This topic will be dedicated to my creative rushes related to tipography, logo design, iconography and mostly important, hyper-realistic pieces. Some of you, might already know me because I'm a former member of the old forum and, the Italian one.
I will later update this post with a collection of links of old drawings, in a way to connect this with the past; in the meantime you can check my new galleries on Logopond and CGsociety: still, work in progress.
I started a project where i release resources on the public domain. You can follow the progress on twitter @avreference and instagram @audiovisualreference
Certainly! It will be a long time though.. I would definetely need some coding help if anyone is interested. The game is going to be released as public domain to give people a way to learn both from a graphic standpoint and a programming one.
I'm experimenting making fonts with Inkscape and FontForge. This is the first version of a monospace inspired by braille (and circuits). There are rounding errors on Inkscape at point 18; this does not seem to happen on other softwares. I would be glad to have some feedback; is anyone interested to try it? Make a back-up first; you never know.
It's working now. Measures get immediately tricky on Fontforge and sometimes, I prefer to start anew rather than try to find a fix.
I have uploaded an otf; codenamed "vanilla" however the actual name is anewera1. I'm making different versions; this one has the latin lowercase/uppercase from a to z; you can turn a "common text" in its braille counterpart, although no number or character are present.
Update-- Check picture. The first ( anewera1_22122019.otf ) is now more spacious and contains a-z uppercase and lowercase; the second ( anewera1condensed.otf ) is condensed, I think could be useful. Working on numbers and punctuation
When I click on Run Game, I get a big gray +, a B and an A, both in a purple circle. And white text "No Canvas Support". Nothing happens, nothing clicks. (Old version of Firefox)
Brynn, I think the problem here is Firefox not updated, because I have the last version and it works. It could also be that you're trying from a phone?
I'm going to release a gb file so eventually you can try it on some open source player for game boy because this is meant to be played on updated web browser as html5 game and as a gb file on the likes of visual boy advance
Page updated with the graphic file and the gb which I only tested with visual boy advance so far. It should be compatible with any game boy player, if you can use the following rgb colors from light to dark:
224/248/207
134/192/108
48/104/80
7/24/33
I'm still finishing the helping documentation and then I will make a new episode (polished this time)
Third batch of Librivox covers. I uploaded all of them (12 so far) on archive.org. They are on the public domain, so feel free to re-use or remix them. https://archive.org/details/librovox
South America next. I think they aren't many so I'll probably add special flags like O.N.U. and close for now this series. Unsure if doing cars or flowers.
Very impressive! I like how each of them have their own expression but at the same time they have a consistent style. Could you tell me something about your work process? How did you come up with the idea to A Mother’s Song for example? 🙂
Hi Billy! And thanks for leaving a comment. You're right about consistence and identity. I'm using this LibriVox cover-making as a training ground, looking to build a style that can be described as friendly and characteristic. I love both music and literature so in the hope of finding more cover-making techniques not only for audiobooks but also for books [ I like manuals and short stories ] and musicians, I joined LibriVox some months ago as a volunteer.
Here are some background thoughts.
Identity is a key element to me; anything needs its own space and time. Afterall, the books and voices are different, even if you hear them say the same words!
I have a lot of typefaces, the more libre font the better. A reason I started making my own. Using a kit with only four or eight typefaces like Garamond, Bodoni, Gill Sans and Futura would make me sick in no time!
About the consistence. I use full colors, sometimes pantone ( but they work best for backgrounds ), no effects or blur, no gradients. Opacity when I need to be quick. No strokes only path. Most of the times geometric: squares, rounded and booleans; some "free"hand with the pen tool.
