Extraneous line appears when using Zig Zag effect

Question

This is the procedure that I'm using:
1. Create 3 horizontal lines with only a stroke color, no fill. Each line is a different stroke color.
2. Using the Blend tool, blend the three lines to get a nice linear gradient.
3. Make an Art Brush from the 3-line blend.
4. Create a path, for example, just a straight line, and apply the new brush.
5. Choose Effects > Distort > Zig Zag with Smooth turned on. If the zig zag is shallow and diagonal line appears in the path that does not belong, ruining the effect. The extraneous line will print, so it's not just something that appears on the screen.
Is there any way to avoid this? If the bumps in the wave are steeper, the diagonal line doesn't appear.

Answer 1

Hello Jay,
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<br />What I did is to use really small circles (3 Circles: Red, Yellow, and Blue) Blend them together with specified steps of 100 (Option+Blend Tool+Click). The amount of steps depends of the distance between each circle.
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<br />Then I created the "Art Brush" and apply it to a straight line.
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<br />After that, I rotated a copy of the line 45° and a third line another 45° (this will make 90° with 3 lines).
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<br />Selected the Vertical and Horizontal lines, then select the "Zig Zag" effect and set the values that you want. The diagonal line I reset the size of the "Zig Zag" effect to very low value.
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<br />After that I use "Convert Anchor Point Tool" (Shift+C) to smooth the curve of the blending. To have better results I suggest to use more than 3 lines to make a 90° turn (Just keep in mind that the middle lines should have a "Zig Zag" effect size of low value.
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<a href="http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1fm7KrGLb3VxTRWESwjMVlnShprH" /></a>
<img alt="Picture hosted by Pixentral" src="http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1fm7KrGLb3VxTRWESwjMVlnShprH_thumb.jpg" border="0" />
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<br />But another solution is to first make the Mask of the shape that you want, create a Rectangle with the gradient that you want and use the "Envelope Distorted" ("Envelope Distorted"+ "Make With Warp" + Style "Arc"). Please make sure that you already selected "Distort Linear Gradients" under "Envelope Options"
<br />And then make the mask.
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<a href="http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1vG69C4xb8gausk6fxfmkMOE4ggtzB" /></a>
<img alt="Picture hosted by Pixentral" src="http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1vG69C4xb8gausk6fxfmkMOE4ggtzB_thumb.jpg" border="0" />
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<a href="http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1IUevEolmMjG7JkjMAKgf2N4zlb0" /></a>
<img alt="Picture hosted by Pixentral" src="http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1IUevEolmMjG7JkjMAKgf2N4zlb0_thumb.jpg" border="0" />
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<br />I hope this helps!