Self made ink scatter brushes expand problem

Question

Hello, I made ink scatter brushes a while ago and on a few previous projects they worked well. But today weird thing started happening. I think my brushes do not expand properly.

When not expanded, I can color the stroke normally, but after I turn them into shapes, the fill does not work the way it is supposed to. It colors the whole selection area (the square) not just the object. Fill and stroke menu also does not show properly. The first picture shows my brush after being expanded. On the second picture I tried to recolor the same expanded object.

Monika Gause · Accepted Answer

That seems to be a bug with scatter brushes. Illustrator doesn't delete the invisible rectangle automatically. After expanding you need to select all unpainted objects (no fill/no stroke) and delete them. Then apply the fill you want.

Kurt Gold · Answer

You can outsmart this behaviour by applying a placebo-like Transformation effect to the (live) Scatter Brush strokes.

That is, select all your Scatter Brush strokes, go to Effect > Distort and Transform > Transform, take the default settings and click OK.

Now the invisible rectangles will not be created when you expand the brush strokes.

You could also save the brush stroke plus the placebo as a graphic style to prevent the undesired behaviour in case you are going to use the brush often.

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