I listen to the voice and the story, assign it some color combination ( a problem when there are more voices ) but we only have two weeks to finish. It seems a lot but it isn't. Some books are long so I don't have the time to finish them. I started to make them in one-two sessions; around four to six hours. If you check the page of Master Zacharius on LibriVox you'll find a download for the bookcase; that means a back cover is also needed! ( not mandatory but I'm doing it anyway )
A mother's song. I imagined an harp, an instrument used a lot in the past. This harp would make the letter M with the strings in the center and the colums at the sides. In the process I removed the strings because the composition was too static, certainly not like a mother song.. So i decided to make a woman face, giving the space to prominent lips. The colors have low contrast to give the impression of gentleness :)
Thank you Roberto for giving me some insight about your creative process. To make my own work more coherent over time I guess I should do something similar – find a design language that works for me and stick to it. The problem is, with an application like Inkscape, there are so many possibilities. One day I want to use plain bezier shapes, the next day I want to try the Power Stroke LPE. Then maybe mesh gradients, oh wait I want do plain shapes again – you get the idea. It’s not the end of the world I guess, but it would be nice to one day find my own style.
Having the ability of multiple choices can be overwhelming at the beginning, but knowing different styles will come in handy as you never know what you might need one day.
My suggestion is to limit yourself, learning one tool at a time and then, combine more tools as time goes by. You'll get more comfortable with some tools and some others you won't use at all.
I prefer minimal and realistic drawings. They are opposite styles, yet I can make awesome things just by using blur ( for realistic ) in addition to opacity, the pen tool and the square.That's all I use actually :) Check my CG gallery https://rm.cgsociety.org/ [ that I need to update!! 😅 ]
That’s awesome. Especially the Game Boy, that would have been a great photorealistic model even if it was made in Blender or any other program, but Inkscape? That’s just brilliant.
It would be interesting to see the free thinking we have seen examples of in the audiobook covers, in a photorealistic style. Or do you like to keep these two opposite styles separated?
Probably a realistic approach would be overkill as the limited time at disposition, considering this is done on "free" time, wouldn't allow much details. Less details, less realism.
Some people prefer to use old paintings or drawings! And that, indeed, ties well with old books.
I’m sorry, I didn’t express myself clearly: For the LibriVox project I think the style with solid shapes is perfect. I like that kind of style a lot. I’m just saying that I would love to see the combination of surrealism and photorealism in another project, perhaps it could be a gallery exhibition with huge giclée prints? Just an idea.
Huge drawings are something I want to make; I know some that are doing common offset printing with their illustrations, signed and numbered, but I don't really like the result.
I was thinking about buying eco-friendly materials and try with the geometric first but I don't want the usual painting or the common printing? Are giclee really different? I'm not sure I ever saw one.
I used to draw with pencils, and already tried to make some painting at a smaller scale.
Making prints has been a long-standing dream for me too. I’m not sure how the quality of giclée prints compares to offset prints, as I have not compared them side by side. However, I do own a few ”art prints” from Society6 (I think that’s the same thing as giclée prints). I’m not an expert on print quality but I think they look as good as one could wish for – the colors are nice and vivid and the details are sharp.
(After doing som web based research, I realized some people in the graphic industry (page in Swedish) prefer the term art print since the term giclée can be a bit confusing).
Checking various print shops I find very little information about the environmental friendliness of art prints. It’s a shame because that is indeed an important aspect. Most companies (Swedish ones at least) seems to emphasize on the fact that their prints are archival stable. But alas, no information about eco friendliness. 🙁
Here also ( Italy ) labs seem to prefer the name art print [ I have one and the best part is the feeling of the paper ] They always brag about the quality but no talks about the composition and the materials used; I think it's either not a priority or not feasible at all. I would be happy to make my own paper and using pigments for colors, as well the stencils to help with the geometric stuff. For the realistic trought, I was thinking about having some screens displaying the pictures and people would play with them zooming in and out; moving the drawing; a sort of "old" paintings evolution. The technique is similar, making shapes and smoothing them..
Sounds like a really cool exhibition. Making your own paper really makes a lot of sense, organic components plus the fact that the artworks would have a more luxurious feeling to them.
