Shape Engine

With Shape brushes, you can create strokes that will autofill. This engine was originally ported from an existing free tool called Alchemy. The shape engine has more limited features than Alchemy.

In the left example, for every line I made, I traced back over it. This creates a leaky, energetic line style. In the right example, I paired a shape brush with the Mirror Tool. If you set the background color to the canvas, you can “erase” with the same effect.

While there aren’t as many settings as Alchemy, it does provide some convenient brush stroke options.

• Speed – Amplifies your pen strokes along the x and y position.
• Smooth – Without smoothing, your brush strokes will have an angular look when making quick brush strokes.
• Displace – As you draw, the entire shape will be moved in the opposite direction of your brush stroke. You will have to test this out to really understand this. To produce the effect more prominently, keep your pen down and continue to draw.
• Winding fill – Overlapping shapes will stay filled instead of being hollowed out.
• Hard edge – Creates aliased, hard edges. This is useful when you are blocking in colors and want to lock the transparency. This also works nice when using the “color split” option.

The winding fill is turned on with the right image. Turning this on is easier to control, but having it off can give your line work more energy and chaos.