I was screen spying on Go Media’s Chris Comella as he was working on a Smashing Pumpkins design in which the dense black typography was exploding shards in every direction. He placed every particle by hand (and it shows). I wondered if scatter brushes could be used to get a similar effect.
Sometimes I get the feeling that Scatter Brushes don’t get enough attention in Illustrator. They are actually a pretty powerful tool, especially if you’re trying to achieve a complicated look that could take awhile to make by hand.
So here are 14 free brushes, but let’s first take a look at the anatomy of a scatter brush. A new Scatter Brush starts with any vector object you think would look cool scattered along a path. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume this is a circle with a black fill and no stroke. Drag this circle onto the brushes panel and choose “New Scatter Brush” from the available options.
You should now see a window with four major options. When adjusting these options, it is best to have a sample stroke on your artboard and the “preview” box checked so you can immediately see the effects of your changes.
All of these major options have a drop-down menu to the right that selects how the parameter will react. The default setting is “fixed”. The remaining options are Random, Pressure, Stylus Wheel, Tilt, Bearing, and Rotation. A little explanation on these options first.
Parameter Settings
1. Random: Creates a brush that varies randomly within a defined range. Now you’ll see two sliders instead of one, and the brush reacts randomly along the path between that range.
If you don’t have a wacom, then you’re going to have to settle for Random settings for variety. (Also, get your Wacom set-up properly by following this guide) Otherwise, check out all these ways to get some more expression out of your Scatter Brushes:
2. Pressure: Creates a brush that varies in response to how hard you push down with your Wacom. This setting is really only useful with the Size parameter, and can give really confusing results when used with other parameters.
3. Stylus wheel: This one is pretty confusing. From what I understand it changes the diameter of the brush in relation to the stylus wheel on a digital pen. Does anybody have a Wacom with a scroll wheel? Am I missing something? I would just stay away from this setting.
4. Tilt: Creates a brush that varies in response to the angle of tilt between your Wacom and the tablet surface.
5. Bearing: Very cool! This setting is great to use with the rotation parameter, and varies the brush based on where the tip of the brush is pointing.
6. Rotation: Also a good option to use with the Rotation parameter, it varies the brush based on how you are twisting the wacom pen along the ‘z’ axis.
Ok, on to the parameters themselves.
Parameters
1. Size controls the size of objects along the stroke.
2. Spacing controls how much space there is between objects along the path.
3. Scatter controls how much space there is between objects perpendicular to the path.
4. Rotation controls how the objects are oriented relative to the page or the path.
I usually start settings each to random and with ranges similar to the screenshot below. Then I go back and experiment with the pressure and tilt settings for the Wacom.
Okay, let’s get back to creating your Scatter Brush. A good first attempt at getting the settings right is to set all parameters to Random and a medium range. How does that look? The two parameters that I find need the most fine tuning are Size and Spacing. If your scatter brush looks too thin, try moving the range of sizes higher and moving the range of spacing lower.
In the free download there are 14 Scatter Brushes to get you started. One of coolest brushes in the freebie is a splatter brush, which allows you to paint a splatter along a path; that’s a lot of control. You’ll also find circles, shards, sticks, squares, little pills, chunks & petals. Also included is the little particle explosion from the preview image made up entirely of the scatter brushes in the freebie.
Double click the brushes to see each one’s settings. The way I have them is just a starting point - go ahead and customize them to your own style. You might be surprised how different a brush can look with a few changes to those sliders.
When trying to make something crazy with scatter brushes my best advice is to layer, layer, layer. For the preview image I laid down a bed of dark colored brushes, then some white ones on top, then some more dark. I’m sure you’ll come up with something cooler and show it off in our User Showcase.
Good luck!
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Awesome as ever. Really useful stuff your posting. Handy to all designers from any sector! Thanks again! Keep it up!
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Extremely cool stuff guys!
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Hot tutorial and freebie set - I’m looking forward to trying these out this week - i’ll post a comment if anything cool comes of it. Thanks a ton for keeping such a great line of designer elements coming!
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I was needing brushes that were not splatters or abstract clouds and logged on and saw this post. Thank you for continuing to keep design fresh!
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Amazing like always….with every post i realize how behind we are .Anyway your work is very inspiring.Keep up the good work.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
So.. where can I get the shirt?
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I love this because it sucks when there’s a font that needs a bit more grunge in one of its letters, makes it look so much better. Thanks
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
fantastic…
this is AWESOME… I was thinking about scatter brushes today.
Damn… LOL
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Really awesome, and extremly useful, now everyday i love illustrator more and more.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Cool tutorial. Anything to save time is always welcome.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Yah, you are right Adam. Scatter brushes don’t get no love! I will have to make some soon.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Thanks AGAIN you guys and gals!! Always spoiling us
Cheers!
