Inkscape Hands-on Class 01: Super Pig!

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Brandon and welcome to the Inkscape hands-on series of lessons. In this series, we're using entirely hands-on project-based approach to learn how to create stunning digital art with Inkscape apparel for free and open-source vector graphics editor. And this first lesson of this series, or create a cute character named Superpave. The process, we'll learn all about how to create manipulate shapes with the shape tools and the select tool. How to use the fill and stroke dialogue for full control over colors. How to use the Align and Distribute dialogue to align parts of our drawings in various ways. And how to group and sort our drawings and the canvas. It's going to be a big lesson and a very important one for establishing the foundation will need as we continue to learn more and more advanced topics throughout the series. Also because this is the first lesson. Before we get started, we'll do a quick overview of escapes interface and learn how to navigate around the canvas. If you're already somewhat familiar with Inkscape, please feel free to skip the overview video and head straight to the lesson. Alright, if we're ready to begin, go ahead and load IQ safe and start a new document. I'll see you in the next video. 2. Quick Interface Overview: In this video, we'll quickly go over Inkscape interface and talk about how we can do things like zoom and pan around the canvas. The canvas is this large area in the center of the window. And it's where we do all of our drawing. The center of the Canvas, get this rectangular area called the page. Although we're working with vector graphics, which we can re-size it anytime without loss in quality. It's still sometimes useful to constrain our drawings to particular area. That's what the page is four, and we'll be using it for this purpose when we create a poster at the end of the course, if you want to change the dimensions of the page, we can do so with the document properties dialog. We can open by going up to the File menu and choosing Document Properties. The Display tab under front page. We can choose the format of the page here, and it will change the page straight away. The default format is A4. They can also give the page a custom width and height here. And we can change the pages orientation. Over here. We can change the color of the page and the color of its border. At the top here, we can change the display units used by the rulers at the top and led to the canvas. The default is millimeters, but we can put it on something else like pixels if we want. We can go in and close up this dialogue now to lead to the canvas as the toolbox, which contains all the tools we use for drawing, will be discussing most of these throughout the course. In version 1.2, we can re-size the toolbox. First bar above the roller is the controls bar that's contains functions pertaining to the tool we're currently using. We're using the leg tool at the moment, which lets us select and transform objects. So the control is bar. Now let's us do things like select all objects, flip objects, and reposition objects. These functions change as you squish the different tools. The next bar up is the command bar. Let's contains a lot of basic commands like creating, opening and saving documents, undo and redo, copy, cut and paste, and some different Zoom options. If you click one of these six buttons here, it would duck a dialogue over here on the right. This is the fill and stroke dialogue, which gives us a lot of control over things like the colors of objects. Because see other dialogues we click this arrow here, will be discussing many of them throughout the course. We can close it out by clicking the X here. At the top. We of course have the menus. The File menu lets us do things like create new documents and open existing documents, as well as save our document, import files into our document, and export our document to file formats that can be used outside of Inkscape. The Edit menu deals with things like copying and pasting and selecting objects. Under view, we have a lot of Zoom options and orientation options. For the remaining menus will be discussing them a lot throughout the course. If we click this arrow all the way on the right, it gives you the snap controls, which let us snap parts of our drawings together in many different ways. And we can actually see many more options if you click Advanced Mode here. We'll be talking much more about these a bit later. Before version 1 to the snap controls were actually in a bar here on the right of the canvas. At the bottom we have the color palette, which gives us some options for quickly changing the colors of objects. You can click these arrows at the right for more colors. Under the color pelvis, the status bar, which gives us information like what color is the selected objects are using other information about the selected objects, our mouse cursor position, and some options for zooming and rotating the canvas. Another way we can zoom is by holding the Control key and scrolling the mouth swore up and down. And it's actually zooms in and out around our cursor. To pan around the canvas. They can hold Control and press the arrow keys. We can hold Shift and scroll the mouse wheel. Or we can press down the mouse wheel and move the mouse. Or we can hold down the spacebar and move the mouse. Okay, that should do it for a quick overview of the interface. Now we're ready to start drawing, which we'll do in the next video. See you there. 