I am working on improvement of the Joomla! template we use on verysimpledesigns.com. And as that is mostly an after hours job, it progresses slowly. I have to divide my attention to creating new content, finishing tutorials and re-design. All fun to do, but it is sometimes more fun to just doodle a bit. And that is what I did last night.
I simply opened up Inkscape and started to dabble a bit, with the idea to make a concept for a character creation tutorial. But I ended up making an easter bunny – and as that holiday is upcoming – I decided to share it. The vector is cleaned up and can pass any microstock scrutiny check – all paths are closed, no embedded text, no transparancies and no patterns.
I have published the vector as Inkscape SVG and eps format but also exported it to png in 300dpi and as web-friendly size with all bunnies scaled to 256 px height. The work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License. Check it out: Freebie Easter Bunny Vectors.
I started to write a tutorial about seamless pattern creation in Inkscape a long time ago. I really struggled with it, as I was afraid it would not show enough original content, and also because the use of seamless patterns within Inkscape comes with quite some limitations.
Through verysimpledesigns.com I received a request for a tutorial on seamless pattern creation, and I figured I might as well finish and publish the tutorial I started earlier. Total composing time for this tutorial is over 20 hours and I still am not totally happy with it. My Inkscape “guinea pig” still needs to test it – and I hope he’s gentle in his verdict. It is available on the Inkscape tutorials page and I will announce it on the front page as soon as the final tweaking is done.
Most weeks life goes by in a nice reasonably predictable way and the days sorta smoothly roll over from one into another. Other weeks things happen like wild water rafting. This was such a week. Worst thing that happened was that our cute cat got hit by a car and passed away. Some people might say a cat is a cat, others say it was just a pet, and others may cry for him. Truth is that this little cutie was very important to me. When I moved continents I had to leave my cats behind with new friendly owners. And when I arrived in Oz, this cat was waiting for me, rescued by someone that cared about the cat but had no idea how to take care of him. He was about 8 months then, kept indoors and as a young male in puberty very wild. So I was greeted by a strong cat piss odour and a cat that attacked upon each opportunity given. Oh, and they fed him dog food (as the cat ignored cat food). It took me a few weeks to straighten the cat out, train him to use the cat door and be happy with proper cat bits for food and little snacks of tuna or chicken whenever he was behaving particularly well. The cat turned out to be very socialized and a real cutie and he made it a lot easier to get used to my new home. This week I had to say goodbye as someone took him away from us. I feel very very sad.
New Inkscape tutorials
This event also slowed down some designs I was working on. I made a cute paisley motif a while ago for some custom stationery. I figured it would make a good Inkscape tutorial. When I started to write however, the tutorial became unbelievable long. This is mostly due to the fact that I try to write them for beginner Inkscape artists. So lots of hints and tips, while I describe each step. I am still very fortunate that my mate is not good in vectoring, and that he is still trying to learn Inkscape. That makes him the ideal guinea pig. I only mention new tutorials on the homepage of verysimpledesigns.com when they passed his test.
In the end the simple paisley motif appeared to be useful for 3 new tutorials, where each one focusses on a different aspect of pattern creation. The tutorials are published and we are awaiting feedback.
A while back I created a simple video tutorial on how to create Spiro Swirls in Inkscape. It is aimed at beginning Inkscape artists and even without any prior Inkscape knowledge it should be easy to follow.
Spiro curves (Cornu spirals) were introduced to the design world by Raph Levien, and the feature is included in the latest release of Inkscape, version 0.47.
Spiro curves are awesome. They were originally created to support font design, and creating smooth flowing swirls is easily done.
My tutorial demonstrates the basics of Spiro curves in Inkscape at a slow pace and use it to create smooth flowing swirls.
For some reason this tutorial is the most popular page on verysimpledesigns.com, and it gets more visitors than the front page. How awesome is that?
It has been a busy weekend… beach, good food, lazing about and so on. Then Monday knocked on the door and I decided to do some more work in Inkscape.
I wanted to make an easy fringed patch and without too much trouble I got the desired result. And then I figured it would make a nice tutorial, so I am working on that.
I also experimented a bit with the different shapes and some filter settings and the results look awesome. To make it useable for another group of graphics designers I turned the pictures into Photoshop Brushes. Peek preview on this page, and available for download at verysimpledesigns.com tomorrow.
