I’m working on a new 60’s inspired font, just wondering, and this is a long shot if there is a plugin/formula to help create a line that goes to a swoosh ending.
Hard to explain, but if you look at the f and r, the swoosh at the end. I’m kind of doing it by eye but was wondering if there is a plugin or mathematical formula for getting a spiral that kind of goes off to one side. I know the spiral tool in illustrator does it but that generates a single-weight spiral with no end swoosh.
If I understand correctly that you want the shape to go off smoothly, one way is:
make sure your nodes are horizontal/vertical (top shape), and then run Fit Curve and Green Harmony script in a loop a few times (bottom shape)
I never knew that it actually remembers the setting if you select the curve and apply fit curves. So if you click away from the curve and then select it again, look at the fit to curves, and it remembers the setting—very handy that it does that. So even if you tweak the curve with green harmony, it sort of shows you an estimate of what setting the curve has.
Fit Curve controls the relative length of your handles, or the ‘curvature’ (which technically is a wrong term but in this limited context nobody cares). Shorter inside curves tend to have a higher curvature (higher Fit Curve value), the corresponding longer outside curves will typically have a lower curvature. 55% is an elliptical curvature (you almost always will want something higher than that, especially for transitioning a curve into a straight line), 100% is where the handles touch. Preparing a tutorial about it at the moment.
So in short: make sure you have corresponding segments on either side of the stroke, give the inner ones a higher Fit Curve, the outer ones a lower Fit Curve, and then harmonize with Green Harmony or the RMX Harmonizer.
BTW Illustrator’s spirals are cheating. It just adds up ellipsis segments.
