KalaaLog

• Software: Inkscape (or Adobe Illustrator)
• Level: Intermediate
• Subject: Chain Links

Illustrating vector art of chain and chain links is quite fun once you get the hang of it. The most important thing is to get the basic shape right.

Basic Shape

Getting the basic shape right is very important. Draw as many grid lines to assist you as required. There are basically two shapes you need to draw. One that is parallel to the canvas and one that is perpedicular. The parallel one is composed by subtracting shape 1B from 1A. (In Inkscape use Path > Difference from the menu). See to it that both the shapes are of same height and also that the perpedicular one fits into the hole of the parallel link.

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• Software: GIMP or Adobe Photoshop
• Level: Advanced
• Subject: Demon Trio - Screech

Earlier, using the thumbnails of the silhouette two characters, Slug and Slice were created. Here is the progress on the third one.

The silhouette is scaled up to 25% of A4 landscape at 300 dpi (the target size) and distorted a bit to get the perspective and rough composition.

I detailed the head a bit so that I get a better grasp at the character as I start putting in brush strokes that define the concept.

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• Software: Inkscape
• Level: Beginner
• Subject: Drop Shadows

This is quite a simple technique you can use to create drop shadows of objects you have designed in Inkscape.

Drop Shadows of Simple objects

Let us first look at a simple example.

Make a copy of the object (rectangle in this case) and move it few units to the bottom and to the right.

Then, change the color to black or dark gray.
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When I was working on the Demon Trio - Slice project, I had shifted from working in GIMP to Photoshop along the workflow at the time when I wanted to create flat color layer. That was because, I could not find a Polygon Select tool in GIMP. After some poking around at some GIMP forums, mailing lists, and the program itself, I found that we can do a polygon select in GIMP.

Here is a video that walks through the process of using Path tool in GIMP to have a similar approach as you would do with a Polygon select tool in Adobe Photoshop.