VectorVonDoom

I forgot I was going to upload the afd file but didn't. So here it is. Red eyed tree frog.afdesign

No, I had tried that and just tried again to be sure. I hadn't checked before but it doesn't show up on any palettes. I just tried 1.7.0 that was on my old macbook and that is fine on my new one with Catalina, the options menus show as expected.

Hi Sean, Thanks. Does that include the options menu disappearing? It's not there even after a restart. I also tried a preferences reset and it didn't help. As it happens I decided I didn't need to export the swatches anyway, which is good!

macOS Catalina 10.15.1, AD 1.7.3. I managed to get the swatches panel to mess up. Not sure how as I only added those swatches but had docked/undocked it too. It sorted out on a restart. However more of a problem is that the options menu isn't there top right so I can't export etc and it's just not there ever.

It doesn't seem to have any pattern, some days it hasn't happened but yesterday it was 3 or 4 times in the end. I can do a vid but there's not much to see really, the pic is basically it. You can't fix it by just setting the opacity back to 100% or even emptying the fill and re-picking, you do have to restart first. Like I said I'm doing a lot of colour picks, both for flats and gradient stops but I'm not sure it's simply down to how many. After a restart it happened again relatively quickly, an hour or two.

Yes I know, I can't think when I wouldn't want it checked. If I scale the artwork I want my blurs scaled too or it changes the look. I don't really use any other effect. But it does sort of become second nature to check the box before setting anything. Perhaps when scripting comes along we can just do a little script to go through everything with an effect and set it checked in code. I think I read a while back (can't remember where, not here) that it was planned for this year but that doesn't seem likely now even in beta.

It's getting there. So far it's not looking too terrible! This and finishing off the dragonfly (I've not touched it over summer) might well be the last ones I do in this style at least for a while. Would be nice not to have to check Scale with Objects a million trillion times .

Now that summer is truly over I've just started some drawing again. This is for a portrait, a bit more than head and shoulders shot. It will be my first attempt, and possibly last (it's going very slowly), at a realistic one or pretty much any person come to that. I've bits to do around the edge to blend in but will do that when the skin is done. I guess it will show up here pretty much full screen, it obviously won't be that large when on the face, so zoom out or stand back. I've included the AD file just in case you're interested. Lips.afdesign

macOS Catalina 10.15.1, AD 1.7.3. The color picker sometimes stops working. In the layers panel the objects look blank but the fill in the colour panel is actually black, zero opacity (so looks white in the circle). You need to restart then either set opacity back to 100% and re-pick or set the fill to nothing then re-pick. I'm doing a ton of picks but in the last hour it has happened twice. I don't think it's me.

Unless you don't care about being pixel perfect or, depending on the artwork, want to export to svg then personally I would never use AD for icon design. Even more so if you're creating many of them. I did try my best to think of a way to use AD but I just can't unless I'm OK with it taking multiple times longer than currently and limit what the artwork contains. When I say you can't make it pixel perfect, you obviously have snapping for the initial drawing of an object but you can't retrospectively snap. As for SVG's it depends what you do, but add a drop shadow for example and it exports that as a png not as an svg filter which is no use. It completely breaks down if you want to create multiple sizes of an icon per file as I do. This is why I've yet to drop AI and that's ignoring things like the often requested select same which I use all the time for icons. If 1.7 changed either of those things then ignore me but I didn't read that they had. Also how does it look at actual icon size? It's "easy" creating a huge icon, but that doesn't mean it works at real sizes.

Lack of progress can certainly be dispiriting to start with. Sometimes you compare this week vs last and it's spot the difference. But once you have done a couple you know what to expect. It's strange that I enjoy it really as I'm normally not the most patient of people. I will post the finished result but it won't be for a while at this rate.

They are a lot of work and most people won't want to do this style, either it takes too long or it just doesn't interest them, but I find it fun. Sometimes I do have enough though and need a break then go back to it. Whether I'll do many more I'm not sure. People have different opinions on photorealsim whether it's the way I do it, with AI gradient meshes or even natural media. Some like it, some don't, others think the vector ones are simple and anyone can do it in 2 minutes (I wish). The most usual one is why bother, you can just take a photo. That's been said ever since photorealism became more popular in the '60's. The other one is it's cheating because practically everyone works from reference photos in various ways. But I don't do it to please people, although if some happen to like them then great.

It's really fiddly and some places it's just a mass of noise or blocky that you have to make sense of. So although I've worked on it at least for a little while every day, if I'm being optimistic then I'm perhaps a fifth of the way through. I don't much like the reflections on the eye so might leave them out. I don't want to do days of just drawing all the hairs so I'm doing some as I go. Pretty much each one has its own gradient so that's slow. If you're having your photo taken you should shave I'll get there eventually. I was thinking of sharing the ad file when I'm done but then I'm not sure you'll be able to learn much from it.

Not everyone has the time or inclination to do something like this, as long as you have fun with whatever style you prefer then that's all that matters. The reason I tried this style is that I was always impressed by the photorealistic artists and, although I often thought about trying it in vectors, I never got around to it until I AD and decided it was a good time to finish something. I used to often get to a certain point and think what a mess it looks and crosses your mind to give up. But you learn that it will turn out OK in the end, so I don't think about that too much any more. I think as it's vector and you end with so many objects you really have to break things down in to sections. There's no technical reason why you couldn't do it as one big object but you'd still be effectively breaking it down in to parts even if you don't make them in to groups. I didn't really expect anyone to play along. But if anyone is then keep going, my one is taking ages to not get very far. So don't give up, have a day or few off then go back to it if need be.