Illustrator and Whiteboard

I have a problem and after days of searching the Net, I can't seem to find the answer. I'm hoping someone here can help.

I'm using illustrator cs6. Actually we just got it at work so I'm rather new at using it.

One of the things we use illustrator for is to help us manipulate images for whiteboard animation. There is a technique that requires you to first prepare the images in illustrator but there is a sizing issue I can't figure out.

I don't want to bore you with all the whiteboard stuff but let me give you enough info hoping it will help solve the illustrator problem

It is important to know that we use THE SAME image several times for the effect. The image will be a raster image.

FIRST INSTANCE

1. We import (place) the FIRST INSTANCE OF THE SAME IMAGE into illustrator.

2. Using the pencil tool (we can not use any other tool) we stroke certain areas of the IMAGE to be drawn in the whiteboard and DO NOT stroke the areas we don't want to be drawn.

3. When done stroking, the IMAGE is saved as a SVG.

SECOND INSTANCE

1. We open a new document and place the same raster image we used in the FIRST INSTANCE into illustrator.

2. Using the pencil tool, we stroke different areas of the image to be drawn in the whiteboard

3. When done stroking we save the image as a SVG.

So in the above examaple we used the same RASTER image but each image was stroked in different areas using the pencil tool. We saved the images as SVG. Lets say we named the images 1.svg and 2.svg. Remember they are the same image, the only difference is they were stroked differently with the pencil tool.

First I import 1.svg into the whiteboard and next I import 2.svg exactly on top of 1.svg. When the whiteboard draws the images it will first draw the strokes of 1.svg and than it will draw the strokes of 2.svg.

HERE IS THE PROBLEM.

When creating the FIRST INSTANCE ABOVE and adding strokes, some of the strokes go outside of the border of the image. Hence when I save it, the image size may be larger than the original image because of the strokes going outside of the image border. The same thing may happen when I stroke the SECOND INSTANCE of the image.

I need to find a way in illustrator CS6 to remove all strokes outside of the image border so when I save the images they are the same size. If they are not the same size, when I import them into the whiteboard software, the drawing effect shifts while it should look like one image being drawn. The two SVG images have to be the same size for the drawing effect to work.

WOW!!!!!!!!!! I didn't know it would take all that to explain my problem and I'm still not sure if I explained it well. I'll keep my fingers crossed that someone can decipher the above enough to help me out. It's appreciated.

Thanks

Takes a lot of reading your questions does! Sounds like your not using the correct size of art board. This is where it gets hard for me cos I think you are using an animation programme that come with the whiteboard? I don't know it. The software that the white board uses for its animation must be a specific size so therefore you artboard in Illustrator must be the same. Also because we are using mixed software here when you export a raster image in any Adobe product that image will exported at 72 ppi but when you bring it into a windows programme that programme will bring it in at 96 ppi and a really think that this is your main problem. Since your using Illy CS6 why not use the multi-artboard facilities that started in CS5 so that you're not saving SVG 1 then bringing it back in to illy to do the next one just Ctrl+C, then Alt+Shift+CTRL+V to paste it in all artboards then draw your strokes. Just check all that all the raster images that you use have the same ppi values on the top line when you bring them in to Illy

Best solution the I found when using whiteboard graphics was either to use Flash (,swf) or Gif's - Flash for vector objects and PhotoShop for raster, doesn't need to be PS could be a few raster editors. Up until very recently I worked for a large health board in the UK and had to produce presentations for many projects and a lot were done on whiteboards. We used 2 programmes for this and both were based on a video type file which ran in the browser on the w/board one was PowToon can't remember the other as in the office we didn't have After Effects which is just about the best thing that you can use. AfterEffects because it is adobe's it can take all adobe generated graphic programmes file formats.

I do wish that more people if they come back will tell if I have helped them or not. In most types of these questions there're more solutions to the problem.