The Joy of Inkscape

By kattekrab, 9 August, 2008

Well - I submitted an abstract to the linux.conf.au call for participation to do a tutorial on Inkscape.  And I encouraged one of the lead inkscape developers, Jon Cruz, to also make a submission. He tells me he did! Which is very W00t!

But also reduces the chances of having my own tutorial accepted.

I need to figure out how to record voice as well as my desktop and start creating practice video tutorials... to build up a portfolio of handy tips and tricks. I think this would also be a good way to further develop my own skills.Poster of KungFu Panda movie to illustrate sunburst effect

Stewart Smith suggested the abstract should include links to examples of stuff we'll cover in the tutorial - which was a good suggestion - but meant I probaby would have missed the CFP deadline. Instead... I'll blog - here's hoping this helps...

Sunburst:

There's actually a few different ways of creating the sunburst effect so prevalent in current graphic design. Like the background on the Kung-Fu Panda poster. I noticed the poster on a tram stop shelter and thought - look there it is again!

So how do you do it?

You need to make a triangle... there's a couple of ways to do that (use the polygon or line tools), and then you can use inkscape's tiled clones feature or just rotate a clone whilst manually hitting the space bar to make a copy. Holding down control will constrain the angle of the rotate keeping the gaps even. You can also tweak the angle of rotation. The poster uses a slight variation on a theme by swirling the sunburst - but that's easy enough to do in inkscape by just dragging the path into a curve.... kinda nice result.

Someone remind me to blog about Grunge effects and Floral vector details... and I should do a step by step screen grab of the sunburst too... and by the time I do - it might have gone out of fashion.

Here's my attempt to do a sunburst like in the poster... not identical... but I hope enough to give the general idea...

 

 

Must give thanks to the master - andy fitzsimon who first told me how to do the sunburst!