J
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
This is like Si Scott typography meets a stick of dynamite lol, amazing work as usual I’ll have to try these out.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
You guys make me jealous with your illustrator skills…
I’m a Photoshop only person
*sigh.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 pm
These are pretty cool definitely getting a feature in my links segment this week might try to make some of my own to.
Thanks Again for a producing such a great blog.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Oh mannnn, this is great! Downloading for sure!
September 4th, 2008 at 2:10 am
How do you guys constantly continue to amaze me? Go Media is not as good as my Bible, but a close second!
September 4th, 2008 at 7:36 am
Yeah… I do the same all the time. Good times.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:40 am
“3. Stylus wheel: This one is pretty confusing. From what I understand it changes the diameter of the brush in relation to the stylus wheel on a digital pen. Does anybody have a Wacom with a scroll wheel? Am I missing something? I would just stay away from this setting.”
It’s not actually on the stylus; from what I know this option can be used with older Graphire tablets witch had a wheel for varied the thickness of the stoke because it didn’t have the ability to register the pen tilt, witch also applies for the newer Bamboo series.
I’m not 100% sure of this information, but I know that I got a Graphire for my brother and that’s what I understood from the instruction manual. I my self have a Bamboo fun and I know for sure it does not register the tilt, and has no options for it in the preference panel.
Have a good day.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Thank you.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Thank you. I downloaded them and bookmarked this page so i can make my own. I appreciate you taking the time to write this up.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
@loja, Ahh. Makes sense - glad you could clear it up.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I
Need
that
shirt.
nao.
supah sexy.
oh and the brushes make for an excellent solution to boring text! ty.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:54 am
Thanks for the freebies and tutorial. Much appreciated since I’m a beginner at Illustrator this is a good help
September 5th, 2008 at 8:26 am
I was screen spying on Go Media’s Chris Comella as he was working on a Smashing Pumpkins design in which the dense black typography was exploding shards in every direction. He placed every particle by hand (and it shows). I wondered if scatter brushes could be used to get a similar effect.
—————
albertjames
http://cash.friendsandfreebies.com
September 9th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
that tee is freaking awesome- I hope SP picked it up!
September 11th, 2008 at 6:54 am
Anytime. The least I can do. I’ve learned a lot from you guys. Great posts, great work.
September 13th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I turned my Wacom pen over about 50 times trying to find a stylus wheel..nope…none here..maybe if I drink another glass of Pinot ?.. thanks for the tips and tricks on creating scatter brushes..I may download the freebies…but what I really want to do is make a bunch of my own. I have to tell you I really eat up GoMediazine articles. The freebies are freakin fantastic…but learning how to do it myself is worth all the freebies thrown together…IMHO..
keep on with the keepin on!
Tori
September 13th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
PS…you guys got me using Illustrator so much..I opened Photoshop today and forgot how to use it!..(j/k..like riding a bike…but I did hesitate!)
September 16th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I’ve taken a shining to scatter brushes lately. These freebies should be a nice addition to my collection. Thanks guys!
September 24th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
The stylus wheel is a dial on the side of some Wacom pens that simulates the dial for controlling paint flow on a real-life airbrush. It’s mainly used by artists who are coming from an airbrush background rather than a pen or fiber brush background, since it will feel like a more natural way of working for them. It is indeed most useful in conjunction with the Size setting, although if brush strokes could vary their Opacity (they can’t), it would be cool to use for that purpose as well. I could also see using it with the Scatter setting, especially if you are using Pressure to control Size.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:20 am
all are beyond imagination…excelent stuff..thanks a lot for sharing this to the world…
November 8th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
For a “quick” and dirty way to utilize the brushes… I start with an extra bold font (Akzidenz Grotesk Extra Bold) and lay it out. Then I draw a quick and random zig-zag with the pen tool over the text, and set the stroke to a suitable scatter brush. Tweak the appearance, including setting the brush colour mode to “Tint” and matching the stroke color to the shirt/paper colour.
My trick from this point is to copy the text and stroke and paste them in front (⌘+F) of your art. Turn the text to outlines (⌘+Shift+O) and for the stroke use (Object > Expand Appearance) to make the scatter an object. Then use pathfinder to union the text out lines first, union/exclude/intersect (your choice) the expanded stroke second, and finally intersect the text object and stroke object.
You will wind up with partially destroyed text pieces to fill in some of the original text that had been destroyed by the original stroke. From here you can set it to fill the original text colour. This maintains readability while keeping the destroyed look. Alternatively you could set the fill to transparent and the stroke colour to match the text colour for a spider-webbed glass look. Or if it’s still not destroyed enough, you can set the scatter object outline to yet another scatter brush.
This keeps the text readable by replacing removed sections inside the path of the text.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:33 am
great one