3. Super Pig: Let's start creating Super Pig by activating the circles and ellipses tool here in the toolbox. With this tool, when we click and drag in the canvas, we can create ellipses. After we release the mouse, we get these square handles at the left and top. With these, we can re-size the ellipse. If we switch to the select tool, we can easily move the ellipse around. We also get these handles around the ellipse's bounding box. With these, we can scale it. If we hold Ctrl, it will constrain the width to height ratio. If we hold Shift, it will scale the opposite side as well. And if we hold Shift and Ctrl, it will scale all sides proportionally. If we click a selected object with the select tool, it will switch to the rotation and skew handles. With the handles on the corners, we can rotate the object. If we hold Ctrl, it will snap the angle, and holding Shift will rotate it around the opposite corner. The handles on the sides let us skew the object. Holding Alt snaps the angle, and Shift skews around the opposite side. The point around which the object rotates or skews is called the object's rotation center. This is denoted by this cross-hair at the center of the object. We can actually move the rotation center to another point if we want, then rotate or skew around that point. All right, let's press Ctrl Z a few times to undo until the ellipse isn't rotated or skewed anymore. And we can click it again to get back to the scale handles. The color that's filling the ellipse is called the fill color. And we can change it easily by clicking one of the color swatches in the color palette. This is going to be for Super Pig's body, so let's use one of these pink colors. We can also add a stroke to an object, which is like a border around it. To do this, we hold Shift and click a color swatch. Here in the status bar, we can see the fill and stroke colors of the selected object. This number next to the colors is the stroke width. We can right-click the number for a few different stroke width options. We actually don't want a stroke on this ellipse, so to turn it off, we can hold Shift and click this red X to the left of the color palette. If we click the X without holding Shift, it will turn off the fill color. But we don't want to do that, So let's give it a fill color again. Let's switch back to the circles and ellipses tool and start creating another ellipse for the head. If we hold down the Ctrl key, it will constrain the width to height ratio. We're able to create a perfect circle this way. And if we hold down Shift as well, we can center it around the cursor starting position. Let's release to create a circle. Then switch to the select tool and move it into place. As you can see, when we create a shape, it will by default get the same color information as the previous shape we created. Let's make it a lighter color so that it doesn't blend in with the body. We could continue using the color palette, but for much more control over colors, we can use the fill and stroke dialog. To open it, we can either go to Object -> Fill and Stroke, or we can click this button in the commands bar, or we can simply click somewhere within the color information area in the status bar. And now it's docked here on the right. The first tab we have in here is the fill tab, which lets us change the fill appearance of selected objects. At the top we have different fill types. The default is flat color, and we have some other types like gradients and patterns, which we'll discuss in upcoming lessons. Next, we have some different color modes we can choose from, like RGB, which stands for red, green and blue. And CMYK, which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. The default mode is HSV, which stands for hue, saturation and value. With hue, we can change the actual color. Saturation affects how much white is in the color. And value affects how dark or bright the color is. We also have the Alpha channel here, which lets us change the opacity of the fill color. In the next tab, stroke paint, we have all the same options as the fill tab, but for the stroke color, and in the stroke style tab, we can adjust various stroke settings. We'll take a look at these a bit later. For this circle, let's make it a lighter pink than the body. We first want to set the color back to the color of the body. To do this, we can switch back to the fill tab and click this eyedropper button down here, which changes our cursor to an eyedropper icon. Now if we click a color on the canvas, it will set the selected object's fill color to that color. Now we can go in here and adjust the color a bit. Next, let's create Super Pig's nose. For this, let's switch to the squares and rectangles tool here. With this tool we can click and drag to create rectangles. Like with the circles and ellipses tool, we can hold Ctrl to constrain the ratio. This will allow us to create squares. And if we hold Shift, it will center it at the cursor starting position. Let's create a rectangle for the nose. Like with circles and ellipses, we get these square handles we can use to resize it. We also get these circular handles at the top right corner. These let us round the corners. To make the corners sharp again, we can either bring the handles back to the top right corner, or we can click this button at the end of the controls bar. We actually do want to round the corners of this rectangle though. so let's drag this handle down as far as it will go. Now let's make it a lighter pink. Let's switch to the select tool and move it onto the head. We could just eyeball the positioning of the nose, but if we want more accurate control over alignment, we can use the align and distribute dialog. To open it, we can either go to Object -> Align and Distribute, or we click this button in the commands bar. The first tab we have in here is the align tab, and in the align section of the tab, we have these buttons that allow us to align selected objects in many different ways, such as aligning their left edges, centering them vertically, and centering them horizontally. The objects will be aligned relative to the anchor, which is whatever we choose in this relative to box. The anchor can be the last selected object, the first selected object, the biggest or smallest selected object, the page, the entire drawing, or the entire selection area. With the default of last selected, chosen, if we select the head and nose by dragging a selection box