need some info before buying

[PixelDust]

It is the use of the vector brush that gives the smooth lines while in XPro we have the limitation of a bitmap brush. A vector brush is what a few of us have been asking for a while as it restricts many types of users, like people who draw cartoons, portrait artist and as you have shown here graphic design.

Having moan at bit here, on the plus side you would not have to jump from Illy into PS as you could easily dirty up the design all in XPro.

Hmmm... You mean the custom brushes in Xara are all bitmap, not vector? I thought you could either have vector or bitmap brushes.

As for cartooning, I like to use the preset brush profiles to get that nice tapered look. However, I agree that the custom brushes need work, partly because of the breaks at the curves and corners of strokes that show up in the example above. It would be nice to make custom brushes that stretch along a path like those in Illustrator or CorelDraw, along with the current "scatter-type" brushes that Xara has now.

[handrawn]

You can make brushes out of vector shapes in xara

I don't think that is what Peter [albacore] meant I think he was thinking of brushes like illustrator

[PixelDust]

You can make brushes out of vector shapes in xara

That's what I thought. I think you can also make bitmap brushes in Xara, but I haven't tried it yet.

I don't think that is what Peter [albacore] meant I think he was thinking of brushes like illustrator

I believe Illustrator's brushes are all vector. AFAIK, you can't use bitmap brushes in Illustrator. I don't know Illustrator very well. Xara is so much easier to learn!

[handrawn]

from [CS3] illustrator help on creating brushes:


The artwork cannot contain gradients, blends, other brush strokes, mesh objects, bitmap images, graphs, placed files, or masks.


Xhris has done a good tutorial on Xara brushes - it is on his site [see his profile]

I cannot do my digital brushwork in xara however, so I am having to use illustrator...

[BONES]

Why woudl you stuff around with brushes at all? In this specific example, I would make a rounded rectangle and keep duplicating, resizing and recolouring it. Once I had 5 layers, I'd use the inner one [duplicated a few times] to cut the centre out. Than I'd just duplicate it a few times and create the pattern by scaling it in various directions and using more rectangles to cut off bits I didn't need. Once I was happy I'd rotate it all 45 degrees, put in the background, splatter the "texture" around and change its blend mode. It sounds like more work but:
a) you wouldn't have to stuff around with brushes,
b) it would give you more flexibility, and
c) it would probably be quicker anyway.

[salaam]

I think that would work well except you would have problems resizing the rounded corners every time.
I would suggest using the [contour tool] to manage the gradiated curves.

[BONES]

Resizing corners works well if you use the grid. its something I do all the time and I don't need to think about it these days.

[David O'Neil]

Resizing corners works well if you use the grid...

Proper vector brushes would work more easily, and be more editable. From this thread, it appears that AI's approach is superior in this case. This makes me curious to play with that program, especially given gigsmella's tutorial showing some of its other tools.