553 Creating a classic neon sign in Illustrator

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques! This week, I'm gonna show you how to create a neon sign entirely from scratch using a bunch of open path outlines, and old school blends inside Adobe Illustrator. Here! Let me show you exactly how it works. Alright, here's the final entirely synthetic neon effect inside Photoshop, but we have to start things off by blending the letters in Illustrator. So, I'll go ahead and switch over to that application, and, as you can see, I have some hand-drawn letters right here.

I'll go ahead and click on the O, for example, with my black arrow tool, so that you can see that it is an open path outline, and you have to start with open path outlines, in order to achieve a neon effect. But as you can see, they're not particularly complicated. The E with it's two path outlines, is the most elaborate of these letters. Alright, so, first thing we wanna do, is go ahead and select all the letters, and because the background is currently locked, you can do that by pressing CTRL-A, or Command-A on the Mac.

Next, we wanna group this type together, by going up to the Object menu, and choosing the Group command. Alright, now, I'm gonna go up to the Edit menu, and choose the Copy command, or I could just press CTRL-C, or Command-C on the Mac, and that's gonna allow me to build up a sequence of these letters. And as you can see, I have the Swatches panel open, in the top-right corner of the screen, and my stroke is currently active, there is no fill. And, so, with that stroke active, I'm gonna change it to black, which is absolute RGB black, incidentally. And then I'm gonna increase the line weight value, here inside the Stroke panel, it just happens to be the easiest way for me to work, and I'll change this line weight to a whopping 48 points.

Now, if you're working along with me, you're not gonna see any difference. In fact, you're not gonna see any difference in the video either, and that's because we have black letters against a black background. Alright, now I'm gonna paste a copy of my letters in front by going to the Edit menu, and choosing Paste in Front, or you can press CTRL-F, or Command-F on a Mac, as I will be doing in the future. And that's gonna go ahead and paste a copy of those letters. Alright, now I'm gonna change the color of my stroke to this guy right here, deep red. And to give you a sense for exactly how that's put together, I'll go ahead and double-click, and notice that my R-value is set to 180, and both G and B are set to zero.

I am working in the RGB color space, incidentally. It's very difficult to achieve neon quality colors in CMYK. Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and cancel outta here, and then I'll increase the line weight to, let's say, 42 points this time around. Alright, now I'll press CTRL-F, or Command-F on the Mac, in order to paste another copy of my letters, and this time, I'm gonna change the stroke back to black, and I'm gonna increase the line weight to 33 points this time around, and this is all trial and error, folks. I just came up with some colors, and some line weights that I liked.

Alright, now I'm gonna once again press CTRL-F, or Command-F on a Mac, to paste yet another copy of those letters in front, and I'm gonna change the color this time to bright red. Which, by the way, has a red value of 230, a green of zero, and a blue value of 15, for what that's worth, and then I'm gonna take the line weight to 24 points. Alright, we have just two more copies here, so I'll press CTRL-F, or Command-F on a Mac, in order to paste the second to last copy, and I'll change the color to dark red this time around, and to give you a sense for what that looks like, it has a R-value of 150, both G & B are zero, and I'm gonna leave the line weight set to 15 points.

And then finally, I'll press CTRL-F, or Command-F on the Mac again, I will change the color to this guy right here, vivid yellow. That has an R-value of 255, a G-value of 200, and a B-value of zero, and I will take the line weight down this time to a mere six points. Alright, now what we need to do is blend all of these letters, and you can do that by just marqueeing em, like so, and you can marquee any old place with the black arrow tool because after all, all of the letters are grouped together. And the great thing about Illustrator is it does allow you to blend between groups by going up to the Object menu, choosing Blend, and then choosing Make.

And that is gonna create a series of intermediate transitions, so that we have smooth colors inside of our neon letters. But if things aren't looking all that smooth to you, then what you wanna do, is return to the Object menu, drop down to Blend, and then choose Blend Options, in order to bring up the Blend Options dialogue box here. Very possibly, by default, it's gonna be set to smooth color, which looks like this, if I turn on a preview checkbox, so not so smooth. What I found worked better is to change Spacing to Specified Steps, and then set the number of steps to 20, at which point, I'll go ahead and click okay to accept that change.

Alright, now I'll just go ahead and zoom back out, by pressing CTRL-0, or Command-0 on a Mac, I'll click off the text to deselect it. And then, here inside the Layers panel, I'll twirl open this neon layer by clicking on this little twirly triangle right there, and I'll turn on this item named Border, which is yet another blend. So I created it in exactly the same way as the letters. I just did in the background because there's not really any sense in repeating ourselves. And that is how you blend between groups of open path outlines, in order to achieve a basic neon effect inside Illustrator, that will eventually look anything but basic here inside Photoshop.

Alright if you're a member of Lynda.com, I have two, count them two, follow-up movies, in which I show you how to up the ante in your neon effect. First, we're gonna add some light fluctuations. Notice how the tubes here, especially at the bottom, they grow dimmer and brighter over time, which is the way it really works, and then I'll show you how to create the dark, so called block outs that connect the O to the P, do you see that right there? And the P to the E, and so forth. It's all in the name of creating a more credible effect.

If you're waiting for next week, I'm gonna show you how to create photo-realistic neon inside Photoshop. Deke's Techniques, each and every week! Keep watching.