pronounced by saying ‘Jake’
without conjuring imagery of
lumberjacks or mans best friend.

This tutorial came about after seeing something similar done over at Mike Laughead's site. Please take some time to check out his work. He's an amazing illustrator. Mike demonstrates how he creates half-tone patterns for use in his illustrations and t-shirt designs.

While I was going thru his tutorial I decided there must be a way to do this in Illustrator. And here it is. This tutorial was done using CS3, but can be accomplished in CS2 as well.

1. Start with an object and apply a black and white gradient to it. We don't want to use color just yet as it will complicate the halftone.

2. Select Effect->Pixelate->Color Halftone Pattern

3. You can choose the angle of your halftone. Just make certain that all channels have the same angle. Choose a Max. Radius based on the size of you design. I usually find the sweet spot for me is somewhere between 20-35px

4. Ok there is your pattern. You can adjust it, tweek it, massage it into place. You can even use the gradiant tool to change the gradiant up. But you aren't done yet.

Once you have you gradiant in the shape you like, proceed to the next step.

5. Select Object->Expand Appearence.

6. Click on the arrow down button next to the "Live Trace" button at the top of the work area and select "Tracing Options".

7. In this box you mostly need to make sure that you have "Black and White" "Fills" and "Ignore White" selected. Click "Trace".

8. Go up to the top of the work area again and click "Expand".

9. Select your favorite color.

That's it! You now have a scalable vector-based halftone effect.