I’ve been experimenting lately with creating textures directly in Illustrator rather than moving the vector art to Photoshop for that step.
Thought I’d share the resources I found that helped me become more comfortable with this process.
RDesign (a creative studio in St. Petersburg, FL): Easy Vector Textures in Illustrator part one
Thoughts: This technique uses Illustrator’s Live Trace feature to create textures from raster (photo) images of textures. We had a lot of fun playing with this one…finding real life textures to photograph was particularly enjoyable!
DeveloperTutorials: A Quick Wood Grain Texture Using Adobe Illustrator
Thoughts: Definitely a quick and easy technique to create a pretty realistic wood grain texture using some lines and the warp, twist & pucker tools.
Melon Animation: Texture using Transparency
If you don’t have the time to create your own textures from scratch, I also found these downloads that should get you started:
- Swirly Clouds Vector Design Motif from KeepDesigning.com (FREE) – a lovely swirling, circle design
- Photos of a variety of textures from TextureWarehouse.com (FREE) – great collection of wood grain, glass, mechanical, rubber, and other textures
- Photos of a variety of textures from BenCloward.com (FREE) – includes some amazing photos of snow, skin, foliage, rope, bark, clouds, and more