Adobe Illustrator for Windows - Re: need help making kaleidoscope or spirograph effect

Author

Re: need help making kaleidoscope or spirograph effect

Teri Pettit

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

Chihiro,

I have retitled your post to make it easier to find. When making future posts, please try to give them titles that describe the problem or question you are asking. (A title like "illustrator help" makes it sound like it would be a question about how to us
e the Help system.)

See this advice from Len Hewitt on making effective forum posts:
LenHewitt, "How To Get Help Quickly" #, 5 Mar 2004 12:23 am </cgi-bin/webx?50@@.eed5198.2cd0728e>

I'd call those kinds of images spirographic illustrations too. (Even though they technically aren't even what a spirograph does, since it makes a single long connected path that goes through many revolutions. But visually the effect is extremely similar.)
A kaleidoscope, in contrast, uses reflections of clipped randomly distributed objects, and doesn't look like spirographic art at all. But I see that the vector clip art you linked to called the rotated overlapping lines "kaleidoscopic art", so the blame
for the misleading nomenclature is theirs, not yours.

If these kinds of designs interest you, you might want to take a look at the file "Fun with Transform Effects" on my web site:

<http://tpettit.best.vwh.net/adobe/>

It shows how to use the Transform live effect to make repeating rotated and spiraled designs where there is only one copy of the base art, and all the repetitions are generated by the effect. That allows you to modify the base art once, and immediately vi
ew the way it changes the rotated design, without having to repeat all the transformations again.

Maybe I will revise the file to add some examples that are spirographic and some that are kaleidoscopic. The Snowflake example in that file could be adapted to simulate a kaleidoscope, if the object to which it was applied was a triangular clipping mask c
ontaining an assortment of randomly distributed shapes within it.

James_Talmage@adobeforums.com

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

You do yourself a disservice if you use only literal duplication (Transform Again) to create re-iteritive designs. This PDF shows why Transform Effect allows more quick experimentation:

<http://www.IllustrationETC.com/AIbu...tSpirograph.pdf>

JET

James_Talmage@adobeforums.com

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

If these kinds of designs interest you, you might want to take a look
at the file "Fun with Transform Effects" on my web site

Teri,

Just in case you are not aware of this: When I try to view that PDF (Transform_Effects_CS.pdf), either with Acrobat Pro 8 or Adobe Reader 7 (Windows) I get an otherwise blank PDF displaying the "This Illustrator file was saved without PDF compatibility...
" message.

I don't know if this has to do with the fact that I recently installed Acrobat Professional 8. (There is some conversation in the Acrobat forum about Acrobat 8's "stricter" insistance on properly formed PDFs (whatever that means).

JET

Teri Pettit

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

JET,

It is not a .pdf file. None of the files on my web site are. It is a .ai file, that was intentionally saved without PDF compatibility. They are intended for opening up in Illustrator so that you can examine the way they are built in the Appearance and Lay
ers palettes, which is why I list the AI version number. They don't have screen shots like your AIBuds do, they instead have instructions like "Select this object. Open the Graphics Styles palette and apply such-and-such style."

Perhaps your browser is changing the extension. Safari will do that, although it tends to append .ps rather than changing .ai to .pdf. You should be able to change the extension back and open it in Illustrator.

Instead of clicking on the links, it may work better to right-click or Ctrl-click and use the "Download this file" command so that it doesn't try to open it in a browser or an application.

James_Talmage@adobeforums.com

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

It is not a .pdf file.... Perhaps your browser is changing the extension.

It's IE 6. I've never known it to do that. RightClicking on the link gives a name of Transform_Effects_CS.pdf.

Weird.

JET

Harron_K._Appleman@adobeforums.com

2006-12-06, 8:16 pm

James,

Left- or right-clicking in IE6 gives me .ps extensions with .ai file download links, including Teri's... and that's "normal" with IE in my experience.

You might have an errant MIME type association in your registry.

Teri,

I've noticed some of your .ai files are Zipped. I think that's the best way to handle it.