Category: Vectors

As we are about to leave 2011…

Syllie

Phew… that was one busy year! Lots of things happening, but mostly working my but off! I’ve built and launched quite a few websites and fortunately they were well received. So it’s time for a little break during the Christmas period to catch my breath and play with a lot of things that I have not been able to play with … (hehe)

One of those is to finish a website for a friend of mine – she’s running a small yoga business and tho we’ve set her up with the default WP theme – we sure can do better! And please don’t mention my own website.. haha.. I know .. it is way overdue. But I hope that I will be able to upload some more of my illustrations and artwork and then I may switch to a portfolio type template.

Other things I am involved in…

Reviewing of a book on Inkscape. I think I am way too critical tho – so not so sure if they’re happy with me. The book is targeting the beginning Inkscape artist, the same group for whom I write Inkscape tutorials on verysimpledesigns.com. And those that know me in person know I set pretty high standards.

I am also trying to complete some more tutorials for that same verysimpledesigns.com. It has been way too long and I know it.

And finally I am working on vector illustrations and creating a stronger identity there. There are so many talented artists out there  and the internet provides such a nice opportunity to see what others are doing and how their styles developed over the years. I love the galleries that show earlier as well as recent work.  It also proves that it is very hard to put your own mark down and do something that is very unique. I know I am overthinking that tho 😀 – it is clear from my work that I like weird and unrealistic worlds in happy colours.

Change of Weather

Syllie

Finally! Summer is near! The temperatures are slowly going up and for the next few weeks it will be ‘comfortable’ – that is just before it becomes too hot and I need the airconditioner to feel comfy. I am still not used to the Australian weather. Funny thing is that ‘Sydney people’ try to deny that it is cold – many houses do not have heating systems and some of my friends seem to think it is quite normal to sit indoors with your coat on. I miss the comfort of a central heating system on cold days! I have had a serious cold / flu / sinus infection and been sniffing and coughing for weeks. So glad I can work from my own home!

Work-Life-Play

Life here is not really so different as to my life in the Netherlands. Sure the weekends are awesome – bushwalks, beachlife and enjoying a laidback lifestyle – weekdays are business as usual. I really like the work and the complexity is slowly growing. As I wrote in my earlier post – I feel I am a full WordPress developer now. We deliver a few websites a month and are expanding our range of services. I am focussing a bit more on extending skills with particular frameworks such as JQuery. All in all very cool and a job perfectly suitable for a geek girl.

Joomla and Very Simple Designs

I finally found some time to do a major update on our Inkscape tutorial site verysimpledesigns.com. The site runs on Joomla! 1.5 and I was hoping that by now version 1.6 would have been released. Not so – and that might as well be ages away again – so I finally found the courage to update all components to the last available version.

I still need to fix a few things: use of an older version of JComments has resulting in commenter’s names and email adrresses disappearing. Of course I have back-ups so I can restore the table – but one has to do that aye?

I am not sure what is keeping the release of the new version, a new beta version is released every 2-3 weeks and they have carefully mentioned a possible RC1 with the next release. But c’mon – that has been a way too long development cycle! (and yes I am aware it is open source, depending on volunteers etc…). Anyways.. I am working on an overhaul of the template we use on verysimpledesigns.com – for use with Joomla! 1.6. We will migrate the site when the release of Joomla! is production ready. A specific point of focus is to number the steps in a tutorial better to improve readability.

Inkscape

Inkscape 0.48 has been released a few weeks back and an update is in the making. Whilst all the developers work hard on fixing issues – some regression has occurred and the release of 0.48.1 is pushed back a bit. There have been a few cool but not so noticable additions to the program – and I am way overdue in writing a tutorial about that. Gonna try to fit that in next week or so.

More play

So is it all work and no play? Of course not! Like I said – the weekends are for relaxing and enjoying the Australian lifestyle (bushwalks, beachlife, meeting up with friends and of course steaks and such on the barbie).

I also picked up another skill – I did a course in textile printing. The very simple vector designs I create are very suitable for fabric printing and I figured I might as well add that skill to my set. The course ran at the Sydney Community Collegue and was led by a very enthousiastic instructor – Ro Cook. The course comprised of screen printing and relief printing.

In the screen printing part we created our direct stencils by cutting our designs from a a coated material. The results are pretty good – but I must confess that I am not crafty enough to spend 2 hours cutting an intrinsic design from a piece of (coated) paper. So back to automated techniques: we obtained an electronic cutter. At the moment that buy seems to be a failure as the software that drives the machine is not doing its work – it is unable to cut our own created SVGs. An update of the software has been promised a few times and is about to be released (this week). But counting the empty promises sofar I do not keep my hopes up too high.

Oh and tomorrow is the day of the Metallica concert 🙂

Freebie Easter Bunnies

Syllie 2 Comments

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.

Freebie Easter Bunnies
Freebie Easter Bunnies

Pfft.. what a week…

Syllie

Our cute cat

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.

Inkscape Tutorial: Fancy Borders
Inkscape Tutorial: Fancy Borders
Inkscape Tutorial: Floral Motif
Inkscape Tutorial: Floral Motif
Inkscape Tutorial: Paisley Motif
Inkscape Tutorial: Paisley Motif

Vector Illustrations now also available

Syllie
Beautiful cherry blossom design in pink
Beautiful cherry blossom design in pink

We have decided to also publish our vector illustrations on verysimpledesigns.com. For this purpose we have created a new section of resources with the name “Vector Illustrations“. For now it offers the result files of the tutorials we wrote, but sometimes with a bit of a twist. For example, I made the delicate pink cherry blossom floral design also available as a sweet baby blue design. All illustrations are available in eps and Inkscape svg format and printables of 12″x12” at 300dpi – and for now – free for personal use.