Icelandian Startrails

This little badge design is based on something i saw on one of Björk's 'Debut' era (ca. 1993) releases.
I guess it was supposed to be Björk's logo: the letter B in a cool foreign looking alphabet/techno design, with the repeating gradient background in earthy browntones and a startrail on top.

Especially the startrail seemed like a nice idea for another brush dynamics tutorial, so i began exploring.

It went all well until i tried to add a stroke to the stars, which just didnt look good because small selections converted by Gimp into a path, do not result in very accurate paths. Especially the smaller stars looked more like little blobs with all sharp points gone.

So i switched to Inkscape and tried to recreate the startrail effect only to discover that its a lot harder than expected and gave up after banging my head against a wall for hours.

Last week i gave it another try and this time i got it working.

Not only was i able to delve deeper into designs with gradients, i also figured out how to make a vector startrail.

So after the jump i present to you, two techniques of making a startrail.
First in Gimp and then in Inkscape.

Version 1.6 of 'ofn-text-along-path' released

After writing the sequel to my Text along a circular path tutorial, i had a little conversation with ofnuts and he gave me a few tips how to improve it.

Text along a circle II [path directions explained]

Of all blog entries, my 'Text along a circular path' tutorial gets the most hits.
In the statistics section of this blogspot i can see what people searched for, and apparently putting text on a path is a big problem (popular search terms are circular text and curved text).

One of the more esoteric aspects of text along path is putting two aligned sets of text on the same circular path, but with each set of text going in a different direction.

Gimp's native 'Text along path' functionality can only do this with fonts that are perfectly centered on all characters.

With ofnuts text along path plug-in installed, this is much easier, because you get a lot of different Height Reference options, how to map your text to the path.

But this doesnt help with finding out how to change direction of your text.

So here is the secret:

Hell Invaders

For full size, open in new tab.

Welcome to the real world

A real stencil.
Handdrawn with symmetry lines, then photocopied on to a sheet of overheadprojector acetate and cut with a scalpel.
In 1997, the techstep was in full swing.

Decided to turn it into a double exposure.

My mind is glowing

Another blast from the past.
Resurrected an ancient cyborg stencil-style drawing with my scanner, gave it the vector treatment, then added a stroke in Affinity Designer (sorry Inkscape), halftone shading and a brand new warpaint in Gimp.

Dämon #1

Better Patterns with the Resynthesizer plug-in

Ever noticed how ugly Gimp's native patterns are ?

The resulting texture always looks very artifical and uniform.
This is because the tiles are very small (50-150px). In Gimp 2.8 a pattern can be up to 512x512px.

There is a simple fix that will make them look 200% more awesome with a mouseclick !

Like this:

Vector Doodle

Lost on the road

Its been six years since i started working with Gimp, with lots of ups and downs.

For the last few years i was so focused on tutorial writing that i stopped being creative and have become a bit of a copycat. Every time i fire up Gimp, its because i want to figure out how to do a certain effect, which as a result has prevented me from being an artist.

When i realized i got lost on my journey i tried to remember what i wanted to do before i mastered the program.
Strangely i couldnt figure it out until i found an image on the internet of a cool futuristic logo, which would have put a smile on my face back then.

The more i deal with all the technical details, the less my creativity flows.
Things that would have made me excited, seem banal today.

On the other hand, artists who really impress me are 100 times better than me.

I have a lot of sketches from 20 years ago, that i'd like to vectorize and expand but im too scared to spoil them.

So yesterday i drew a bit on paper, got an idea, quickly switched to Inkscape and began building....

Bokeh Tests

 

How to work with Brush Dynamics for a Bokeh effect

In the next post i want to show you how to make a Bokeh effect in Gimp, but before that can happen we need to talk about Brush Dynamics and custom brushes.