Blending contoured shapes on a curve...

**Ross Macintosh** · 06 January 2001, 03:37 PM

I don't know if anyone has tried this - you should! It is fun.

I drew an ellipse and rotated it about 45 degrees.
I drew a straight vertical line.
I applied an outside contour (4-step) to the line.
I cloned the contoured line and offset it.
I applied a simple blend from one to its clone.
Selecting both the blend & the ellipse, in the tools for blends I attached the blend to the "curve".

The result was the neat twisted ribbon effect. I touched up the graphic with some shadowing and highlights.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[This message was edited by Ross Macintosh on January 06, 2001 at 04:45 PM.]

**Ross Macintosh** · 06 January 2001, 03:37 PM

I don't know if anyone has tried this - you should! It is fun.

I drew an ellipse and rotated it about 45 degrees.
I drew a straight vertical line.
I applied an outside contour (4-step) to the line.
I cloned the contoured line and offset it.
I applied a simple blend from one to its clone.
Selecting both the blend & the ellipse, in the tools for blends I attached the blend to the "curve".

The result was the neat twisted ribbon effect. I touched up the graphic with some shadowing and highlights.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[This message was edited by Ross Macintosh on January 06, 2001 at 04:45 PM.]

**Ross Macintosh** · 06 January 2001, 03:55 PM

I just played with this technique some more and realized the contouring isn't necessary. Instead of a contoured line you can use a shape with any fill you want. I just tried it with rounded-end rectangles filled with a 3-colour linear fill designed to make the rectangle look cylindrical. It worked reasonably effectively. The example below shows what can be achieved with the technique
.
Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[This message was edited by Ross Macintosh on January 06, 2001 at 05:37 PM.]

**caraman1** · 06 January 2001, 07:03 PM

Reminds me of those optical illusions by Escher(I think that was his name)

Dennis

<a href=http://www.djart.com>DJArt & Design</a>

**Ross Macintosh** · 06 January 2001, 07:29 PM

I find M.C. Escher's work certainly does come to mind with the above images. As a teen (years ago) I had a book about him and it strongly influenced my interest in highly crafted illustrations. (My examples above are not!). I'm glad you brought him up because it is nice to be reminded of such heroes. I'm sure his work has been an inspiration to a great many people involved in graphic design and technical illustration.

I find it interesting that his work had a mathmatical basis - as does working with blends - given the behind the scenes algorithms that our friends at Xara Ltd. have coded. My other heroes are those folks who develop code that allow us to be creative and enjoy our work.

Thanks Xara Ltd.
Regards, Ross Macintosh

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

**Egg Bramhill** · 07 January 2001, 04:48 AM

Ross
Thanks for the great tip. I found I had to mess about with the overlaps on the ends to get a smooth transition. Attached another Escher diagram
Egg

**Egg Bramhill** · 07 January 2001, 05:41 AM

but you can quickly get complicated effects with this tool

**Ross Macintosh** · 07 January 2001, 09:13 AM

The following example was done with the blend tool. The blend was between two identical long skinny rectangles with curved corners. The blend was attached to a sine-like curve.

What I learned in this one was that even after it is attached to the curve (line) you can interactively edit the fills of the end objects from which the blend was created. I selected one of the original end shapes (ctrl-click + tab if necessary; you tab between either end and the line) and then edited it as a multicolour linear fill. Copying that completed object to the clipboard I was able to tab to the other end shape and paste attributes (ctrl-shift-A)making the two ends identical again. I finished up the graphic by applying a shadow to the blend, creating a background, and making a shadowed frame.

I had fun!
Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>