PROJECT: Surgery Procedure¶
Assemble a Letter from Parts¶
FrankenFont’s™ Monster¶
Download VFJ
Put your knowledge to the test!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it:
Build a G from various parts of the E, I, and O.
Below, I show you how to do it. But to improve your skills, don’t look at that until you have figured it out for yourself!
⓿ Prep the glyph for surgery. Go to menu: Font > New Glyph, type G. Hit Create.
❶ Push the T (Text tool) in the toolbar. It will open up a new window or tab. Type “IOEG”. Hit Esc. (You also might need to use Cmd2 to zoom in more.)
❷ Double click the O. Copy it into the G.
❸ Now you get to use some operations from the font surgery tutorials! Highlight the upper right quadrant of the O and push forward delete ⌦. Your “G” should now look like this:
❹ First let’s work on the top. We are going to borrow the top of the E for the G.
Go into the E.
Now, we don’t want the top of the G that huge!
So let’s cut out a smaller part.
Create some nodes in the middle of the top arm. Use CtrlAlt-click.
❺ We’re going to copy this part over and attach it to the G.
Select top E arm. Now copy it. (CmdC) Attach it into the G like this. ▼
Pro Tip
Notice that I’m holding C (Power Nudge) as I make the connection.
Power nudge helps prevent curve distortion.
❻ In a similar way we’ll grab the top of the I.
Go into the letter I. Highlight and copy the top.
Now paste into the G.
Move this into a good place. You should end up with something like this. ▼
❼ Now…we could just attach the ends of the open contours. But that would look pretty bad. So we’ll trim this instead by creating nodes then deleting.
Zoom in.
Using the Knife tool (or CtrlAlt-Click), make nodes on both parts of the lower G curve.▼
Trim by selecting the top nodes, then back deleting ⌫.
❽ Now, hold down C to activate power nudge. With your mouse, move the nodes from the O segment to the I top.
The G should be a closed path now.
Tip
Another way to use power nudge: Double-click the Contour tool. Select the power nudge option.
IT’S ALIIIIIIIIIIIVVE! IT’S ALIIIIIIIIIIIVVE!
You might be wondering:
“What type of chop shop are you running?!”
But seriously, refining this is gonna to take some work.
So save this file. We will take a look at this again, in the refining turorial.
You will learn the techniques and tools to turn this Franken G, into a rockin’ G. Well, at least it will look better. :)
Good work!
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