Scriptographer – Text Pencil
I’ve been wanting to post about scriptographer for a long time and I think it is one of the coolest Illustrator tricks out there. Everything from interactive tools to raster effects can be achieved. I’ll be going over a few of my favorite scripts like ,text pencil, crowdomatic, spiderweb and fadenGraydiExplosionpack.
basics
download and install
you can download Scriptographer for free here and then follow the installation instructions to get started. Once you get it installed go ahead and grab the four scripts that I’ll be using here.
Place these scripts in the folder with the other scriptographer scripts, again they have instructions at their website here.
Text Pencil
drawing with words
Text pencil is the script that got me interested in scriptographer right from the start. It lets you define a set of words and then you get to draw out shapes using those words.
When you open illustrator if you don’t see the scriptographer window go to Window > Scriptographer > Main to get it open.
The window should look like the image below.
Then select text pencil from the script list and click run, this should open the text pencil interface and let you control the font size and what you are saying. Remember to click “refresh text” when you are done.
Next you want to define which of the tools you are going to assign text pencil tool to these are the ** and // buttons at the bottom of the scriptographer interface.
Then click that tool from the illustrator tool bar and you are ready to go.
If you get lost you can always use the drop down from the text pencil interface to get back to the letter you want.
And your done.
