Can somebody point me in the direction of a tutorial for making this effect in Illustrator?

You can try the Warp tool (Shift R) on outlined strokes.

That needs to be scripted. Actually someone did build a script for this, but it has not been published and relies on Illustrator CS5 with the plugin Scriptographer: https://scriptographer.org/gallery/afternow/

It will be difficult doing it without using some sort of scripting. But the direction would be to use blends.

Moved to the Illustrator Forum.