Filling in the Colors of an Illustration Efficiently

Question

I have the following illustration:
What I need to do is fill in certain aspects of this illustration with different colors. For instance, I might need to change the color of the hair, or the shirt or the jacket. Currently the way I've been doing this is by using live paint. The only problem with this is that when using Live Paint, it nearly doubles the size of the file and also adds about twice the amount of paths. For what I'm trying to do, it's extremely important to me that I keep the file size and the amount of paths at a bare minimum. I've tried using paths -> simplify after using Live Paint, and the problem with this is it skews the illustration a little, and also puts some "holes" in it (ie the dead spaces I was referring to in my other thread).
Ultimately, what I'd like to be able to do is just select the path for a certain area of the drawing and fill it. However, there isn't always a neat path for the part of the drawing I want to fill. What I'm wondering is, what is the best way to go about separate the one ginormous path that engulfs much of the illustration into some other smaller paths that I can fill. Or in general, can anyone think of a better way to go about doing this so I get the most efficient illustration possible?
For your reference, here is the svg version of the file: https://sendnow.acrobat.com/?i=0HBJVDJKKp*sXdjhyzeV3A
Thanks,
KiSS

Answer 1

However, there isn't always a neat path for the part of the drawing I want to fill.
Then you have to create one.
...what is the best way to go about separate the one ginormous path that engulfs much of the illustration into some other smaller paths that I can fill....
That's essentially what LivePaint does. It creates new paths in the shapes of areas that are merely visually enclosed by portions of existing paths. When it does this "flood fill" behaviour, it creates additional closed paths with fills.
If the area that you want to flood fill is too large, or has gaps that let the flood fill bleed out to areas you don't want it to, you can control that by drawing additional, temporary paths (for example, across the bottom) to "contain" or "limit" the areas of flood fill.
Or in general, can anyone think of a better way to go about doing this so I get the most efficient illustration possible?
Sure. Understand that you don't get something (elegant, efficient results) for nothing (sloppy drawing with over-automated instant-gratification features). Learn to draw with the Pen tool, placing and modifying anchor points deliberately; drawing optimal paths to begin with instead of drawing paths that merely look like they enclose the right areas  by dragging things like the Brush or Pencil tool.
...when I try to join the line to that anchor point, it's giving me the "to join, you must select two open..."
If you're using LivePaint, you don't have to join the paths to contain the flood fill if you're relying on LivePaint to automatically detect and trace around the new visually-enclosed areas.
When you do want to join paths (as when drawing/constructing paths deliberately), you don't have to select endpoints to join paths. You can just select the paths with the black pointer and invoke the Join command. The joins will occur at the nearest ends. You can do the same thing to close a single open path.
If the ends where you want the joins to occur are not the nearest ends, you can, again, draw a temporary path to cause the desired ends to be the nearest, and then delete/modify unwanted anchors/segments thereafter.
Your stated goal here is to get optimal paths. You just don't get that by using the loosey-goosey, artsy-tartsy "painterly" features (Pen, Pencil, LivePaint, autotracing, etc., etc.) You get it by learning how to draw Bezier paths deliberately and accurately.
JET