Making of a Valentine greeting card - Part 1: The Heart

Valentine’s is just a few days away so today we’ll be creating this Valentine Day Greeting card.


This tutorial will be divided in two parts. In Part 1 we will create the Heart itself. In Part 2 we’ll create the background for our card.

Let’s begin.


1. Create a big circle (L+Shift). Press Shift + C on your keyboard and choose circle’s bottom anchor point. It will turn from round to pointy.
2. Press A and choose the upper and bottom anchor points and pull them down a bit till it looks like a huge water drop.


3. On a new layer create another, smaller circle and duplicate it (Alt+ drag). Go to Window + Align and choose Vertical Align Bottom. Place as shown.


4. If needed, pull the upper point down a bit more to create a shape of a heart.


5. Choose all figures and go to Window - Pathfinder. Press Add and Expand.

6. Duplicate (Alt+drag) the heart twice and place as shown.


7. Choose both hearts, go to Pathfinder and choose Divide and Ungroup.

8. Choose the right part of the divided heart and place as shown. Alight to Top and Right. Erase the leftovers.



9. Create another copy of the original heart and move it aside. Press R and choose Hearts bottom anchor. You will see a small blue circle appearing above it. Press Alt and rotate to right as shown.


10. Choose both hearts, go to Pathfinder window again and press Divide and Ungroup (rightclick).


11. Choose the left part and place as shown.


12. Place it as shown. Make this detail a little smaller by moving corners. This will be the a white highlight
13. Another way to create this highlight is to draw a crescent shape with a Pen tool.

It’s time to color the heart.


14. Choose Cherry color for the right part and White for the Left. Delete Stroke for both.
15. The heart itself will be colored with Radial gradient colors - Red and Yellow. Apply by pressing from upper the left corner of the heart.

The heart is ready.

In Part 2 of this tutorial we'll be making a background for our Valentine greeting card.

If you have any question regarding this tutorial - don't hesitate to post it.

Making an umbrella with Illustrator.

There are several ways to create realistic umbrella with Illustrator. In this tutorial I will cover one of them.



This is the umbrella we will be creating this time. Make sure your reference image of umbrella is multi-colored divided to sections.





1. Open a new document (Cltr+N) and File-Place your reference image. It is always good to separate things at the beginning so Lock the first layer and open a new one. Set the Fill color to None.


2. Start outlining each section of the umbrella using a Pen Tool. Remember, that in order to create curved lines you should point and drag your mouse and only then release it. Each section should be outlined on a separate layer.



If your shape doesn't look exactly as your reference shape, choose the Direct selection Tool (A) and choose an angle on your shape. Then press Alt on your keyboard so you can work with each handle separately to adjust the lines.


3. After outlining all the umbrella sections add a handle and a top to the umbrella using a Rounder rectangle tool.
4. Hide the layer with the reference image.


5. To color the umbrella use either multiple base colors or create a nice gradient color.


6. That’s it – hope you found it useful.

If you have any questions - don't hesitate to ask. I will be happy to answer it.

Let there be 3D!!!!!

This blog is to become a collection of links that are related to theoretical and practical applications of Computer Graphics and Animation, including tutorials, galleries, articles and sites. Since I was (and still am) eager to know as much as possible about 3D CG, I created my own list of essential CG info resources. As my list was growing, I found it equally hard to find the necessary material either on web or my computer. So the main purpose of this blog is to create a collection of all the info that I ever found useful (for me) without the need to search for it whenever I decide to use it again.

The first link will lead you to Tutorialized, a well known website providing all-kind and all-level tutorials including 2&3D graphics, web design, video editing, programming and many more. Since I'm basically self taught (except a short course in college), I practically (still) live there. If you're not familiar with this site, check it out. And if you're new to CG – this one is made for you.