Create A Balloon - Illustrator Tutorial

Quick and easy balloon shape in Illustrator.

1. Open a new document and with the ellipse shape tool draw a balloon shape oval:

2. Now with the polygon tool draw a triangle (3 sides, radius I used was 12px, but if it’s too big or small you can change it after, just select it and drag the corner boxes whilst holding down shift and alt). The triangle needs the point at the top. Now place on top of the circle just overlapping (as below) and using the align tool, align both to the horizontal center:

3. Now, with the pathfinder tool, click ‘add’ and then the expand button to make the basic balloon shape:

4. Using the line tool, draw a straight line down for the string. Using the zigzag tool, enter the following settings:

5. Right click and select ’send to back’ with the string tail selected.

6. Now, add a gradient to the balloon. With the balloon shape selected, drag two swatches over to the gradient palette like so:

7. Make sure that ‘radial’ is selected, and the dark colour is on the right, and that there is slightly more of it. Now hit ‘G’ or select the gradient tool, and click and drag (in the direction as shown) The longer you drag it, the sort of wider it gets, which is ideal:

8. Now draw a small white ellipse with no stroke, and then drag the corner points round, rotate it so it looks natural and in line with the balloon shape, as below:

9. In the transparency palette, change the opacity to around 40%, depending on how visible you want the highlight to be.

10. Select the balloon and the sting, and make the stroke heavier to compliment the balloon.

11. Select everything on the art board and then copy and paste the entire balloon. Change any colours quickly by dragging the swatches over, group everything together and rotate round to show variation.

Voila!

  Illustrator

  Illustrator, tutorial