One a side note, if you are going to use cotton fibers: I remember hearing somewhere that whether organic or non organic, cotton plantations consumes enormous amounts of water, and cotton grows in areas where the available fresh water is already limited. But using organic cotton is probably much better than using the genetically modified variety.
Speaking of realistic, a few days ago I tried combining gradient meshes with the Blur filter (with the ”Blur content only” setting checked) to even the gradients out. I think it’s a promising technique and it could be really useful for asymmetrical shapes with highlights and shadows.
Well, at least you have thought about the issue. I think that’s a good start.
It was interesting to see that this level of realism could be achieved with vector graphics + blur. I started using Inkscape about five years ago. First it was the price tag that appealed to me, but over the years I have discovered a lot of useful features that would be difficult to live without now, e.g. better snapping functionality, bezier tool shortcuts, better align and distribute. Basic things that I use a lot. And besides, using an open format (svg) feels a lot better than being locked in with a proprietary format.
I tried many softwares, for different tasks, and what always attracted me the most was the fact you could see the shapes like a standard drawing yet you could also write and read it like a book! I even though about making a drawing and keep the whole text on printed pages! And I'm totally going to do that!!
I think it could produce an interesting result, a very postmodern/meta type of thing to do. 🙂
Is it worth the effort learning the xml and svg standards? I mean can you do stuff by writing svg code that is difficult or impossible to do in Inkscape?
Of that I can't say. I remember someone making svg glitch-art! I know some html/css but seldom use it for Inkscape. The last things I made were: modify the xml for the theme and trying to make a symbol set. And as far as I know you need to write the code for symbols to work! Those are the only things that come to my mind. 🤔
I used to play around with html and css, but that was a long time ago. This was before browsers respected the web standards so it was very frustrating to make the page look the same in Netscape and Internet Explorer... (Yes it wasn’t exactly yesterday). Glitch art sounds fun though! 🙂 Have you uploaded the results anywhere?
Yeah I read about IE / Netscape saga by one of the Netscape developers' blog. 🤣
He wasn't me making the glitch art: someone used to post a few example, although I can't say if it was on the old forum or somewhere else. Some old sites related to Inkscape aren't anymore!
Yes it was pretty crazy… 😂 I think the chaotic situation was mostly Microsofts fault(?) but Netscape probably introduced some non-standard tags of their own.
Oh sorry, I misread your post. Too bad! it would have been interesting to check it out.
Today I played with the gradient mesh on the new version. After plenty of crashes, this is what I came up with ( download attachment ) I'm not a fan of gradients but I will make more backgrounds; if you have any ideas, please share, I'll listen.
Hi Roberto, Sorry for the late reply. Here’s one idea from a Logos By Nick tutorial on Youtube. He uses the mesh object as a color palette of sorts, which I guess could be a useful technique for other types of illustrations as well. This type of triangle pattern looks good but I think it is a bit of a cliché at this point. But maybe the basic idea can be developed and built upon? I think gradients can look nice sometimes but it depends.
Work in Progress Things. Still, at half way.
Inkscape.org
This topic will be dedicated to my creative rushes related to tipography, logo design, iconography and mostly important, hyper-realistic
pieces. Some of you, might already know me because I'm a former member of the old forum and, the Italian one.
I will later update this post with a collection of links of old drawings, in a way to connect this with the past; in the meantime you can check my new galleries on Logopond and CGsociety: still, work in progress.
Until then
Have fun
Welcome RM.!
Welcome Roberto! Where are your drawings? ;-)
Hi Victor! Did you already checked my galleries on CGsociety and Logopond? I'm working on very different things and will post new works.
I'm partecipating on the contest for Inkscape 1.0, check my entry! "a glimpse to the future"
I started a project where i release resources on the public domain. You can follow the progress on twitter @avreference and instagram @audiovisualreference
First batch of Librivox audiobook covers.
I'm making a game! Download the first kit on opengameart.org/content/coderunner
Woa! As soon as your game is working could you tell us more about it? The design looks really nice. Good job!