over them, then hold Shift and click the body to add it to the selection, last selected now refers to the body, since we selected it last. So now if we click, for example, this button, which says align right edges of objects to left edge of anchor, the anchor stays in place and the other objects move so that their right edges are aligned with the anchor's left edge. Similarly, we can align the right edges and we can center them horizontally. Okay, now let's remove the body from the selection by holding Shift and clicking it again. And let's move the head and nose back to where we want them on the body. When we have two or more objects selected with a selection box, last selected will refer to the topmost object. So now if we click this button to center them vertically, the nose stays in place and the head moves. If we want just the nose to move instead, we can undo that with Ctrl Z, choose first selected as the anchor, which will refer to the bottom-most object, then click the button. We actually want to move the nose down a bit so that it's not quite centered horizontally on the head. To do this, we can click the canvas to de-select everything, then select the nose, and as we move it, we can hold the Ctrl key to force it to move either only horizontally or only vertically. So we can move it down here some while keeping it centered vertically on the head. Next, let's use the squares and rectangles tool to add some nostrils to the nose. Let's first create a small rectangle over here, so we can see it. Let's make it a darker color than the body. To set it to the color of the body first, we could click the eyedropper button in the fill and stroke dialog again. However, we won't always have the fill and stroke dialog open, and in any case, what this button actually does is it temporarily switches us to the color picker tool, which is located here in the toolbox. So we can just activate the tool here, then click the body to pick the color. Now we can make it a bit darker. Let's move it into place with the select tool. Now we want to make a copy of this and put it over here. One way to make a copy of an object is to press Ctrl C to copy it into the clipboard, then press Ctrl V to paste it. This will make a copy centered at our cursor. Let's delete the copy by pressing the Delete key and select the original again. Another way to make copies is by duplicating. To duplicate an object, we can either right-click it and choose duplicate, or we can click this button in the commands bar, or we can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl D. This places the copy directly on top of the object. So now we can hold Ctrl and move it over here while keeping them horizontally aligned. Next, we want to use the Align and Distribute dialog to align the nostrils on the nose. Let's first hold Shift and click the other nostril, then the nose, and in the align and distribute dialog, let's go back to last selected as the anchor, which will refer to the nose. Now we can click this button to align the nostrils horizontally with the nose. We also want to align them vertically with the nose while keeping the same amount of space in-between. If we click the center vertically button right now, it will put both nostrils at the center of the nose. But if we undo that, we can first toggle on this move/ align selection as group button. With this on, the selected objects that aren't the anchor will be treated as a single object, so they will move together. Now clicking this center vertically button will give us the correct result. The nostrils for me were already pretty close to centered, so we can see this better if I move them over here first. Next, let's use the circles and ellipses tool to create some eyes. Let's hold Ctrl and create a small circle over here. Let's give it a black fill. Then we can switch to the select tool, duplicate the eye with Ctrl D, hold Ctrl and move it over here, then Shift-click the other eye, then the head, and with the group button still toggled on here, we can align the eyes vertically with the head. Let's work on the ears next. For this, we can use the stars and polygons tool here. By default, this tool is on star mode with corners set to five. So if we click and drag, we can create a five cornered star. If we hold Ctrl, we can snap the angle of rotation. After we create the star, we get these two handles here. The outer handle lets us adjust the tip radius of the star as well as rotate it. Holding Ctrl will stop it from rotating. The inner handle lets us change the base radius and skew the star. And holding Ctrl will stop it from skewing. We can change the number of corners of the star if we want. Spoke ratio refers to the ratio between the base radius and the tip radius. If we right-click in here, it gives us options that correspond to stars with a particular number of corners. So for this six cornered star or hexagram, I can choose the hexagram option here for the correct spoke ratio. With rounded, we can round the corners. We can also do this by holding Shift and dragging one of the handles. Randomized will randomize the positions of the corners and the angles. To do this with the handles, we can hold Alt as we drag them. This button at the end here will reset all the settings to the defaults. Let's switch to polygon mode now, which changes our object into a five cornered polygon. For Super Pig's ear, we want to use a triangle. So let's change corners to three. We can use the handle here to shrink it down and rotate it. Let's hold Shift and round the corners a bit. There we can switch to the select tool and move it into place. Let's use the color picker tool to make it the same color as the head. Let's also add an inner part to the ear. To do this, we can duplicate the ear with Ctrl D, make it the dark pink of the nostrils, then switch to the select tool and shrink it down some holding Ctrl and Shift. I'm going to adjust the positioning just a bit. Next, we want to put both of these shapes onto the other side of