This wasn't the tutorial I had planned to write next, and I think Inkscape knew it and gave me a hard time. If you've been here awhile, you know that I believe yarn can talk, so it's only rational that Inkscape can pick up on my inner thoughts too.
(Yes, I'm joking. Though....yarn really can speak to you!).
If you were on social media this fall, you probably saw the "F*** Flake" snowflake ornament. Imagine a word starting with F, creating a snowflake, a circle at the centre with the year in it. I love snowflakes, and knew that the tools in Inkscape should make it really easy to design some. However, finding tutorials and videos on how to do this was not easy. I found a few, but nothing that really gave me what I needed. Then I found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQqRfMP_hl4 The sound quality is not very good, so turn it up. I also found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwTe0jhOYEU but he seemed to take the long way around on some elements. There's somethings to be learned by watching both though. I realized that watching videos geared for Glowforge, or laser cutters is more helpful for Cricut users than general Inkscape videos for graphic designers. There are things you need to consider for Cricut or laser cutters that you don't have to think about when creating a digital image.
Originally, I wanted to cut these out with the Cricut, but because of my surgery, this wasn't really possible at the time. Perhaps for next year (which, is really this year, but my years typically follow the school year, so "next year" is September LOL). Since I'm learning more and more digital design, I started getting really creative with these. Let's back up though to a basic image.
I had intended to cut this one out, but just couldn't get to it. This is what we're aiming for in this tutorial, and then I'll expand on it a bit if you want to just make it a digital image.
First step, for Cricut users, set up the Document Properties like this:
Display units and Custom Size units are both in inches, the custom size is 12x12, and the Scale is 72 in the x window. This will ensure it will import into Design Space at the size you intend it to be.
Open up the Text Editor (the A on the left side), and either choose your font from the top font menu, or just type your text and then scroll through your fonts on the right side, seeing how it looks in different fonts. I used Amrelia. Do not click out of it or convert to a path.
Then Path--->Union. Somehow, I missed the l in the picture above.
What makes these snowflakes fun (to me) is all the "swirls", usually called glyphs or swashes. Not all fonts come with them, but the ones that do usually mention it as a selling feature. To see the glyphs, you need a "character map". The one that comes with Windows 10 is pretty useless, as it's so small. If you're using Windows 10, download Character Map UWP from the Microsoft store.
To use it, scroll through and find what you need/like and select it. Click +Add (towards bottom). It'll add it in the lower window. Then click copy. Go back to your design, and click paste where you want it in your text.
Here's where the tutorial gets tricky. I went back and forth from this step, to the next, and then starting over as I tried different combinations of glyphs. It's not until you rotate it that you can really see how it will look. So don't despair if it takes a few tries. If there are no letters with hanging tails, you might want to change more letters to ones with glyphs so that the words will connect with each other when you rotate them, for strength (if cutting out). As you do this more often, you'll start to visualize text in different ways. You can always use the Bezier pen to create swashes to connect the snowflake arms in a decorative way.
Also check it with View--->Display Mode--->Outline View. You'll see that this particular font is really skinny! You might want to use the Outset function to thicken it. You follow the same process as in earlier tutorials to create an offset, but you don't need to change colour, or lower it, and then you'll Union it to the original text.
Once you like your text, use the selection tool, and Path--->Object to Path. Then Object--->Ungroup (a few times might be needed), then Path--->Union. If you are keeping this digital, you can leave the Union till later in case you want to change something. However, if you are going to cut this out of cardstock, you want to make sure all the letters are connected somehow.
Take a look at the outline view, using View--->Display Mode--->Outline. If there are gaps between letters or parts of letters, you need bridges. To do this, you can look at it with the Node Editor and see if any nodes can be moved slightly. Or, you can Union in little rectangles like in the second video I linked to above. If you want to keep this digital, and have a neon feel to it, you need to create gaps like Nick does in this video starting at the 3:50 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE-gKcJC8M8&t=12s
Once you are happy with your text, the fun part starts. Wait! Hasn't this been fun all along? LOL. It's time to rotate! Select your text, go Path--->Path Effects (at the bottom of the list). This will pop up the Path Effect menu on the right. It's a large box with a small + icon at the bottom. Click the icon and the following screen will come up
. Click "Rotate Copies" (here, it's the first icon in the 5th row. It might be in a different place on yours depending on screen size).
This will rotate your text and pop up the following dialogue box off in the right panel.
You can play with these values. Although snowflakes have six "arms", if you have a long skinny text, you might want to up it to 8 copies.
You might be looking at your snowflake, and say "it's squished together in the centre! I want the circle with the year!". In the videos above, they made the circle first, but for some reason I do it after. We need to spread the snowflake out a bit first.
Click on the Node Editor and then the snowflake. See in the centre there are two blue lines that meet in the middle? You need to drag that centre node to the left. It's touchy! You might be able to use the arrows keys or the CTRL button to keep it centered. I haven't tried.
As you drag it out, picture a circle with your chosen text inside. If you're going to be cutting this out, You don't want too much of a gap between the words.
