Following up on an idea from the Spiro 0.01 release thread, I would like to pose a curve-drawing challenge to all interested typophiles. The following image is a 1200 dpi scan of the 60pt lowercase 's' from ATF Bakerville, page 20 of their 1941 specimen book. That resolution works out to 1000 pixels / em, so if it's traced actual size, it'll be exactly right for Type1 flavored outlines.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to draw an outline using the tools of your choice: FontLab, Illustrator, Ikarus, whatever. Also feel free to use either cubic or quadratic Beziers (I'd love to have examples of both). Try for the highest quality you can. The scan is pretty clean, but I'm pretty sure the flat patch on the bottom right is a flaw in the ATF work (the uppercase S doesn't show that, so I'll hold that in reserve if I have to run this again).

When you're done, post a screenshot of your work, ideally at the same scale as the above image. In your post, include details of the tool(s) used, amount of time taken for drawing, and how many hours experience you have with that tool. Also, if you would, please send a vector version (PDF, TTF, PFB, whatever) to raph.levien@gmail. (Add a .com to the end to make that address work).

If all goes well, I will use the results posted in my thesis, as part of a comparison between my Spiro tools and existing Bezier-based approaches. I will also post my own screenshots after I see a few results here, but right now I don't want to influence people's choices of where to put the Bezier control points.

May the best outline win!