Inkscape Hands-on Class 05: Travel Icon

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. This lesson, we'll create an icon that we can use for something like a travel app. And the process will learn how to use the Trace Bitmap dialogue to vectorize imported images. We'll learn how to use the pencil tool to do free-hand drawing, will learn how to apply dashed patterns to strokes, as well as how to create our own dash patterns. And we'll learn how to use clipping to hide parts of objects. Okay, let's go ahead and start up a new Inkscape document, and I'll see you in the lesson. 2. Travel Icon: To begin creating the travel icon, we're going to vectorize an image of the Earth. And to do so, we'll use a feature called the Trace Bitmap dialog. So first let's go to File -> Import. The image we'll be using is this globe image here, which I provided as a downloadable resource. Okay, let's go ahead and import it. Then let's hold Ctrl and make it a bit bigger. Alright, to open the Trace Bitmap dialog, we can either right-click the image and choose Trace Bitmap or go to Path -> Trace Bitmap. In the Trace Bitmap dialogue we have three tabs: single scan, which will create a single path; multicolor, which will create a group of paths; and pixel art, which lets us vectorize pixel art. Let's first check out the single scan tab. At the top here we have some different detection modes we can choose from. The default mode, brightness cut-off, will vectorize all parts of the selected image that are darker than this threshold setting. We can see in the preview down here that the only part of this image that is darker than the threshold is the semicircle going around the outside of the globe. If we increase the threshold, we'll start to get more of the globe in the result. And if we like what we see, we can click Apply down here. Now we have this single path created from a tracing of the image. We're not actually going to use this path for our icon though, so we can go ahead and delete it. Then select the image again. The next detection mode, edge detection, attempts to create line art from the image. Color quantization separates the image into the number of colors we choose here. The next mode, auto trace, doesn't give us a preview, so we have to click Apply. This will add some color to the path. Centerline tracing also doesn't give us a preview, and it's another method for creating line art from an image. Let's put the mode back on brightness cutoff. We can also invert the image, which will give us the background with the globe cut out. And we have some details settings that we can change here. But the results of changing these are very subtle, so I don't use them much myself. With User-assisted trace, we can use the pen tool to draw a path around the part of the image we want, give the path a fill color, select the path and the image, check User assisted trace, and now we can see that it traces just the part of the image under the path we drew. We can increase the threshold setting a bit more if we want. Then click Apply and delete the path we drew. Now we have our Earth path. We're going to be using this path for our icon, so let's move it out of the way for the moment and select the image again. Let's take a quick look at the multicolor tab. Like with single scan, we have some detection modes to choose from. All of these modes will create a tracing consisting of a group of multiple paths, allowing us to get a more detailed result. And the number of paths it creates is whatever the scans setting is here. The minimum is eight, so it will create at least eight paths. If we click apply and give it a few seconds, here's the result we get with the brightness steps mode. As we can see in the status bar, this is a group of eight paths, and we can double-click it to enter the group and access the individual paths. The colors mode lets us get the colors in the tracing. And grays is the grayscale version of colors. Auto trace seems to often cause Inkscape to freeze up, so I'm not going to try it here. We also get some extra settings here with the multicolor modes. Smooth will apply a Gaussian blur to the tracing, giving us a smoother result. But it's a very subtle difference. Stack is good for more detailed images as it will fill in some of the gaps in the tracing and make it less transparent. And remove background here actually removes the path that is closest to white in the tracing group. This is useful for images that have a white background as it will remove the background for us. The final tab we have in the dialog is pixel art. If you have a pixel art image that you would like to vectorize, this is the tab you would use. Be careful with this one though, because it can create up to one path per pixel in the image. So unless you only use it on very small pixel art images, it can be extremely slow. Okay, we can go ahead and close out the Trace Bitmap