How to "draw" pointed corner drop shadows in Adobe Illustrator CS5

Question

I have this image which I want to re-draw/reverse engineered so that I can use it at different sizes as resizing it cause it to look bad.

But I can't seem to figure out how to do it. The drop shadows on two sides and with the amount of shadows increasing from less to more as you go further out.

Do I, just for example, take a rect and play with the drop shadow settings? I tried that but I am not even getting close.

Just need a push to the right direction.

Answer 1

Gradient mesh isn't really necessary for a simple rectangle.

1. Create two long rectangles (the same size)
2. Give one rectangle a simple black-white gradient and a normal drop shadow.
3. Edit the gradient to make both colors transparent, leaving only the drop shadow visible.
4. Add two points to the top-center and bottom-center of the drop shadow path.
5. Select all 4 corner points with the white arrow tool and drag them down to make an upside down V shape.
6. Use the Convert Anchor Point tool on the two points you created in step 4 to round out the middle corners.
7. Select the two top corner points and drag them up and inward.

.... I think thats a little more than a push in the right direction.

Answer 2

I would use a gradient mesh for a couple reasons.

• It will be infinitely scalable as a mesh
• Trying to teak some raster settings within Illustrator will require quite a bit of playing, especially to achieve the distance blurring. And, after all that, you'd still have to re-tweak whenever you want to adjust the shadow.

While many users fear and avoid gradient meshes, there's really no reason to. They are as quickly created as any other vector object within Illustrator. In most cases the use of a mesh is much more versatile than any raster effect.