DoubleTake

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Dave Crosby
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DoubleTake

Post by Dave Crosby »

I have long admired the appearance of lettering done with a double tip nib pen, and decided to do some experiments with FontCreator.

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As I REALLY like using Samples, I started with a fresh new Font, named it and saved it then made a simple font the sample. I went to the proper editing box and drug in the appropriate sample, then drug it in again and tried to move it over. That didn't work too well because you have to RESELECT the glyph to move it, but now there were two exact same contours on top of each other. I erased it and started over.

The next time, I drug it in, moved it over, THEN drug it in again.

Then I selected everything and clicked on "Get Union of Contours."
By the way, make sure you don't have any problems in your first glyph like knots, overlaps, points on top of points, or extreme off curve points. They will stop this process dead in its tracks.

That was a fun project suggesting lots of interesting variations and possibilities, but I thought of an easier way to do it.
.........................................................................

Round Two: This time I started with FCBasicFont2.ttf as my starter font.

I clicked on Tools > AutoNaming, and renamed the font to DoubleTake1.ttf and saved it under that name.
Now that easy, half of my work was already done!

I started with "A," Select all, Copy to Clipboard, Paste (both buttons circled in red), then held down the Shift key while pressing the right arrow twice and the up arrow once. This moved the second glyph 200 f-units right and 100 f-units up.

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Then I used the mouse to select all and clicked on the Get Union button (circled in red)

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I did the same with the rest of the upper case letters so after running Tools > AutoMetrics, the font now looks like this:

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Here is the font "As Is" for those of you that would like to finish the project.

DoubleTake1.ttf


Hmmm ..... Now, what if I were to use Glyph Transformer to make a new version of the original font at 3/4 size and combine them ...

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Last edited by Dave Crosby on Fri Nov 02, 2007 2:35 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

You could also do this with Glyph Transform Wizard. In the glyph edit window, copy your glyph as before, then Tools, Glyph Transformer: Outlines, Move 200,100 and Metrics Width increase 200 (right side). Then paste the copy of the glyph back into the original place.
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Dave Crosby
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Yes!

Post by Dave Crosby »

That is the amazing thing about this software!

Sooooo many possibilities!
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Dave Crosby
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Get Union

Post by Dave Crosby »

Sometimes overlapping complex glyphs can overwhelm Get Union's ability, resulting in an error message.

Don't give up!

Go to Contour Mode and use the knife to cut out pieces here and there (I don't know if it is necessary, but I remove the pieces) in some of the overlapping segments and try again.

Image

So far, I have not found a single instance where I couldn't get Get Union to work.
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