8
2009
This tutorial will show you how to create a vector halftone effect using CorelDraw. The resulting image is a square, but the techniques used here could be applied to a wide variety of shapes.
Step 1 – Create a custom artistic media brush
Create a small circle, 100px by 100px, with black fill and no outline. (Hint – hold the CTRL key and use the ellipse tool to create a perfect circle).
Select the artistic media tool and select the sprayer. Select “New Spraylist” from the drop-down list. Click on your black circle then select “Add to spraylist”. The sprayer should be set to “sequentially” and the spacing should be slightly larger than the circle diameter – we will set it to .4″ for this example.
You now have the spraylist needed to create the halftone circles.
Step 2 – Create the object to be filled
We will leave our original black dot as the center of our illustration (select the dot and hit “p” to center to the page). Stretch it larger to to 315px by 315px. We now create a large square that will define the outside boundary of the halftone object. Create this large square with no fill and with a hairline black outline, sized 2400px by 2400px, and centered on the page.
Step 3 – Apply the artistic media to the outer square
Select the square with the pick tool, then select the Artistic Media tool. Re-select the spraylist we created in step one. You should now see a square of circles.
From the object manager select the square with the artistic media and break it apart. You will now have a group of individual circles. Delete the original square to get rid of the outline.
You should now colour the outer circles 10% black. Select and ungroup the outer dots.
Step 4 – Blend
We start by making a horizontal blend line from the center dot to the two outsides. Drag a horizontal guideline down from the top ruler and center it on the middle of the center dot. Make sure the left and right small dots are lined up on the guideline (enable “snap to guideline” , hold the ctrl key, and drag the outer dots up or down to the the guideline).
Now select the interactive blend tool, click the center black dot and drag the cursor to the left gray dot. When you release the cursor you are left with this:
It’s pretty but not what we’re after! To get the halftone effect we must adjust the blend settings. Reduce the numer of steps down to 3:
Select the blend group with the pick tool, break it apart and ungroup the dots. This will allow us to create vertical blends from each of these dots.
Next drag a vertical guideline from the left ruler and center it on the black center dot. Align the top and bottom gray dots on the guideline. Blend from the center dot to the top gray dot (using 3 steps), and then again from the center to the bottom gray dot. Your result should look like this:
Move the vertical guideline to the left and center it on the large gray dot to the left. Snap the closest small gray dots to the guideline and blend to the top and bottom. (Delete any excess small gray dots that are in the way) Remember to set the number of steps to 3 each time.
Repeat for the remaining 3 dots on the center horizontal line. Delete any excess outer gray dots when they get in your way. You will delete all of the vertical dots when you get to the smallest dot on the left side. Your final result should look like this:
You can now delete all the outer dots on the right. Select all the rows and columns left of the center vertical row, copy, paste, and flip horizontally. You can now shift the pasted dots to the right to get the complete picture:If you want the resulting shape to be a circle, break apart the artisitic media, ungroup, and delete any dots from the outer edge of the image.
Step 6 – Play Around
This technique can be used with many different shapes to achieve a variety of effects. The blend tool has a lot of options – try cycling through colours, orient shapes in different directions, then blend.
Here are some more examples of what can be accomplished.
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