Metallic effect

[mcoombs]

Hello,

I am creating a design and would like to use some text with a "silver metallic" effect to it.

Any suggestions how to do this please. I guess I'm being lazy as I could probably work it out.

Thanks
Mike

[sallybode]

There are so many ways to achieve metal. Here are a few. They are mostly done with blends and contours and duplicating the type (converted to curves and nudging it up and duplicating the original again and nudging it down and using Simpify) Cut the main object, select the remaining, apply conical blend, combine, then break apart, paste the original back and decorate further with a few sparkles or lens flares, finish by adding a faint drop shadow set to add mode in a pale yellow gold. That does script.

If you wish to see it better, there is the .pdf.

[alanstancliff]

Sally,

It would be great if you could post a step-by-step tutorial for one of the examples in your picture.

Regards,

Alan

[mcoombs]

Thank you.

The effects shown are amazing. A tutorial would be of great help or a link to somewhere that I might find one.

Thanks again
Mike

[sallybode]

I think I'll do a video tutorial, but there are various steps for different versions of DRAW. However the more I think on it, I have respect for the fellow who created this technique for DRAW. I don't feel right about it.

In the meanwhile, I'll show you where I bought the tutorials that helped me learn to do this.

http://www.unleash.com/jeffh/vectormetal/index.asp
http://www.unleash.com/jeffh/goldfactory/index.asp
http://www.unleash.com/jeffh/drawtips/index.asp

Jeff's tutorials are very good, he put a lot of labor into what he did and I don't feel right about taking credit for his innovations.

I have refined his techniques by adding some techniques of my own. These I can freely talk about. What I've added is my techniqe of shadow painting. The technique of Jeff's involves creating great gradients. This is the first step. The best way to learn to do gold is first to do silver. As silver is working with a grayscale gradient, it is easier to control as you don't have to decide if the gold color is right or if is is too saturated. The technique used here changes the silver to gold with a duplication of the rear shape set to the front and changed to the color gold and set to Mulitple in transparency. Further adjustment was made as to its saturation with a linear gradient applied to bring out the subtle color variantion. PhotoPaint has a great little sparkle in the image sprayer that can be copied and pasted into DRAW, set to Add and manipulated to get a variety of flares. I've played with the technique a lot and have found that there are other transparency modes that work too. The background color of course helps with the effect. By using a gradient in the background, I did not have to apply a drop shadow set to a color to aid in the effect, so it becomes eaiser.

The main thing is to learn to observe where light will make a gleam on an item to add then these effects to where light will make slight flares, appeals to the eye and makes you see a three dimensional object from two dimensional letters. The font used in this example is "Atlantic Inline".

Chunky text gives you more real estate to practice on.

Often my customers ask for a gold or silver effect and then ask for text that is used on a Wedding Invitation, since you would hardly use something that thin to even do foil embossing, I steer them away to something thicker. It is a shame to go through the trouble of doing this to have it wasted away by having to use it at 12 point on a business card. All things don't print well at all sizes. Metallic effects need a greater size to be given their just due. I am working on a cover for a book to be printed on 11 x 17 so the cover is 8.5 x 11 inches. The type is 36 point and the capitals are 48. It is in an elegant script, because it is big enough, it is for a "Silver Anniversary". If you attempt a metallic effect over two line, paste them up as two separate objects or you have to double the work in making the gradient.

I have been in discussions with people about what makes DRAW easier to use than Illustrator, I have about the same skill at using Illustrator, however, I would not really try to do this in Illustrator as it is much more difficult to set up the gradient, and since application of it is by trial and error, you want a metallic effect in most case to be perpendicular to the the baseline of the lettering, it is hard to do. If you have trouble with getting the gradient to be perpedicular, you have guidelines that also can snap the gradient to it. If you have trouble with the snap not being powerful enough to do this, you can adjust the snap in Tools/Options and set snap to "high". I never change this.

In addition, great metallic type frequently has quite a stacking order, to select any item in that stacking order is fairly easy in DRAW, Illustrator, if you want to select something, isolate it to its own layer. This makes the processing of artwork take a lot longer.