Shapes Brushes: Seven Tools for Every Effect

The Shapes brush category in Brinimate is the largest category with seven unique brushes. Each uses different combinations of dash patterns, width factors, opacity levels, and line cap styles to produce distinctly different visual outputs from the same stroke gesture.

🖊️ Marker — The Flat Rotulador

Technical profile: lineCap: square, lineJoin: miter, opacity: 45%, widthFactor: 2.5, tension: 0

The Marker brush produces wide, flat, semi-transparent strokes — exactly like a real alcohol marker or highlighter. Its square caps create clean, abrupt starts and stops per stroke. Its 45% opacity means strokes overlap and build slightly darker areas, perfect for tonal blending in design work.

Best for: Comic book coloring, flat design UI elements, annotating storyboards, highlighted text animation.

Creative use: Apply a Marker stroke as a “sweeping highlight” transition animation — a wide strip of color sliding across the scene on a tween.

💨 Airbrush — Diffused Soft Coverage

Technical profile: opacity: 18%, widthFactor: 5, tension: 0.7

With only 18% opacity and 5× width, the Airbrush is the widest and most transparent brush in Brinimate. Each stroke covers a huge area with barely visible color. Like a real airbrush, it requires many overlapping passes to build substantial coverage — and that gradual build-up is exactly its strength.

Best for: Sky gradients without gradient fills, soft vignette darkening around canvas edges, atmospheric haze in landscape scenes, soft shadow casting beneath characters.

Gradient technique: Use 8-10 Airbrush strokes with decreasing size from center to edge for a convincing spotlight effect — no gradient tool needed.

➖ Dotted — Rhythmic Dashes

Technical profile: dash: [w*0.1, w*2], opacity: 100%, tension: 0.3

Dotted uses a dash pattern creating short round dashes separated by larger gaps. The result is a clearly rhythmic, dashed line — like a perforated edge or a movement path guide.

Best for: Dotted outlines for path/route animation, dashed UI borders, coupon/cutline visual effects in motion graphics, stitching and sewing pattern effects.

🔵 Dots — Evenly Spaced Beads

Technical profile: dash: [0, w*2.5], opacity: 100%, widthFactor: 1.5

Dots uses a zero-length dash segment ([0, w*2.5]) — only the round caps of each segment are rendered, creating perfectly round, evenly spaced dots along the stroke path.

Best for: Bubble chains and underwater effects, bead necklace and jewelry illustrations, polka dot pattern fills, retro game collectible paths (coins in a row).

Animation use case: A “coin trail” animation — dots along a curved path with a tween sliding them from left to right. A perfect “collect coins” effect.

🎗️ Ribbon — Smooth Flat Tape

Technical profile: lineCap: butt, opacity: 80%, widthFactor: 0.8, tension: 0.5

The Ribbon brush uses butt line caps — abrupt, flat ends with no rounding — and medium opacity. This creates a flat, tape-like stroke that flows smoothly through curves.

Best for: Ribbon animations (gift bows, award ribbons), flowing fabric effects, decorative borders, abstract geometric compositions.

The winding ribbon technique: Draw a sinusoidal wavy Ribbon stroke. Apply a tween to animate its position slightly up and down with a cycle. The flat, smooth ribbon reads as a flowing banner or flag in animation.

═══ Double Line — Parallel Tracks

Technical profile: dash: [w*4, w*2], opacity: 100%, widthFactor: 0.5, tension: 0.4

Double Line uses a longer dash pattern that alternates filled segments and gaps in a way that creates the visual impression of two parallel lines running side by side. It’s not literally two strokes — it’s one stroke whose dash rhythm mimics a track or railway.

Best for: Railway track and road marking animation, technical diagram connections (wiring, piping), ruled notebook line effects, equalizer waveform visualizations.

🌫️ Spray — Scattered Particle Cloud

Technical profile: dash: [0, w*1.8], opacity: 40%, widthFactor: 0.6, shadowBlur: 0.8, shadowOpacity: 50%

Spray creates scattered dot particles along the stroke path with very small spacing gaps. The low opacity (40%) and subtle shadow give each particle a slight glow, making the overall effect look like an aerosol spray cloud or particle emitter.

Best for: Spray paint graffiti effects, star field/space dust backgrounds, particle explosion animations, pollen or spore scatter effects in nature scenes.

Explosion animation: Draw several Spray strokes radiating outward from a center point on keyframe 1. On keyframe 15, scale them up 3×. On keyframe 20, reduce opacity to 0 via override. Apply tweens. Result: a convincing particle explosion from a single keyframe.

💡 Pro Tip — Shapes Brushes for Pattern Fills: Instead of using Pathfinder fills alone, layer Shapes brushes inside closed areas for texture:

Draw a Pathfinder shape (e.g., a circle).

Draw Dots or Spray strokes inside it.

Group them together.

The result is a filled shape with a subtle internal texture — no layer masks required.