Redrawing Speedlines

Lately, the cleaners at M7 have been doing beautiful speedlines with nice pointy tips, so I picked some of their brains about how they were doing it.

This is a compilation of different ways to get nice pointy speedlines without going crazy.

Peachjello just showed me the best and fastest method (so far) to redraw pointy speedlines. It’s so simple I want to weep a little. Choose the Line Tool, and then click on the drop down menu at the end of the shape selection menu. You’ll see options for arrowheads. Set width to 100% and length to 3000% (you may have to adjust these settings based on your line width and page size). Now draw your line, and it will automatically be pointy. Easy as pie!

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If the lines are perfectly horizontal or vertical, you can use Motion Blur.

First use the Line Tool to draw your speed lines.

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Then go to the Filter Menu > Blur > Motion Blur

Make sure the Angle matches the direction your line is going in, and tweak the distance to determine just how pointy the line is.

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Another method is to use the pen tool to manually make triangular speedlines.

Make your first anchor at the tip of the speed line. Make your second and third anchors at the base of the speed line. Close the path by clicking on the first anchor. Fill the path.

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You can also use the Polygonal Lasso and fill, but make sure the tips aren’t too thin. You might have to extend your selection past the actual point. (Thanks Irec ^^)

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And the last method here uses the Simulate Pressure option for the Pen Tool.

First, set your Brush Tool to the appropriate width and then set the Minimum Diameter around 35%. You can set that higher or lower as you see fit.

Again, make the first Pen anchor on the tip of the speed line. Make a second anchor at the base of the line, and then close the path by clicking on the first anchor again. Basically, it folds the line back on itself.

Now right click, choose Stroke, and make sure the Simulate Pressure box IS checked.

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2 Responses to “Redrawing Speedlines”

  1. July 3rd, 2008 at 8:31 pm Irecinius Says:

    Another method, well thats what I’ve been doing it anyway.

    Polygonal Lasso,
    Check – Anti-Alias

    Then start on the base of the speed line, the trick here is to go PAST the end of the speed line, then go straight back to the base.

    You need to go past the end of the speed line, otherwise the line will end up shorter and “weaker” then the raw..
    How much past you need to go? varies from angle, size and tip.. but its pretty easy to figure out.

    Its just 3 clicks, base, point, base.
    Then fill the selection.

  2. December 19th, 2009 at 2:38 pm progste Says:

    the pointy speedlines part is really cool! I always wondered how M7 could do that^^

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