How to Create a Zeppelin Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

Final product image — What You’ll Be Creating

We’re honouring the German language and culture this week in celebration of the launch of the German version of Envato Elements!

In today’s
tutorial we’re going to take a look at the process of creating a floating
zeppelin illustration in Adobe Illustrator, using nothing more than a couple of geometric shapes and
tools.

So, assuming you already prepped yourself with a fresh cup of coffee,
let’s jump straight into it.

What You’ll Need

Before we begin, I wanted to point out that the texture that I ended up using for the current project is part of the Subtle Halftone Textures pack (more precisely halftone number five) which you can find over at Envato Elements.

Oh, and don’t forget you can always expand your resource library by heading over to Envato Elements, where you’ll find a great selection of vector graphics.

example of subtle halftone textures — Subtle Halftone Textures by Envato Elements

1. How to Set Up a New Project File

As always, we’re going to kick things off
by setting up a new project file by heading over to File > New (or using the Control-N
keyboard shortcut), and then adjusting it as follows:

Number
of Artboards: 1
Width:
800
px
Height:
600
px
Units:
Pixels

And from the Advanced tab:

Color
Mode: RGB
Raster
Effects: Screen (72ppi)
Preview Mode: Default

2. How to Set Up the Layers

Once we’ve finished setting up our project
file, it would be a good idea to structure our document using a few layers, since this will help us maintain a steady workflow by allowing us to
focus on one section of the illustration at a time.

That being said, bring up the Layers panel and create a total of four
layers, which we will rename as follows:

layer
1: background
layer
2: zeppelin
layer
3: gradient
layer 4: texture

3. How to Create the Background

As soon as we’ve finished layering our
document, we can start working on the actual illustration, and we will do so by
creating the background. So make sure you’ve positioned yourself
on the first layer, and let’s jump straight into it!

Quick tip: before we
start, I wanted to point out that the entire project was built with pixel
perfection in mind, so you might want to check out my How to Create Pixel Perfect Artwork tutorial, which should get you up to speed in no time.

Step 1

Grab the Pen Tool (P), and after setting your Fill color to #7AC6F4, carefully draw
the main shape for the lower background cutout using the reference image as
your main guide.

creating the main shape for the lower background cutout

Step 2

With the Pen
Tool (P) still selected, quickly draw the smaller upper cutout, positioning
the resulting shape as seen in the reference image.

Step 3

Once you’ve finished drawing
the background segments, we can start working on the foreground clouds, which we
will create using some circles of varying sizes. Position them on the sides of the bottom shape, coloring the front ones using #F0FBFF
and the back ones using #D4F7FF.

Step 4

Since we want the shapes to remain constrained to the surface of the
background segment, we’re going to group (Control-G)
and then mask them using a copy (Control-C)
of the underlying shape which we will paste in front (Control-F). Then, with both the copy and the grouped shapes
selected, simply right click > Make
Clipping Mask.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to select and group all of
the current section’s composing shapes using the Control-G keyboard shortcut.

Step 5

Move over to the smaller background segment, and start working on the
sun by creating its glowing halo using a 112
x 112 px circle (#FFCF83) followed by two smaller ones (#FFCF83), each 12 px smaller than the last. Stack them on top
of one another, making sure to lower their Opacity
to just 16%. Once you’re done, add
the actual sun using a 40 x 40 px circle
(#FFCF83), making sure to select and group all four shapes together using the Control-G keyboard shortcut.

Step 6

As soon as you’ve finished creating the sun, mask it using the same
process used for the foreground clouds, so that it will remain bound to the surface
of the underlying shape.

Step 7

Start working on the smaller floating clouds by creating three different
shaped ellipses (#FFFFFF) for each instance. Make them overlap (1), and
then adjust them by first pinching their side anchor points using the Anchor Point Tool (Shift-C) (2). Continue
adjusting their shape by individually selecting their lower anchor points using
the Direct Selection Tool (A) and
then removing them by pressing Delete,
making sure to close the resulting paths using the Control-J keyboard shortcut (3). Once you’re done, select and group
each of the clouds’ composing shapes using the Control-G keyboard shortcut.

Quick tip: to achieve different variations,
simply increase or decrease the width and/or height of the ellipses until you
get the desired shape.

Step 8

Finish off the background by positioning the resulting clouds as seen
in the reference image, selecting and grouping all of the current section’s
composing shapes afterwards using the Control-G
keyboard shortcut.

positioning the smaller floating clouds onto the upper background cutout

4. How to Create
the Zeppelin

Now that we’ve
finished working on the background, we can lock its layer and then move on to
the next one (that would be the second one), where we will take our time and
gradually build our little Zeppelin.