Me And My Shadow

As promised, here are some of the 3d vases created by my Monday night class. You may notice that J. Cronin's vase is decorated with bunnies. And if you read my last blog, you might recall that a recent quiz in the class involved drawing animals and turning them into symbols. Mr. Cronin took full advantage of the symbols palette by using the symbol that he had created for the quiz. Looks to me as if the blue bunny is planning an escape. Actually, the falling over aspect of some of the vases is my fault. The assignment specified that one vase should be rotated. Most of the students felt that was offensive to their design and chose to ignore those instructions.

Several students complained bitterly about the drop shadow that I requested also. I was trying to save them time and trouble and asked that they apply a simple drop shadow (Effect>Stylize>Drop Shadow.) They pointed out, rightly, that it didn't look very natural. A few students drew their own shadow. They then lowered its opacity, skewed it, and sent it behind the vase. I love it when students think outside the box (or in this case-outside the vase.) This worked very nicely, but they asked me if there was an easier way.

My first impulse was to use a built-in Graphic Style called Shadow Back that comes with Illustrator CS2. I use it occasionally when I am in a hurry and want an object to throw a quick shadow. You can find this style by opening the options menu in the Graphic Styles palette.(Click the little circle button at the top right of the palette). From the menu choose "Open graphic style library" and from the list choose "Image Effects." The style is on the bottom row of the palette.

I tried using this and, as I feared, it failed to do the trick. I knew that since 3d is an effect, the vase is not really vase-shaped, but actually just a half a vase. Here was the result. The drop shadow worked, but, I lost my pretty 3d effect. Pretty much what I expected--ah, but hope springs eternal! Back to the drawing board. After some thought, I decided that I could Expand my vase so that it was no longer simply an effect. Expanding breaks an effect down to about a kajillion paths and points. Once you Expand an object, there is no going back, so make sure you love your vase before you begin. To expand the vase, select it, and choose Object>Expand Appearance. Your object is now truly vase shaped. Keep it selected and click on the Shadow Back style in the graphic styles palette.

I wasn't totally happy with the graphic style--I thought it was a little too dark and overly-defined. Once you have applied a graphic style, though, you can always fix it up a bit in the Appearance Palette. The 2nd fill in the palette is the shadow. (see palette below.) I selected it, played with the gradient a little bit, added a gaussian blur, and lowered its opacity. I also thought the skewing of the shadow was a bit off, so I double-clicked on Free Distort and adjusted it also. Finally, after all that work, I saved my edited version of the back shadow in the Graphic Styles palette. Who knows, I may want to use it again some day. I am still not in love with the shadow, but I am certainly tired of it.

How would you create a drop shadow for a 3d object in Illustrator? Can anyone give me a new and innovative way that I haven't considered?

If you are new to Illustrator and are interested in learning how to create a drop shadow from scratch, check out this Biorust tutorial.