Tag: Vector Based

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265 of 365 is a thicket of retro sound waves #design #inkscape #tutorial

Retro sound waves
Retro sound waves

So these are some cool retro styled waves. I think of them as sound waves, and I think they’re reminicient of record albums, grooviness, and the lacksadaisical feeling of my childhood in the 1970’s. To do it yourself in Inkscape:

  1. Create a smallish square (50x50px) with the rectangle tool (ctrl-r).
  2. Duplicate the square (ctrl-d) and move it to the bottom edge of the first square. It should overlap at the line and be aligned with the first square.
  3. Repeat this action until you have 7 squares in a vertical row. Feel free to use the align tool to align them all perfectly, but by eye is fine.
  4. Select the line of squares by rubber band method or by shift clicking each of them.
  5. Convert all of them to paths (shift-ctrl-c) them combine them all into a single path (ctrl-k).
  6. Select and copy (ctrl-c) the path.
  7. Open either the pencil or Bezier tool (whichever you prefer, if neither, use pencil) and set it to use the clipboard as a shape.
  8. Draw your line, and notice that the squares are used as a brush. Have fun!
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263 of 365 is on ethics and work #design #type #Inkscape

On work and ethics
On work and ethics

A simple idea, but an important one. A million tragic movies couldn’t exist if everyone followed this one rule.

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portfolio requests

253 of 365 is a giraffe made out of text by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #typography #design #inkscape #tutorial #cc

253 of 365 is a giraffe made out of text by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #typography #design #inkscape #tutorial #cc
253 of 365 is a giraffe made out of text by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #typography #design #inkscape #tutorial #cc
253 of 365 is a giraffe made out of text by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #typography #design #inkscape #tutorial #cc
253 of 365 is a giraffe made out of text by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #typography #design #inkscape #tutorial #cc

So my libland friend Julie asked me to sketch her a giraffe, and I do just about anything Julie asks. In this case, I did the following to fulfill her request:

  1. I found a silhouette of a giraffe and imported it into Inkscape.
  2. I lowered the opacity on the giraffe so that I could see text as I placed it on top.
  3. I added the letters in the word giraffe one at a time with the text tool
  4. I selected (s) each of the letters and made them into paths (shift-ctrl-c)
  5. Using the node tool (n) I stretched each of the letters into the shape of the silhouette until the letters were representative of the silhouette of the giraffe.
  6. The silhouette was set aside, and I then created a background for the scene.

Try it out with your favorite animal, and let me know how it turns out! Hope you liked it Julie!

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Bokeh by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #vector #tutorial #cc

Bokeh by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #vector #tutorial #cc
Bokeh by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #vector #tutorial #cc
Bokeh by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #vector #tutorial #cc
Bokeh by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #vector #tutorial #cc

Given my recent reminder from Beth about the very cool, powerful, flexible tiled clones tool in Inkscape, I decided to make a little tutorial about how to create this bokeh effect.There are a lot of settings here, but along the way, try playing with my numbers to see what happens.

  1. Make a black background created with the rectangle tool, the same size as your page.
  2. Make a single circle, and “unset the fill” by right clicking on the fill color indicator in the lower left and choosing ‘unset’.
  3. Make the circle about 1/50th of the black rectangle, sort of the proportion of a star on the American flag’s blue field.
  4. The first circle should go to the upper left corner of the black field.
  5. Select the circle and open the tiled clones dialog by going to edit/clones/tiled clones, and use the following settings to replicate the design.
  6. The tiling scale is set to 8 columns by 6 rows (48 clones)
  7. In Symmetry tab: Choose P4M Symmetry, Shift X and Shift Y in both row and column are set to 15% with 6% randomization in both X and Y
  8. In Scale Tab: Scale X and Y in both row and column are set to 5% with 10% randomization in both X and Y.
  9. The Rotation tab is ignored.
  10. In Blur and Opacity tab: Blur is set to 1% per row and 2% per column with 5% randomization. Fade out is set to 10% in both row and column with 25% randomization, and alternate is checked for both row and column.
  11. In Color Tab: An initial color of a slightly yellow off white is chosen. This is why the fill must be unset in the original circle. Each of the settings for Hue, Saturation and Luminance are set to 2% per row and column with 5% randomization, except that Luminance is set to 30% randomization.
  12. The Tracing tab is ignored.
  13. Click on the Create button at any time to see how your settings affect your clones. When you’re satisfied, close the dialog. As long as you have the original selected, you can go back into the dialog and continue experimenting.
  14. Also, any changes you make to the original immediately affect your clones, as you might imagine. My imperfect circle shape for the bokeh was created by finding and selecting the original (shift-d), making it into a path (shift-ctrl-c), and altering its shape with the node tool (n)

Obviously, there are a lot of options with this flexible, powerful tool. However, once you begin to play with the options, as I did here, your experimentation will pay off. You start to see what the shift settings do, how the rotation setting works, how to bring about symmetry or randomization, and so on. First, have fun, then worry about getting the precise effect you want. You may find that your experiments lead to more interesting outcomes than your original idea.

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248 of 365 is a star pattern [image] #Inkscape

Star Pattern
Star Pattern

Disclaimer: this is yesterday’s (Thursday’s) post, and tonight’s (Friday’s) may be a few minutes into tomorrow (Saturday), so please forgive me. So one of my favorite Inkscape converts, Beth Nolastname, posted on my wall yesterday, suggesting a really cool background generation site for use with Inkscape. She said:

John, this looks like a neat link to use with Inkscape.

Tiled backgrounds designer


Web based tiled backgrounds designer, create any pattern your site
needs just for few minutes. Adjustable size, pictures, colors, texture
and transparency

I didn;t use it to make my pattern though I did try it and like it. Aside from thinking that it’s a cool site, my only reaction is that Inkscape already has some amazing tools for developing these kinds of background patterns, with a lot more flexibility, such as the one I made for today’s sketch. I made mine with the tiled clones tool (edit/clone/create tiled clones) , which starts with a single (not two) selected object/shape/path/group/etc. of any type, and allows you to create repeated patterns with amazingly rich flexibility. You can affect transparency per clone, rotation per clone, distance apart, angle of repeat, and even color variation per clone. I kept mine pretty simple, adding variation of horizontal and vertical movement by a few pixels, blur variation with a degree of randomness, and so on. In short, while it may have a larger learning curve than Beth’s suggested site, it also is far more powerful and flexible. Thanks for the inspiration, Beth!