January 2015 Video Tutorial -- Tracing Is Not Cheating!

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes Gary, re the shadow. As stated I'm going to give it a whirl too when I get the time.

On the matter of Combine Shapes:

Gary: I’ve not experienced gaps when a “slice and dice” operation is performed, but I’m usually unobservant, so it goes. One thing that creates a gap is having an outline width on any of the shapes to be processed. If, for example, each shape has a 1 point outline, when you do intersect shapes, the product will not have the precise intended dimensions. Always remove outline widths before Boolean-ing.

I attach a simple example xar file showing what occasionally happens when slicing. I can't say it's my experience that Combining either with or without a stroke makes any difference. Have you an example?