retrograde

Hi eejits, here is a screenshot of my layers panel setup and the example of my experimental playing around. The shape is basically a container with only a black stroke on it. The softer stuff inside is me using my airbrush styled brush on a pixel sublayer. You can adjust the fish shape and it keeps the contents of the painted pixels inside it masked... you can even move the paint layer around inside the shape. It's a pretty sweet setup allowing you control over both the pixel parts and the vector shape. Now all I need to find are some more expressive brushes for the painting part. ;)

I'm gonna chime in here and say "sweet"

It's a great way to line up or lay things out too, lines for instance where you can control the amount and the distance between each and if you reposition the objects that you're blending the whole thing updates in sync. I've used it to blend 2 different colours together in a series of steps to find a good "in between" colour, or to create a series of windows in a hi rise building you create one row of windows at bottom and top and blend it to the amount of floors you need... it goes on and on... a really powerful tool that does a lot of the heavy lifting in a designers toolkit.
 
In the attached images from my portfolio you can see lots of blends. The windows are blends of grouped shapes, the trellis and fence on the rooftop, the glass patio roof and even the flowers. The lines on the wallpaper and floorboards under the cat, the lines in the guys hair, and tons of uses on the train, boat, bridge and buildings...

I agree and I couldn't find a way to delete a node that I accidentally added....

In the layers panel, when you disable (not remove) some effects on a certain object it might be worth keeping the "fx" icon in the panel but maybe with a red "X" through it so you know there are some effects applied to it but are just disabled. That way with a click on that "fx" with a red "X" you can toggle the effects on and off right from the layers panel. Currently when I disable the effects, the icon disappears and I don't know which objects I have tried some effects on... This way, at a glance you are reminded which elements have effects applied but are turned off.

Hi guys any plans for locking or hiding selections? (as opposed to layers)
 
When working on large complicated files, I often need to hide or lock items temporarily. In fact the most useful thing I find I use all the time is the ability to lock everything except my current selection. Ie: select an object, keyboard shortcut lock everything else, make adjustments, unlock all, done. I can't tell you how much time I've saved using this over the years...  would be a great feature for AD too! Maybe I should have posted this in the feature request section...?

This is one area of illustrator that's been sadly lacking for years. Some kind of "limited" user defined grid creation scenario would be a serious attraction for many. Common grids to start: isometric, perspective, etc...

A rotate the document or canvas option would be great for gestural sketching when using a tablet. Akin to rotating a piece of paper when sketching for better curve control...