dialog now, as well as delete the image. Now let's work on our Earth path here. First, for the color, this is of course supposed to be the water, so let's open the fill and stroke dialog and give it a blue fill. Next, we want to be able to add some color to the land parts. To do this, let's first switch to the circle and ellipses tool with the E key, hold Ctrl and Shift and create a circle starting at the center of the path. Let's give it a green fill. Now we can switch to the select tool with the S key and reposition and resize the circle. We actually don't want to make it quite as large as the Earth path as we're going to cut off some of the jagged outer part of the path. Okay, now we can click this button to put the circle below the earth path. Then let's duplicate it with Ctrl D, zoom in a bit more, hold Shift and select the earth path, then go to Path -> Intersection. There we go. Now the Earth path looks better. Now we can select these two Earth objects and group them with Ctrl G. Let's next create an airplane for the icon. First, let's switch to the squares and rectangles tool with the R key and create a long thin rectangle over here. And let's round the corners. For the color, I'll just make it white. Now let's turn it into a path by going to Path -> Object to Path. Then we can switch to the node tool, select the three bottom nodes and combine them into a single node by clicking this button up here. Then let's turn it into a symmetric node, hold Ctrl and drag out one of the handles a bit while keeping them horizontal. I'll hold Ctrl and move the node down a bit more. We can also turn the top node into a symmetric node, hold Ctrl and drag out the handles some. Then select the two nodes under it, hold Ctrl and move them down a bit. For a wing, I'll switch to the pen tool with the B key, click inside here, click over here, hold Ctrl and click down here, hold Ctrl and click over here and close it off. I'll turn off the stroke and give this a red fill. I'll create an engine here by switching back to the squares and rectangles tool and creating a white rectangle on the wing. I'm going to make the corners a bit less rounded. Now I'll switch to the select tool, click this button to put the engine below the wing, select them both and group them with Ctrl G. Then I'll duplicate it with Ctrl D, flip it horizontally with the H key, hold Ctrl and move it over here. Now I'll select both wing groups and group them with Ctrl G, hold Shift and select the plane body, open the align and distribute dialog with this button and align them vertically. I'll select just the wing group and press pgdn to put it below the body. I'll also use the pen tool to create a tail fin. I'll turn off the stroke, use the color picker tool to make it the same color as the wing, then I'll switch to the select tool, duplicate the fin with Ctrl D, press H to flip it horizontally, hold Ctrl and move it over here. Then I'll select both fins and group them with Ctrl G, hold Shift and select the plane body and align them vertically. Now I'll move the tail group below the body by pressing pgdn. Now we can select all of the plane parts and group them, then move them on to the Earth group and resize and position it the way we want it. Let's also add a shadow of the plane on the earth. To do this, we can duplicate the plane, make it black, give it a low opacity like 15%, move it down and to the right some, scale it down a bit, and put it below the plane. Next, we can add a location marker to the icon. For this, let's switch to the circles and ellipses tool, hold Ctrl and create a circle in here. I'll raise the opacity all the way up and make it the same color as the plane's wings. Now I'll switch to the select tool and duplicate the circle, make it another color, scale it down while holding Shift and Ctrl, then select them both and go to Path -> Difference. Now let's switch to the node tool, hold Ctrl and drag this bottom node down And we can turn it into a symmetric node, hold Ctrl and drag in the handles a bit. Let's make the right half of the marker a bit darker. To do this, we can turn on snapping, switch to the squares and rectangles tool, snap to this top center node and create a rectangle covering the whole right side. Let's sharpen the corners with this button and make it black with a low opacity like 15%. Now switch to the select tool and duplicate the red path, then hold Shift and select the rectangle and do an Intersection with Ctrl *. Let's go ahead and turn snapping back off. To add a shadow of the marker onto the earth, we can select the main marker path and duplicate it, turn it black with 15% opacity, like the airplane shadow, rotate it, move it down here, and shrink it down some. Next we can create a dashed line going from the marker to the airplane to indicate a flight path. I want to make my flight path kind of zigzagging and give it some loops. A good