To those of you who use my art brush tool, what features or tweaks would you like it to have? Here’s what I’ve got working so far in my development version:
- If a brush was applied in the wrong direction, just run the tool again and it’ll apply it the other way around
- It can now be used in multi-frame editing mode, allowing many strokes to be applied at the same time
- Brushes can be reapplied to a stroke that already has a brush applied to it. Simply select the art brushed stroke symbol on the stage and your new brush symbol in the library and run the tool. Your new brush will be applied in the same direction as the old one.
- Brushes always get applied from upper left to lower right, depending on the relative positions of the stroke’s endpoints.
- Undo.
Some things I’m planning on including but haven’t implemented yet:
- Select a symbol in the library that you’ve used as an art brush. You’ll be able to run a command that automatically updates all the strokes that have had that that brush applied to them. This means that you could change a brush that you’ve already used a bunch, and the tool will go through and make sure everywhere that the brush is used, the stroke looks like the most current version.
- Modify the art brush tool to be able to apply animation, not just a still image, to a series of strokes. (See my previous post about this).
Some things I might do if there’s enough interest in it
- A control panel that changes how the brush is applied – direction of application, whether to scale the width relative to the length, etc.
- A shape-hint-style marker to indicate where to start the stroke
- Smarter decisions about which branch to follow when the path crosses itself.
So let me know what you think. What would you like to see it do? What current behavior annoys you and you’d like to see it fixed?
This was something that I have been doing with it. Is there anyway that once the brush is applied that it can be a drawing object instead of a group? I use it on limbs where a character is a bit more rubbery, to quickly get it in the approximate place. From there, I will go in and tweak its features and form to better flow. I usually have to break it apart draw something to create a drawing object, cut the brush, paste it into the drawing object, and delete the line or whatever I used to create it. For me, I like to use drawing objects so that I can quickly modify while maintaining it as a whole. Does that make sense?
All of these features sound great, especially animated strokes!
It would be very useful to have the strokes preserved on a guide layer underneath like you said, for easy editing later.
One thing I would love is the ability to draw a stroke, and simply have it apply automatically. It would be great for painting things with natural brush texture, or just laying down strokes quickly.
It would also be great if there were a feature where the art would conform to the exact width of the stroke. (So that the stroke itself can become a kind of reference as to how wide the new art might be)
The ability to overlap a stroke without the art breaking would also be amazing.
These features are absolutely great!
I have been using your art brush for quite some time now, and it is just what it needs. The main issue that I get is when the symbol gets flipped in a sequence, or when it collides and breaks, with unexpected results.
Usually, I tweak the size of the line and the symbol to correct that, but it is unstable and unpredictable at times. Yet, it is the best extension of my arsenal.
Having nested animation would be the top of the top. That would open a very vast field of possibitiles for FX, from the top of my head.. you could create some ribbon smoke very easily, while it takes forever manually.
Hi there!
I absolutely love your art brush and I use it all the time! It’s so handy and opens up so many options! Except I recently upgraded to Flash CC and I have found that your plugin is now “incompatible” with my new extension manager for CC! I’ve been googling all over and haven’t found anything other than “Well it’s incompatible…sorry” Ack!! Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!!!