Cool Art

I got an email from Pócs Ádám (RoyalJerry) in Hungary, who has made some cool Deco patterns using Fleurify. I asked how he did it, and he emailed me a step by step on how they were made. Good stuff!

Check it, and the crazy Deco images below...

The procedure:

Illustrator part

• Draw a circle (square, octagon, anything, that looks good and symmetrical considering each axis if you rotate the image with 22.5 degrees)
• Wundes / Fleurify with (mostly every time) more than 100
• Pathfinder / Divide
• Ungroup
• Wundes / ArcTwister (now you have to experiment with it, sometimes undo, then again...)
• Group all
• Apply style: appearance with a 3pt white stroke and a 9pt black one
• Export as PSD (surely you can flatten the image, the PS-part is based on whole layers, not just the illustration outline)

Photoshop part

• Open as RGB and if it is not flat, flatten the image (so that the background would be white against a black illustration)
• Create a layer from the background
• Duplicate it
• Rotate the duplication with 45 degrees
• Set it to difference blend mode

That's all. I sometimes played with a "double-set" -- that means I duplicated the whole layer set in Photoshop once again, merged them, rotated with 22,5 degrees and set its blend mode back to difference.

Jerry has some other cool images on his blog. It's in Hungarian, so I don't know what it says, but I do like the pictures...

cheers,
-J

Good news, exportLayers works on at least Snow Leopard. :)

BTW: Minor bug fix.
The toggle for layer name vs. number was backwards.

The current version posted is correct.
If you downloaded before the 24th just re-download the script.

cheers and happy illustrating,
-J

Export Layers as Images

Hey script kiddies!

I know, I know... It's been a while. Hopefully this will make up for some of the lonely feelings you've had to suffer through.

Behold my newest creation: exportLayers.jsx

It will export as many images as you have layers in an .ai document.

And provides the option for you to process multiple open documents or just the current active document.

You can batch export images like this as PNG, JPG, or GIF with a single click:

just by creating a layer structure like this:

Make sure your static layers are locked.

All unlocked layers will be exported, regardless of visibility.

Layers that are both locked AND hidden will be ignored completely.

....and if that weren't cool enough...

The script also auto-generates a production script into your chosen images export directory, so if you ever need to re-run the batch, just re-open all the same source files, double click the .jsx file in your image export directory, and it will skip the dialog and re-export all the images with the same settings.

Happy Illustrating,

-J