: How to create a pile of tokens like this? Hello, I am new to graphics design and this is my first post here. I would like to create an image as this one below. I have already made a nice

@LarsenBagley460

You can create the tokens/coins by setting up a custom brush. I would recommend doing this in Illustrator as a custom scatter brush because doing so gives you more flexibility in creating and modifying your artwork. In Illustrator, each coin is "painted" by the brush tool as a separate object and can easily be modified as a group and then expanded and further edited individually. In Photoshop the coins would be painted on a single layer which can make it more challenging to separate and edit.

Here's how to create a custom scatter brush in Illustrator...


Create/draw a token/coin (group any separate elements together), then open the Brushes panel.

Select the coin art and drag it onto the Brushes panel.
When the New Brush dialog appears, select Scatter Brush.
In the Scatter Brush Options dialog, name the brush and use the following settings (click OK when done):
size: fixed
spacing: fixed
scatter: fixed
rotation: random; -29 degrees / 32 degrees (adjust this until you like it)

The custom scatter brush will appear in the Brushes panel.

To add variety, follow steps 1-5 to create additional versions of the coin. In the second version I repositioned the dollar symbol and set the brush rotation to -38 degrees / 50 degrees, to make the dollar symbol differ from the first coin.

Using the Brush tool, switch between your different custom scatter brushes and paint the tokens/coins. Each object will be created as a separate object that can be individually moved and arranged. If you want to edit the individual coins (to adjust shape, add color, alter the symbol, etc.), you'll need to Expand Appearance, then make the edits.

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