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I'm trying my hand at emulating MBE's style of designing these cute character/icons in order to progress my understanding of illustrator.

That being said, I suck at it and was wondering if anyone has seen or knows of any tutorials along this sort of style that I might be able to pick up some tips from? In particular I'm not sure on the best way of doing the broken outlines?

Here's a link for reference - https://dribbble.com/shots/2476325-Egg

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    Hello, try avoid asking resource questions. Its actually more work to search for a tutorial than describe how to do this. Second try avoid asking for best anything, because that would mean you would need to define best. Even then best is debatable to begin with just ask how best is for you to decide later once you have some experience in the matter, we cant define it for you.
    – joojaa
    Commented Jul 5, 2016 at 7:03

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One quite fast way is to use the scissors (scissors) tool. Click on your shape where you want the gaps and select the spans for deletion.

enter image description here

Image 1: Quick timelapse of cut.

A quick but less precision oriented way is to use the eraser tool instead of scissors. Its works best if you cut the path up first at some point to make it cut out stuff instead of carve into the shape.

Erase

Image 2: Using the erase tool on a pre cut path (as in not closed)

Another way would be to cut a bigger chunk, then assign that bigger chunk a dashed line or an art brush prepared with same technique. You can also make an art brush for the entire path for assignment in for many objects at one go but in my mind this is a bit too uniform.

Its also possible to use a cookie cutter shape and for example trim with shape builder to cut predictable holes in the shape.

And finally offset a duplicate filled path and place it below:

enter image description here

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    @AndyHolmes added a demo on using erase tool
    – joojaa
    Commented Jul 5, 2016 at 8:07

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