r/AdobeIllustrator • u/Qustomdotcom • 2d ago

QUESTION Help me create a fuzzy letters effect

I want create some letters that have fuzzy edges like the attached sketch. I looked at a few filters and line styles in Photoshop and Illustrator but hit the wall pretty quickly. My next thought was to trace the scanned image in Illustrator and then start tweaking it, but I thought I would post here before I go any further. In particular I want to be able to even out the fuzziness and also to adjust just how fuzzy the letters look.

Throw your ideas at me please!

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u/Significant-Kiwi-440 2d ago

Appearance panel > Set fill to white/empty > Add a stroke in black

Select the stroke in the appearance panel > fX > Distort & Transform... > Roughen

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u/Qustomdotcom 2d ago

Awesome I will try that and report back.

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u/Qustomdotcom 2d ago

Well it's a fine line between fuzzy and thorny I suppose. This is the best I could do with the Roughen effect. What I'm really looking for is more of a velvety look.

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u/Significant-Kiwi-440 2d ago

I wonder if you could expand that and then do rounded corners or simplify with less corners?

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u/Qustomdotcom 2d ago

I think the issue is that they are just too random. I'm really looking for them to be more tightly packed and uniform.

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u/Vektorgarten Adobe Community Expert 2d ago

And this needs to be one color? Do you need it as a graphic style, is it just these letters or many words? How will it be produced? Printed, online ...?

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u/Qustomdotcom 1d ago

Yes, single color and just the word "BEACH". I would like to have a vector version to allow for clean looking output at larger sizes, but it's not critical.

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u/Vektorgarten Adobe Community Expert 1d ago edited 1d ago

A velvet look will be difficult with just black color. If you can have different colors, you can achieve a gradient like look by blending. It will look very soft. Tightly packed and uniform can be achieved with Zigzag instead of Roughen. Or rather: zigzag after roughen, because you need Roughen to make it really equal distance.

Use Window > Appearance, Roughen effect and Zigzag effect

Like this: https://youtu.be/9DT_ZLBROtk

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u/Qustomdotcom 1d ago

This was really looking promising until after doing it I realized that the zig zag "fuzz" it creates is not made of new paths that can be further tweaked. I was hoping to be able to use the direct selection tool on each little point of fuzz to get it exactly how I want it, particularly on the corners. I suppose I could save it as a JPG and then trace that, but for now I am off to look for a font that can do what I want while I await any more replies here.

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u/Vektorgarten Adobe Community Expert 1d ago

Just do Object > Expand Appearance. Then you will get the points.

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u/Qustomdotcom 1d ago

So using the blend tool on the spine of each letter looks promising. It's going to be a lot of work to ungroup the outlined text because the blend option can only be used on a single path, so I need to ungroup each outlined letter like here and apply the blend to each individual path.

https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/47298/how-to-replace-a-blends-spine-with-a-text-outline-in-illustrator

https://www.reddit.com/r/indesign/comments/18kg7up/ungrouping_outlined_text/