the head as well, but we want to flip them horizontally. To do this, we can first select them both and duplicate them with Ctrl D, then click this button up here to flip them horizontally or use the H key shortcut. Then hold Ctrl and move them over here. We can hold Shift and select the other ear parts, then the head, and with the group button still turned on in the align and distribute dialog, let's align them vertically. Okay, let's finish up the head by creating a mouth. For this, we can first switch to the circles and ellipses tool and create a small ellipse down here. We actually want to turn off the fill of this and give it a stroke of this dark pink color. To do this, let's first click the red X down here to turn off the fill color. Then switch to the color picker tool. To set the selected object's stroke color to the picked color, we can hold Shift before clicking the color. If we go back to the circles and ellipses tool, we have these circular handles at the right of the ellipse. If we drag one of these around the outside of the ellipse, we can create segments. If we drag it around the inside, we can create arcs. Holding Ctrl will snap the angle. Let's hold Ctrl and drag this one down in here until it's horizontally aligned with the other circular handle. And when we release the mouse, the stroke at the top part of the arc disappears. This gives us a smiley shape. Now we can switch to the select tool, resize it if we want, and move it into place. Then let's go to the stroke style tab in the fill and stroke dialog and adjust the width of the stroke. Another thing we can do in here is change the appearance of the caps, which refers to the ends of the stroke of an open shape, like this one. By default it's set to butt cap, which squares them off. We also have square cap, which is like an extended version of butt cap. And we have round cap, which I think looks better for this. Okay, now we can select the mouth and Shift-click the head, and in the align and distribute dialog, we can go ahead and turn off the group button and align the objects vertically. Okay, we're finished with the head now, but let's say we want to move all the pieces to another position or resize them all together. At the moment, we have to drag a selection box around them all in order to select them, which is pretty inconvenient. A better way to work with multiple objects that should be transformed together is to group them. To do this, with all the objects we want to group selected, we can either right-click the selection and choose Group, or we can click this button in the commands bar, or we can use the shortcut Ctrl G. Like with using the Group button in the align and distribute dialog, grouping objects causes them to be treated as a single object. So now we can select them as a single object and transform them as a single object. If we want to edit a particular object within a group, we can either right-click the group and choose Enter group or double-click the group. Now we can select the individual objects. We can also add another object to the group now if we wanted to. To get out of a group, we can either right-click and choose Exit group, or we can select an object that is outside the group, or we can double-click an empty area in the canvas. Now we can select the group as a whole again. To remove an object from a group, we can double-click the group to enter it, then right-click the object and choose pop selection out of group. Now if we get out of the group, we can see this object is no longer part of the group. Let's go ahead and delete it. We can also create nested groups, which are groups within groups. For example, we can enter the head group, and let's select all of the face objects and group them with Ctrl G. Now we have a face group, which we can enter into and edit the individual objects. When we're inside a group within a group, each time we double-click the canvas, it will exit the current group and move up through the group hierarchy. So if we double-click the canvas once, we're now outside of the face group and inside the head group, and if we double-click again, we're outside both groups. Finally, to ungroup a group of objects, you can either right-click the group and choose Ungroup, or we can click this button in the commands bar, or we can press Shift Ctrl G. And this will actually just ungroup the topmost group. We have to do it again to ungroup the face group. But we actually want to keep our face and head groups, so let's undo a couple of times. Alright, let's start working on the rest of the body now by creating some legs. For this, let's switch to the squares and rectangles tool and create a rectangle in here. Let's round the corners more by dragging this handle down. Let's make this leg the light pink of the nose. Let's turn off the stroke by going to the stroke paint tab in the fill and stroke dialog and clicking the X here. Now let's switch to the select tool and click the leg to get the rotation handles, then rotate it some. Next, let's duplicate the leg with Ctrl D, flip it horizontally by pressing the H key, and move it to the back of the body. I'm going to rotate this one a little more. We also want to put some legs on the other side of the body. Let's first duplicate the front leg, make it the darkest pink, and move it over here some. Now we want to put this leg beneath all these other objects. To do this, we have to change the z-order or stacking order of the objects. And in the controls bar for the select tool, we have these four buttons for just this purpose. The first one, which uses the Home key as the shortcut, raises selected objects all the way to the top. The second one, with the shortcut pgup, moves the selection up one step at a time. The third one, with the shortcut pgdn, moves it down one step at a time. And the last button, which uses the End key as the shortcut, move the selection all the way to the bottom. This is what we want, so let's go ahead and click it. Now let's duplicate the back leg, make