Last week, I and my friends went to the Bon Odori at Shah Alam, and I wrote an entry about it too. It was an enjoyable event and definitely looking forward to go again next year. When arriving the stadium, everyone will get a plastic fan to get yourself cold down. When I take back home, I observe the form of the fan and suddenly have one idea in mind, why don’t just make it into vector graphic?
The form of the fan is pretty straight forward and easy to construct. Below I will show you how I create it in Illustrator CS2 as well as the vector file for download. Perhaps you may want to ask why I use black color? Well is because recently i read a post in PingMag, it says that black is getting popular in Japan. Look at that black toilet roll, cool. So I also want to experiment black with this fan. Well I think the result is not bad! š
Step by Step Construction
First, built up the foundation shape of the fan. Use round shape and rounded rectangular tool will do the trick. Shape no.1, use the white arrow tool to tweak the top anchor point to make the fan shape. Make sure the shapes are centered align.
Building the frame
Next, build up the frame by using the Offset Path to create in the inside frame. Then Divide the paths using Pathfinder. And then duplicate the frame to make the second inner frame.
Building the bone
Now, build the “bone” of the fan. Look complicated but actually is easy to make. First, make a vertical line, then by using the Rotate tool (or press R for shortcut), Alt click at the bottom of the line to make the registration point at the bottom line, then a window popup. Enter a figure, let say 5 degree and click copy. Continue duplicate the line by pressing Ctrl-D until it forms a full circle. Then delete the unwanted lines like above. Next, make the stroke of the line thicker, maybe 3 to 5 point. Then, expand all the lines to become a rectangular shape.
Remove the extra shapes
By using the shape number 1 mentioned above, divide the path and remove the extra length of the bones as well as shapes that is not bone.
After that, select the bones, the handler and the frames and hit Add to Shape. The fan structure is almost done.
Creating the fan canvas
Then, using the shape 1 and 3, create the “canvas” of the fan shown above. This shape later you can Add to Shape to the structure of the fan. But before that, offset path the canvas to make a smaller canvas like the one shown below.
Now, the look is like this. The smaller canvas is a space to put graphics that you like.
Creating the relief bone
Next, by using the bone created before [make sure that the root shape created is duplicated for backup copy] to make the relief bone of the canvas. Basically, the bon odori fan is finish created with basic white color and black stroke.
Final Result
The final approach by coloring the fan!
Download resource file: Here (AI CS2 – 245KB)
Note: the cherry blossom texture shown above the title header is not included. That is just for presentation purposes.
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