Creating Burning Match in CorelDRAW with Blend Tool

In this tutorial I will tell how to create a burning match with Interactive Blend Tool and Transparancy in CorelDRAW.

The tutorial was inspired by VectorTuts tutorial Create a Burning Match in Illustrator Using Gradient Meshes, so I decided to create a similar effect in CorelDraw, not using Interactive Mesh Tool, but Interactive Blend Tool.

So, let’s start with the match. Select Rectangle Tool and draw 3 rectangles on top of each other. Every next rectangle has to be a bit narrower and have the colour similar to the ones shown below:

To change the shapes of orange and black rectangle, select rectangle with Pick Tool and click COnvert to Curves (Ctr+Q), after which you just can change the position of every node:

Select Free Hand Tool to draw the head and the highlights of the match:

Draw the ellipse like shown below and select the match head and the ellipse:

Apply Back Minus Front:

Now, we have the match with simple solid colours which we will have to blend. To do so, Select Interactive Blend Tool:

Apply Blend to all 3 rectangles one by one, so the colours look softly blended with each other:

To create some texture on the head of the match, copy it and paste again on the top, go to Object Properties > Fill Type > Pattern Fill and select the needed pattern:

For this pattern you will have to apply transparancy. Interactive Transparancy Tool can be found on te left docker:

Choose radial transparancy like shown below:

Place the match on black background:

Now, time to make fire itself. Select Free Hand Tool to draw the shape of fire. Copy it, paste about 3 times (or more) and make each next shape a bit smaller. You will also need to adjust the smaller shapes, but remember to leave the same amount of nodes in each object. The outer shape has to be of the same colour as the background:

Now, select Blend Tool and blend these shapes. After doing that right click on the blended object and Break the Object Apart (Ctrl+K):

Place the fire under the match:

Now, do the same with a few other tongus of fire:

You will first get something like this:

After breaking the blended object apart, select Transparancy Tool and apply Uniform Normal Transparancy, about 80-85%:

Now, to create the smoke, draw 3 shapes, like shown below (each one on the image has the hearline: red, yeallow and pink). The outer and inner shapes have to be of the same colour as the background:

Apply blend to them and place under the fire. Do some more of these smokes:

Draw a few another objects on top of all others, and colour it light blue/grey:

Apply Transparancy to them:

And here is what we got:

You can also experiment with smoke deleting the colours of all the objects, that make smoke, and selecting the outline of about 0,5 pt wide and colouring them grey and blue. As these are still blended, the outline colours will blend too, and will create a nice artistic smoke effect as well.

Hope you enjoed the tutorial. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section:)


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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 at 13:22and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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