The blend tool can be used to make some great little effects, you can use it to create shooting stars or just make some abstract line designs with it. Today we are going to keep it simple and make a shooting star, start off by creating a new web document. Make sure the document is in pixels.
Now with the document open grab the star tool and create a small star in the upper left hand corner of the art board. You can color this what ever you would like but we are going to use a yellow. Set the stroke to none.
Now let’s make a much bigger star at the bottom of the art board. Same as the last star but let’s color this one to an orange (or which ever color of your choosing). Once again make sure the stoke is set to none. If the stoke was set it would ruin the effect that we are trying to accomplish.
Select both stars and go object > blend > make. You will see that it looks kind of like a shooting star. It looks pretty rough though, but that’s okay we can fix this. Go back to the blend menu and select the blend options. Remember that the blend menu was object > blend > and instead of selecting make select blend options. Now that we have the options menu open click the drop down and select “specified steps” then put in 700 and click okay. What this does is it takes away the jagged edges you seen when you first made this blend. Now it looks like one smooth gradient from one star to the next.
You’re done! This is just a simple introduction to the blend tool, you can do so much more with this tool but this was just to get you feet wet. Don’t be afraid to play around with this tool, the more you experiment with this tool; or any tool the more you will learn.
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