I used the pen and then changed the shape in the brushes panel ( I used his cartoon brushes). |
Many features in vector programs are so-called "live effects." This just means they are other artwork "piled onto" the paths you draw, and that additional artwork is automatically re-drawn on-the-fly whenever you make changes to the paths you are deliberately drawing.
Brushes are an example of just such a "live" construct.Someone else has already drawn paths and stored them in the Brushes palette. When you apply a Brush to a path you are drawing, the program is just stretching a copy of the paths contained in the Brush along the direction of the path you are drawing.
All the while, so long as the Brush is being applied to your path in "live" mode, the interface is only displaying the anchorPoints of the base path you are deliberately drawing. But be assured: all the anchorpoints of the artwork contained in Brush are still there; they're just not being displayed.
When you invoke an Expand command, you are essentially telling Illusrator to stop the automatic re-drawing and "nail down" the distored artwork from the Brush. That exposes the actual paths which resulted from the paths in the Brush having been distorted along your path.
It can be a bit alarming (as it was for you), because you think you are drawing nice, tidy, elegant paths (which you may have). Then, when you're happy with the shape of your paths, you invoke the Exapnd command. The actual artwork that you have been stretching along the paths you are drawing become fully exposed as ordinary paths. You see all those kazillion anchorPoints and think "Egads! What a mess."
And you're right. Here's why:
Vector-based graphics are, by their mathematically-defined nature, smooth. That's part of their reason for existence. Vector graphics lend themselves to smooth, efficiently-defined shapes, which are generally devoid of "texture."
Raster graphics, on the other hand, are just a grid of tiny squares, each assigned a color. That lends itself to highly irregular shapes and grainy texture (because the "shapes" are not actually defined at all).
That's why vector-based graphics programs have long been metaphorically called "drawing programs" while raster-based graphics programs are called "painting programs." That's why both exist and why a well-rounded illustrator needs to be proficient with both.
Somewhere along the development of vector-based drawing programs, users demanded more "painterly" effects in drawing programs: they wanted to "paint" with paths. Well, you just don't get high degrees of irregularity and "texture" from vector graphics without using a lot of jagged paths with a kazillion anchorPoints.
So vector-based Brushes which try to emulate the appearance of so-called "natural media" (chalk, paint, etc.) tend to contain convoluted jagged paths with a lot of anchorPoints.And they vary wildly in their elegance, depending upon who created them.
And yes, it can be a problem. In attempts to emulate "paint" textures, with paths you can easily reach a point at which the inherent data-efficiency of vector-based graphics is lost and the resulting file sizes exceed those of comparable--or even more convincing--raster images. This is one reason why many drawing programs provide raster-based Brushes, which step and repeat or stretch raster images along a vector path, and then flatten them to a single raster image.
Now back to your specific example:
You are using a vector-based Brush which contains very jagged paths in order to suggest the "texture" of natural media. But depending on the final scale of the intended reproduction, there may very well be far more roughness in the resulting paths than are needed to make that visual suggestion. That's where the Simplify command may serve to at least reduce the file size. With the Expanded artwork selected:
1. View>Hide Edges. This turns off the display of paths and anchorPOints. The artwork will appear to be unselected, but it's not.
2. Object>Path>Simplify...
3. In the resulting dialog, make sure the Straight Lines checkbox is off. Set the Curve Precison slider all the way to 100%. Turn on the Preview checkbox.
4. The dialog will tell you how many anchorPoints are currently in the artwork and how many will result from the current Simplify settings. Right now, they will be equal.
5. Slowly move the Curve Precison slider leftward. Watch the artwork. Stop sliding when the artwork loses too much of its texture-suggesting roughness.
It depends on scale, but savings of 50-75% are common.
JET
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