How to Quickly Make a Random Lines Sunburst in Illustrator

Illustrator Effects

In many retro and vintage designs, the use of sunburst lines is becoming a near constant. From looking at it, you might think this effect can be very time consuming to make, but nope — I promise you can put your own together in less than 5 minutes using some of the available Illustrator default effects panels. Today, I''l show you how easily you can make a random Lines Sunburst graphic in Illustrator to use on your compositions (while keeping the stroke lines fully editable!)​

Step 1

Open Illustrator and make a new file at any size you want. In this case I'll make mine at 800 x 800 px.

Step 2

In the toolbar, be sure to have the fill set to "None", the Stroke set to Black and select the Line Segment Tool (\).

Step 3

Click and drag while holding the Shift key on your keyboard to make a straight line.

Step 4

Go to Window > Stroke and apply the following settings.

Step 5

Select the Eraser Tool and erase a few parts of the line as shown (this step is optional).

Step 6

With all lines parts selected go to Object > Group.

Step 7

Go to Effect > Distort & Transform > Transform. Apply the following settings and click OK.
Note: you can change the Angle and Copies amount to your liking.

Step 8

Go to Object > Expand Appearance.

Step 9

Go to Object > Ungroup.

Step 10

With all lines selected go to Object > Transform > Transform Each.

Step 11

Lastly, set any Scale you want, click on the "Random" checkbox a few times until you see a distribution you like and click OK.

Some Final Notes

As you saw, making a Lines Sunburst in Illustrator is very easy, and due we kept the stroke fully editable you can change the color and make the lines thinner or thicker once you finish your design by going to Window > Stroke and setting any Weight you want.