![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Playing to my strengths
Jul. 5th, 2005 02:35 amI think I've actually managed to make something that could be considered art, and may eventually turn out decent.
After grappling with drawing by hand and getting results that I wasn't entirely happy with (need practice, can't give up, it's not like good artists spring forth from the earth fully formed), I realized that I should try approaching art with the skills I do have. Those skills being programming, math, logic, and unrivaled stubbornness.
Work gave me the idea to use scalable vector graphics (SVG) since one of my teammates will be testing an application that uses the format. After that it was a simple matter of downloading a graphical tool to use and seeing what I could do. The GNU/Linux version of the program I found has a tendency to crash when I mess with the fill and stroke settings (editing the XML by hand gets around the problem), but it does have some nifty features.
I also "borrowed" my mother's Wacom tablet to see if that would help me use the application's calligraphy tool; unfortunately, the tablet and the version of X.org I'm running don't get along.
The first thing I tried to make was a LiveJournal icon for myself. The original image is actually a 500x500 pixel, 14.4 kB SVG file that I had to scale down a bit and convert to PNG so it could be used as an icon. I started with a basic concept of the current KDE logo's border and use of gradients and combined that one of my favorite animals- the cheetah. The icon still needs to be cropped properly on the right, better tear marks, adjustments to the ears, a decent mouth, and a few other improvements, but it should do for now. If I do things right, I may even be able to add some code to animate the image or have it changed based on my mood.
Here's an unscaled PNG version of the image. I'd provide the actual SVG file, but most people would need a special plugin to view it, and I'm not certain how LiveJournal would respond to me embedding it anyway. Comments and criticism are quite welcome, especially since that's the only way I will ever learn.
http://pics.livejournal.com/exatron/pic/00005yqs/g1
After grappling with drawing by hand and getting results that I wasn't entirely happy with (need practice, can't give up, it's not like good artists spring forth from the earth fully formed), I realized that I should try approaching art with the skills I do have. Those skills being programming, math, logic, and unrivaled stubbornness.
Work gave me the idea to use scalable vector graphics (SVG) since one of my teammates will be testing an application that uses the format. After that it was a simple matter of downloading a graphical tool to use and seeing what I could do. The GNU/Linux version of the program I found has a tendency to crash when I mess with the fill and stroke settings (editing the XML by hand gets around the problem), but it does have some nifty features.
I also "borrowed" my mother's Wacom tablet to see if that would help me use the application's calligraphy tool; unfortunately, the tablet and the version of X.org I'm running don't get along.
The first thing I tried to make was a LiveJournal icon for myself. The original image is actually a 500x500 pixel, 14.4 kB SVG file that I had to scale down a bit and convert to PNG so it could be used as an icon. I started with a basic concept of the current KDE logo's border and use of gradients and combined that one of my favorite animals- the cheetah. The icon still needs to be cropped properly on the right, better tear marks, adjustments to the ears, a decent mouth, and a few other improvements, but it should do for now. If I do things right, I may even be able to add some code to animate the image or have it changed based on my mood.
Here's an unscaled PNG version of the image. I'd provide the actual SVG file, but most people would need a special plugin to view it, and I'm not certain how LiveJournal would respond to me embedding it anyway. Comments and criticism are quite welcome, especially since that's the only way I will ever learn.
http://pics.livejournal.com/exatron/pic/00005yqs/g1
