Vincent Rosati
Forum Replies Created
-
In the main menu, click Window > Graphic Styles to open the styles palette.
Then use the Direct Select tool, the arrow with the plus symbol, to drag your ‘effected’ object into the palette.
Any affects applied to the object are now saved as a set. The Graphic Styles palette is basically a bunch of buttons, so you can click on any object in your artboard, then click one of these style buttons to apply the affect.Illustrator comes with a number of preset styles. Your file may or may not have default styles available, depending on how you created the file. If you create a new file from the main menu the default styles will be available.
You may have to double-click the Graphic Styles tab to see the contents of the palette.
Also, each palette has a toggle/drop down menu. In the Graphic Styles palette, near the bottom, you will see there is a library of additional graphic styles.Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
I’m not sure if I understand your question. It is a good practice to keep all of your source files and your Illustrator project file in the same folder. You could look in Windows > Links to see if any of the files are connected to the project AI file.
Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
I’m not aware of any feature in AI that would help with that. Given that the area of states don’t change that much, any attempt to write a script would cost way more time than just doing a search for the real values and properly sorting into your given color range.
Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
Try dragging the object into the Graphic Styles palette, then test it on another object.
Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
Looks fine here, up to HD. Is it possible you were looking at a low res version as the higher res versions were being processed?
Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
File: 7815_multipleclippingmasks.zip
Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
You might need to Object / Expand the mask.
Then Object / Compound Path / Make the mask, as it likely needs to be one object.As for the mask target, you might need to mask each object individually, as the different object properties (such as the fills) will preclude you from making these into a compound object. So, you have to duplicate duplicate the mask, and mask each target object, one by one.
Hmmm, actually, just try grouping the target objects, then apply the Compound Path mask to that.Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
You’re half way there brother.
It looks to me like you created 4 filled shapes around the nose, as opposed to using the brushed strokes that are used elsewhere. Maybe it’s just the two nostrils that are filled objects?Anyway, the approach I always use is how you did the nostrils; or how you did they eyes and ear ring, using filled shapes, as opposed to strokes.
It’s not the fastest way, but that is how I’d achieve the best control.If you require more speed and really want to use strokes, maybe experiment with some brush presets in Window / Brushes.
There are a bunch of brush libraries in the Brush palette, just click the toggle menu on the top right. Than Open Brush Library…
Also, if you take this approach, I wouldn’t always try to achieve the proper shape with just one stroke. You could use 2 or 3 strokes to build the thickness in certain areas.The attached AI file shows these two approaches. The opacity is reduced to help show what’s happening. The bright green areas are overlapping objects.
In the left example, I’m basically starting with a pool of black, then drawing out to make lines.
I used the Pen tool and Pencil.In the right example, I’m starting with a few different calligraphic brushes set to different angles, saved as custom brushes. It’s basically 3 “strokes”, but it’s actually 6 strokes with a few fill shapes.
If you were actually doing pen & ink, this is how it would be done. Use single strokes where you can, but you’ll often hit a line more than once to get the right shape and thickness. And also painting fills for the deep dark areas.
I used a few Brushes and the Pencil.Either way, you can get pretty fast at this.
For techniques…
Get familiar with reshaping existing paths with the brush or pencil. Create an ellipse or square, than restroke one of the paths to reshape it.
Another one is a way to close paths. A lot of times you’ll draw a fill and you want it to be properly closed. Just select the path object, switch to then draw from one endpoint to the other endpoint and it will close.
And most important, learn to keep your free hand on the keyboard so you can use shortcuts – Hitting the Spacebar so you can move the artboard, CMD – or + for zoom in and out. Force yourself to learn these. Many of the menu items have keyboard shortcuts, or sometimes hovering over items will reveal a shortcut. When you find yourself constantly going to one of these commands, that’s how you’ll know you need to learn that shortcut.For more settings, particularly FIdelity and Smoothness, double click on the pencil or brush in the tools.
Here’s something that might help inspire some ideas 7759_inspiration.zip
Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
James, James… double posting a question. tisk tisk.
Joking aside, I’m afraid you’ll have to actually illustrate that, pen & ink style. Draw the structure, the black stuff. Then draw in the color.
You might start with laying down gesture (gesture drawing) strokes, so you have a skeleton.
I haven’t used a pen in a long time, but I always manually drew variable width lines. So, every 1 ink stroke is basically 2 sides of a path, a closed path, and a fill.
Now, if you’re looking for automation you’d likely want to start in Photoshop and do some preprocessing on the image before bringing it into AI, like Posterize or something. Try a google search for Photoshop Comic Action or something.
Then you can bring the posterized raster in to AI and auto trace, potentially.Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
-
By restricting the color palette to 16 bit means, I think, that you simply don’t get a full palette grayscale alpha channel. 16 bit and 24 bit color have the same number of colors, except that in 24 bit you get a grayscale alpha channel (the extra 8 bits), as opposed to the 1 bit alpha channel of the 16 bit specification.
So, you can still use transparency, but it has to be 1 bit, hard-edge transparency as in a GIF, not soft-edge transparency like a PNG-24 (24-bit, 16 bit + 8 bit alpha channel.)Vince
*Please remember to Rate our replies or check Solution if solved. If you get a good idea from the post, consider clicking the Kudos option.