I was just playing around to make sure I got these steps right, and see what happens if you try to use the arrow or CTRL key. I moved the centre node outwards, then upwards, then back in, and got this neat little design:
Originally the heart was sitting on the upper left tail of the nextT. Since this makes the centre closed in and connects all the arms, it would be okay to cut. You could probably fit a small year in the centre too but oooohhh...what about hanging a little glittery snowflake in the centre? I was just playing though and didn't add any fancy swishes to the end of my name. I'll have to go back and start again. That's what I mean about going back and forth. I wish you could do this directly with a word without having to convert to path, because that makes it hard to add decorative letters.
Next you're going to use the Circle tool and create a circle. Make it with no fill, and just a stroke. You might want to go back to the Node Editor, select the text, and make the snowflake tighter or wider so it touches the circle "nicely". I didn't like how the C wasn't quite touching. I tried moving nodes, but that made it strangely funky. I thought about making little bridges, but that got tedious because I would have to do each C. So I decided this would be a digital design. I could have also altered nodes so the hearts were tucked in a bit, letting the C touch the circle, but nah...
Don't forget to go Path--->Stroke to Path! If you don't, when you go to weld later, this will happen:
Oops. Just one of many glitches while I was working on this!
Time for the inner text. You don't have to stick with the same font, though I did. You can go straight across, stagger, or stack, whatever you want! I used two text boxes, one for each line. Place them in the circle, size, move, size, move, etc. I use the Outline View again to make sure the text is overlapping the circle a bit if I'm going to cut it. You also want to make sure the text is going to be secure, by touching each other somehow, depending on how you put it in the circle. Here, I've Unioned the text (Path---Object to Path; Object--->Ungroup; Path--->Union. You can see how the two 2's merge in the middle. I haven't Unioned the circle to the numbers, or to the name. You can see how the numbers overlap on the circle, especially at the top of the top 2, and the bottom of the 1.
Here comes the fun part. Wait, I said that already. It's all fun! Now we get to union everything! Select the text, and Object--->Ungroup. Make sure each letter is ungrouped. There should be one box per letter, and it will say at the bottom something like "5 objects of 24 nodes".
Sometimes with text, when you Union, the text will suddenly be way thicker. Undo (I think you'll have to hit it twice). Then use the Outline view and see if there's an additional line in the text. There might be a stroke on the text you didn't know about and you had at some point, converted that stroke to a path as well, and now it's all unioned. Or, if it didn't union, that stroke hasn't been converted and is holding up the process--like when you're in grade 1 and you have to make a circle, holding hands and there's one kid that won't hold hands. Making sure all the text is selected, hold shift and click on the X at the start of the colour bar at the bottom left. Alternatively, I have had to use the Objects panel, find each stroke individually and delete.
Sometimes my computer doesn't like it when I'm trying to Union. It can be because there is something grouped. The Objects panel will show that, or go Objects--->Ungroup and see if the info bar at the bottom of the screen says something different. It should say "No grouped objects" or similar. Other times, my computer just can't handle a big task, and I break the Unioning into smaller tasks. Union the text in the inner circle, then the text to the circle, and then that to all the spokes. This also helps you break it down to see what section is giving you an issue.
Are you happy with it? Are you going to cut it out on the Cricut, or are you going the next step and making it digital? More fun awaits!
I should have cropped that, sorry! It was my first attempt at a digital snowflake, with gradient. It says "Max & Mary" Click on the picture to open the picture viewer and see it bigger. I was having trouble with gradients; I really didn't know what I was doing LOL. But I liked it.
When working in digital media, you can save as a PNG file. This can give a transparent background, though if you share a file with someone, unless they open it in a program, it shows up with a black background if you don't specify what colour of background. I had been working with the white workspace and when I shared it with my friend, it appeared black. At first I was disappointed, but then thought it looked pretty cool. You can see what I mean about long text making the snowflake look a little spindly. I could have done 8 spokes, or added more glyphs/swashes to fill it in. I might even try doing basically two snowflakes--one for Max, one for Mary, and then stack them so they alternate around the snowflake. Only one center circle needed.
I also used transparency as part of the gradient to make it fade away at the ends of the spokes.
For Cheryl's, I wanted a white background again, to give the snow feeling. But with the light colours that makes it hard to see. I ended up with darker font colours than I intended.
Gradients. I am not about to write a tutorial on that. I watched some videos; I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzrQUkJEdaQ starting at 21:00.
Somehow, with playing with the gradients, I got a little bright spot near the middle. Like a twinkle! All it is is a lighter version of the colour around it, as part of the gradient.
I liked the snowflake as it was, but it was so fine and maybe hard to read. I remembered a bit about making the neon text from Logos by Nick, the link is near the start of this tutorial (in the part about cutting out bits of letters to make them look neon). What if I added an offset to thicken it? I duplicated it, page down, and did an outset a little bit bigger. Then, the final touch--I blurred the offset just a tiny bit, 1.5% and the opacity is at 77%.
This is a screenshot, which doesn't do it justice.
To change the background of a PNG file, go to File--->Document Properties; it's near the bottom. Pay attention to the bottom colour bar. That's for the opacity and if you want it to show the black, it has to be at 100.
No comments:
Post a Comment