way to do this is with the pencil tool here. The pencil tool has the shortcut P, and it lets us do free-hand drawing. If we look up here at the controls bar, we have this smoothing setting. The lower this is, the more accurate the paths we create will be. However, this will also create a bunch of nodes. The higher the smoothing setting is, on the other hand, the less accurate the paths will be, but it will allow us to get smoother curves. This will also result in fewer nodes. The smoothing setting actually only applies to the paths we create after changing this setting. It won't affect the smoothing of existing paths. If we want to change the smoothing of an existing path, we can go to Path -> Simplify. We can use the shortcut Ctrl L to do it quickly. I'll go ahead and delete these paths now. Let's switch back to the pencil tool, put smoothing on something pretty high, and create a flight path. Let's make the stroke color white. Then go to the stroke style tab and increase the width a bit. To give this stroke a dashed pattern, we can use the dashes setting here. If we drop down this box, we have various dash patterns to choose from. We can actually also create our own dash patterns using this pattern setting. Each pair of numbers in this box, separated by space, is the length of a dash followed by the length of a gap. We can change these, and we can add more. I actually like the 3 3 pattern, so I'll reset mine, but feel free to use any pattern you want. We can also still switch to the node tool and play around the nodes and curves if we want. Let's also give the flight path a shadow. To do this, we can simply switch to the select tool and duplicate the path, make the stroke color black, change the opacity to 15%, move it down and to the right a bit, then press pgdn to put it below the flight path. All right, let's next add a sky to the icon. First, let's switch to the circles and ellipses tool, hold Ctrl and you create a large circle over these objects. We'll be using clipping later to hide the parts of the earth group that are outside of this circle. Okay, let's go to the stroke style tab and turn off the dashed pattern. And let's go to the stroke paint tab and click the X to turn off the stroke. Let's raise the opacity all the way up, then go to the fill Tab and give this a light blue fill. Let's give it a linear gradient, move the first step to the top right and the other stop near the bottom left. Then let's raise the alpha channel of this stop all the way up and make it a lighter blue. Let's go to the select tool and click this button to put it below all the other objects. Okay, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to use clipping to hide the parts of the earth group that are outside of the sky circle. To see how clipping works, we can create a shape over here, then create another shape on top of it. Let's go to the select tool, select both objects and either right-click and choose Set Cip or go to Objects -> Clip -> Set Clip. So what clipping does is it uses the top object to hide or clip out any parts of the bottom object that are outside of it. We can change the color of this and we can transform it like a normal object. If we go to the node tool, we still have the handles for modifying the original bottom object. And if we toggle on this button in the controls bar, we get the handles for modifying the original top object. I'll turn this back off for now. And if we want to release the clip, we can either right-click it and choose Release Clip or go to Object -> Clip -> Release Clip. Now we have our original objects back. Okay, we can go ahead and delete these now. Alright, so to use the sky circle to clip the Earth group, we can duplicate the sky circle, select it and the earth group and set the clip. Perfect. Let's finish up the icon by adding some clouds. For this, let's switch to the circles and ellipses tool and create an ellipse in here, make it white, and create some more ellipses until we have a cloud shape. Now we can select all of the ellipses and Union them together with Ctrl +. To create a shadow, we can duplicate the cloud, make it black with 15% opacity, move it down and to the right some, and shrink it down a bit if we want, and press pgdn to move it below the cloud. We're also going to clip out the parts of this shadow that are outside of the Earth group. But first, let's create some more clouds. I'll just duplicate this cloud and its shadow, move them somewhere else and resize them a bit. Okay, so to clip out the parts of the cloud shadows that are outside of the Earth group, we can duplicate the Earth group, hold Shift and select all of the cloud shadows we want to clip, right-click and Set Clip. Alright, finally, we can select all of the icon objects and group them with Ctrl G. And that should do it for our travel icon. Thank you very much for watching, and I'll see you in the next lesson.