it the dark pink, and move it into place. Now we can either click the lower to bottom button again or click the lower one step button twice to put it below the body. Okay, let's next give Super Pig a cape, so that we'll know he's a super pig and not just some normal pig. For this, let's switch to the stars and polygons tool, and with polygon mode selected, let's set corners to five, rounded to zero, then click and drag to create a pentagon. Let's make it so this point under the cursor is facing towards the right. For the fill color, I'll go with a light blue. Now let's use the select tool to move it into place and adjust the shape the way we want it. We can also flip it vertically, either by clicking this button in the controls bar, or by pressing the V key. And le'ts click the lower one step button to put it beneath the head group. Let's also add some stars to the cape. First, let's de-select the cape, then let's switch to the stars and polygons tool, click the reset button, and create a five cornered star. We can hold Ctrl and drag the inner handle to adjust the base radius if we want. Let's make the fill color a yellow. Now we can move it onto the cape, duplicate it, and move it over here. Let's shrink it down a bit while holding Shift and Ctrl. Now I'll duplicate this one and bring it over here. Okay, finally, let's give Super Pig a squiggly tail. But first, I'm going to shrink the body a bit. For the tail, we can use the spiral tool here, which lets us create spirals. In the controls bar, can change the number of turns or revolutions the spiral has. We can also do this by dragging the outer handle. Another thing we can change is the divergence. If it's greater than one, the center will be denser. And if it's less than one, the edge will be denser. We can also change this by holding the Alt key as we drag the inner handle. The last thing we can change is the inner radius, which we can also do by dragging the inner handle without holding Alt. Let's flip the spiral horizontally with the H key and vertically with the V key. And let's adjust it until we have a curly shape. I'm holding Alt here as I drag the inner handle to change the divergence. Alright, That should be good. As we can see in the status bar, spirals by default have a stroke and no fill. We can give it a fill if we want. But we don't actually want a fill for the tail, so let's turn it back off. Instead, let's switch to the color picker tool, hold Shift and click the darkest pink color to set the spiral's stroke to that color. Now let's switch to the stroke style tab of the Fill and Stroke dialog and increase the stroke width. Let's also make the caps rounded. Then let's move it into place, adjust it some if we want, and put it below everything. Alright, to finish up, let's select all of the body shapes, including the cape, and group them together. And let's move it below the head group. Then let's also select the head group and group the body and head groups together. And that should do it for Super Pig and this lesson. See you in the next one. 4. Export Drawings: In this video, we'll learn how we can export our drawings and start using them outside of Inkscape. Let's start by creating some objects. To export our drawings, we use the export dialog, which we can open either by clicking this button in the commands bar or by going to File -> Export. The first tab we have in here is single image. With this, any parts of our drawing we export will be placed in a single image file. And our options are to export every object in our document, all the parts of our drawings that are inside the page, all the objects we have selected, or we can define a custom export area here. At the bottom here, we get a preview of what the exported image will look like. We get this for each of the export modes. As we can see in the page mode, the size of the exported image will be proportional to the size of the page, and any objects that aren't fully inside the page will have parts cut off. We also have this export selected only option here. When this is off, it will export all parts of the drawing that are within the export area, regardless of whether or not they are selected. If we check this, unselected objects won't be exported. Another thing with this is that if we switch to selection mode here, when this option is unchecked, it will export this part of the unselected object that is inside the selection box. If we check this, however, it won't export that part. In the image size section, which is available for every mode, we can see and set the exact pixel size of the exported image. This is helpful in case we make our objects too big or too small on the canvas and we want to make the exported image a different size without having to re-size the objects themselves. So if we want smaller images, for example, we can decrease the size of the width or height here. And notice that this also changed the other value by the same proportion. An easier way to do this is by changing the DPI value here. The default is 96. And if we want the image to be half the size as the area we're exporting, we can simply change the DPI to half of 96, which is 48. And because we're working with vector graphics, we don't have to worry about quality loss when changing the sizes. In the batch export tab, we can export multiple images at once. With selection mode, we can export each of the selected objects to separate images. With layers, we can export all objects inside each layer. And with pages, we can export all objects inside each page of our document. Creating multiple pages is a new feature of Inkscape version 1.2, and we can do so with the page tool here. At the bottom of the export dialog, we choose what format we want to export to. PNG is the default, but we have a few other options as well. We can also set a location and file name for the image here, then we can export. Okay, that's how we can export our documents. I'll go ahead and close out this dialog now, and I'll you see in the next video.