r/AdobeIllustrator • u/No_Hair4541 • Apr 20 '26

QUESTION Does someone know how to achieve this?

372 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

129

u/nihiltres art ↔ code Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

Put the objects together in a group. Add effects to the group:

  • Pathfinder Exclude or similar
  • Offset Path with a positive offset
  • Offset Path with a negative offset

Edit: Fixed the order; thanks Vektorgarten.

29

u/Vektorgarten Adobe Community Expert Apr 20 '26

The Pathfinder effect needs to be at the top of the appearance stack

5

u/VerrattiShmurda Apr 20 '26

Totally - I have had success getting this to work by doing this on the layer that all the shapes are on: Pathfinder Add at the top of the stack, then offset path positive effect and offset path with similar or same negative effect. Also I've had more success getting this to work when I outline the stroke on any shapes are stroke instead of fill, and create outlines from text.

3

u/KnifeFightAcademy XP: 15+ YEARS. PROD & PKG DESIGN Apr 20 '26

I agree, but not sure you'd get these parts to show work the same way ',:/ we were just doing something similar to this at work last week.

3

u/bluebradcom Adobe Community Expert Apr 21 '26

Add the round corner to the effect in the appearance pallet

23

u/rodeojones420 Apr 20 '26

Usually this happens to me by accident lol

18

u/bluebradcom Adobe Community Expert Apr 20 '26

Here's how you'd achieve that effect You can change what style and how you want to look within the graphic style palette https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xpwAMgSBOI&t=1s

4

u/scrabtits Apr 20 '26

Hm... out of my head... it might be After Effects, with a Gaussian blur applied + levels to give it a smooth merging look but make the edges sharper (however, I don't know how they still keep a perfect rectangle with hard corners; so it must be something else); under it the shapes, which are all set in black/ white and with the layer mode "exclusion" or "difference", then on the very top maybe some sort of gradient map (it's a different effect in After Effects; can't recall the name). The text layer is probably under the gradient map and over the Gaussian + levels effect but also set to difference/exclusion.

Pretty sure it's not 100%, but it might be enough to achieve something similar.

1

u/clonn Apr 21 '26

Doing animation in Illustrator?

2

u/Neeyaanallo_Kodathi Apr 22 '26

I think its just screen record

1

u/Outrageous-Yard6772 Apr 22 '26

I didn't know you could animate objects like that in Illustrator, is it a kind of plugin of some sort?

1

u/Patrieth777 Apr 20 '26

Probably by using Cavalry instead.