🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello,

Please forgive me if this is the wrong forum. I had the hardest time deciding where to post. If there's a better location please let me know.

I'm beginning a new piece and am blocking out elements and working out a strategy. In this preliminary stage I've hit a problem that I'd like to work out before I begin the project.

Maybe I'm approaching it all wrong. So I'm either seeking help with my method or an entirely new way of going about it.

One section of the piece will have a snake climbing up a column. The snake will be a blend or mesh gradient with a lot of detail, and the column will have many gradient overlays as appearance attributes.

Since you can't easily cut gradients/mesh objects I interwove the snake using a compound clipping mask with the appropriate areas cut out and it worked fine until I tried adding a drop shadow, the shadow appears over the column when the snake is behind it. Not good.

I've been experimenting with many ways to solve this but then my brain froze up.

So, like, HELP! :)

Here's an image of the issue I'm facing:
 <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mfrankly/help/marks_weaving_problem.jpg>

Thanks,

Mark