Outlining and simplified illustration

[Alexandre Brandt]

So, I'm trying to turn a colored illustration to a simplified outlined shape as to use in the light background of a page with text.

This is my starting image                              This is the outlined I made so far by removing the colors

         

As you can see, there are shapes overlapping each other.

I'd like to remove the interior of these overlapping shapes as to have a more correct illustration.

I've tried playing around with different selection options but can't manage.

Any tip would be very appreciated.

Thank you

[Monika Gause]

You will have to either

- create white shapes that just overlap the underlying ones

- use the live paint tool or the shapebuilder tool in orer to delete all that stuff (will be a pain in the rear to do so, because of all the detail)

- edit the single paths with scissors tool or whatever is appropriate

See the documentation on the tools respectively about editing paths.

[rcraighead · Accepted solution]

I would suggest leaving the color in place, but change all the fills to White (or Black in some cases). Then convert the artwork to a Symbol and set the symbol instance to "multiply". Converting to Symbol is not required, it is just a handy way to work with a piece of this complexity.

[Alexandre Brandt]

Hey rcraighead,

Thank you for the tip. It worked perfectly.