Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Blob tool

This weekend I worked on a request by a publisher for vector art samples in a thick line style. It has been nearly a year since I worked in Adobe Illustrator so I spent the weekend relearning. I had heard through the grapevine of illustrators playing with the "blob tool" in AI Cs5 and looked into updating my Cs4 version. The $650.00 price changed my mind real quick. Bummed, I went to youtube to see how it worked anyway. I couldn't believe it when I found a tutorial by someone using the Cs4 version of AI.
Sure enough, I had the tool all along and never knew about it.

And it lives up to the hype. Instead of working directly with bezier curves you can draw the points (and erase them) as if you are playing in photoshop.
What a time saver. And fun!

Here is the link to where I learned about the tool.


8 comments:

Deb said...

Wow, Roz, that might give me an incentive to actually learn Illustrator! Can you post the youtube link?

roz said...

Thanks, Deb. I just added it to the post but here it is again.
http://layersmagazine.com/illustrator-cs4-blob-brush.html

AJ Smith said...

This single tool makes me hate illustrator less. Not sure illustrator will ever be user-friendly enough for me (or maybe vice versa) but the blob tool, is indeed a good one! Nice work btw!

Kelly Medina said...

Thanks for the tutorial link. I've messed around with the blob tool a while back when another illustrator mentioned it but this video was super helpful!

Cute results you got out of it too :)

Unknown said...

although I've known about the blob tool I've never really used it but might just be starting now! thanks for sharing!

Alicia PadrĂ³n said...

Finally! Been trying to comment since yesterday but the blog takes forever to load and when it does the comment window doesn't load at all. Think is my internet connection, is so slow!

Anyways, I love these characters! So cute!
I know nothing of vector art. Sounds all very complicated to me.. I've seen the curves things and those look really complicated. This tool looks like something I could try though. :o)

roz said...

Thanks, all !! I hope you give it a try too. =o)

Kathy said...

OH my gosh, Roz, I am SO going there! Blob tool-Thank you!!