Envelope distortion in Illustrator
Distortion effects can take the perfect lines of your vector illustration and give them a more organic or hand-sculpted appearance, says Sam Hampton-Smith.
Add variety to your artwork with chunky, delicate or flowing organic shapes. Push and pull artwork into a pre-defined shape, or force text into a wave. Illustrator has advanced mesh-based envelope distortion functions that are often overlooked, but are hugely powerful tools.
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Once you understand how the distortion works, a whole new range of visual effects becomes available to you. Illustrator offers you the flexibility of three different approaches to distortion nirvana: warp, mesh and object. We're going to briefly look at all three in this tutorial.
The really clever part of this functionality is that all the distortion is entirely non-destructive. So you can always get back to your original artwork, giving you freedom to experiment without risking your hard work.
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