zoom out oh he's heavy he's a heavy boy hey guys this is my boy ricky and i'm sophia and today we're going to show you how to create a simple grain texture using adobe illustrator and how you can add them to your flat factory illustrations giving them a little bit more depth and character and if you like this video don't forget to subscribe to the link right here [Music] this is a technique i use all the time in my illustrations i'm a big fan of simplistic color palettes so this technique helps
to make my illustrations pop just a little bit more one thing to note is that this tutorial uses opacity masks so if you're unfamiliar with these you can check out my video which explains what an opacity mask is and how to apply them to your illustrations otherwise let's get straight into it for this tutorial i will be using these flat vector trees that i created in adobe illustrator which can be downloaded from the link in the description otherwise feel free to use any vector objects that you h
ave created in illustrator make sure you have the gradient and transparency panels open which you can locate under window let's start with this tree here we are going to add a grain texture that also acts as a shadow to the green part of the tree select the green shape copy and paste in place and then change the shape to the colour you would like the shadow to be in this instance i am using a dark blue [Music] again paste in place the green object with this object selected go to your gradient pa
nel and in the drop down select a black to white gradient [Music] we now want to apply a grain texture to this gradient to do this go to the effects tab up the top of the window select texture and then click on grain the grain dialog box will appear with a thumbnail of your object with a preview of what the grain will look like there are options for you to customize the gradient to how you would like it firstly change the grain type to regular in this instance i'm going to make the grain have a
defined contrast by decreasing the intensity to around 40 and keeping the contrast up near 90. we are now going to use the gradient as an opacity mask for the blue object we created earlier to do this copy the gradient and then delete it select the blue object and go to the transparency panel double-click on the box to the right to activate an opacity mask for this object paste in place to apply the gradient we created go back to the gradient panel and play around with the gradient until you are
happy with the way it looks i'm changing the angle to 90 degrees so the shadow starts from the bottom i'm pretty happy with this but i'm going to exit my opacity mask by clicking on the left box in the transparency panel and change the opacity of the object slightly so the color contrast isn't as harsh we have now created a grainy texture that also acts as a shadow to the tree let's try that again but this time we are going to create highlights to both sides of this tree copy and paste in place
the light green object of the tree and change the color to what you would like the highlights to be i'm going to make my highlights a creamy apricot color once you have chosen your highlight color paste in place the green object again and change it to a black and white gradient in the gradient panel move the black marker of the gradient into the middle and then duplicate the white section by clicking the left mouse holding down option and dragging it over to the other side of the gradient apply
the grain texture by going to effects texture and grain this time let's play around with the settings slightly by changing the grain type to soft and move both the contrast and intensity to 100 copy and delete the gradient select the apricot object and double click on the right box to activate the opacity mask in the transparency panel paste in place the gradient and then click on the left thumbnail to leave the opacity mask in your layers panel move the grain texture to behind the darker green
sections we have now created a grainy texture that also acts as a highlight to both sides of the tree for our third and final tree we are going to try something slightly different but essentially using the same technique to create an interesting texture to the tree like you have with the previous examples copy and paste in place the light green part of the tree use the eyedropper tool to select the same color we used for the shadow in the first tree paste in place the green object again and cha
nge to a black and white gradient in the gradient panel play around with this gradient until you are happy apply the grain texture by going to effects texture and grain this time change the grain type to horizontal play with the settings until you are happy i am setting mine to 65 intensity and 70 contrast copy and delete the grain texture in your layers panel move the blue object behind the apricot leaf shapes select the blue object and double-click on the right box to activate the opacity mask
paste in place the gradient click on the left thumbnail to leave the opacity mask and there you have it three different ways of applying grain textures to your flat vector illustration let's go turn the camera on and ah if you enjoyed this tutorial we'd love to hear from you in the comments and if you love all things illustrations don't forget to subscribe to the link right here
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