Certainly! It will be a long time though.. I would definetely need some coding help if anyone is interested. The game is going to be released as public domain to give people a way to learn both from a graphic standpoint and a programming one.
I'm experimenting making fonts with Inkscape and FontForge. This is the first version of a monospace inspired by braille (and circuits). There are rounding errors on Inkscape at point 18; this does not seem to happen on other softwares. I would be glad to have some feedback; is anyone interested to try it? Make a back-up first; you never know.
https://archive.org/download/anewera-braille
I wonder if your rounding errors can be fixed with the precision preferences.
It's working now. Measures get immediately tricky on Fontforge and sometimes, I prefer to start anew rather than try to find a fix.
I have uploaded an otf; codenamed "vanilla" however the actual name is anewera1. I'm making different versions; this one has the latin lowercase/uppercase from a to z; you can turn a "common text" in its braille counterpart, although no number or character are present.
https://archive.org/download/anewera-braille
Update-- Check picture. The first ( anewera1_22122019.otf ) is now more spacious and contains a-z uppercase and lowercase; the second ( anewera1condensed.otf ) is condensed, I think could be useful. Working on numbers and punctuation
Second batch of Librivox audiobook covers.
Playing around with GB Studio and Inkscape: a pixel typeface in the works!
I uploaded a playable prototype of code:runner. There isn't much but you can try the game on https://rmocci.itch.io/coderunner
So... I like the banana!
When I click on Run Game, I get a big gray +, a B and an A, both in a purple circle. And white text "No Canvas Support". Nothing happens, nothing clicks. (Old version of Firefox)
Hey Kirstie thanks for checking it out!
Brynn, I think the problem here is Firefox not updated, because I have the last version and it works. It could also be that you're trying from a phone?
I'm going to release a gb file so eventually you can try it on some open source player for game boy because this is meant to be played on updated web browser as html5 game and as a gb file on the likes of visual boy advance
Page updated with the graphic file and the gb which I only tested with visual boy advance so far. It should be compatible with any game boy player, if you can use the following rgb colors from light to dark:
224/248/207
134/192/108
48/104/80
7/24/33
I'm still finishing the helping documentation and then I will make a new episode (polished this time)
Made a new pixel typeface. You can try it on https://rmocci.itch.io/dogica
Third batch of Librivox covers. I uploaded all of them (12 so far) on archive.org. They are on the public domain, so feel free to re-use or remix them. https://archive.org/details/librovox
I recovered this old pack of flags; looks like I'll have to make the rest now. Download: https://rmocci.itch.io/pixel-europe
Nice flags, looks like you've been busy!
Oh yes, always making something! Thanks lady; I'm already done with Oceania and looking for Asia now.
Wow, how many flags are you intending to do?
Probably those than can be found on the public domain; I think they are around 250! But who knows..
Update on the flags. Here is the mix of Asia and Oceania https://opengameart.org/content/pixel-ania
Looking good. Didnt realize so many flags had green or red!
Red mostly! It was difficult to make them recognizable at small sizes. I'm going to do U.S.A. next!
U.S.A. flag kit https://opengameart.org/content/pixel-usa
Looks fine!
Thanks Lady, Africa is on the making! :) I'm also prototyping a game with those flags!
Flag update for Africa: https://opengameart.org/content/pixel-africa
South America next. I think they aren't many so I'll probably add special flags like O.N.U. and close for now this series. Unsure if doing cars or flowers.
Nice work. And that's a lot of flags!
Update on Dogica: now with a bold version and you can download it from Fontlibrary! https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/dogica
Oh man love it! you made my day :))) ahahah
Updated my LibriVox cover-making page :) https://archive.org/details/librovox
Very impressive! I like how each of them have their own expression but at the same time they have a consistent style. Could you tell me something about your work process? How did you come up with the idea to A Mother’s Song for example? 🙂
Hi Billy! And thanks for leaving a comment. You're right about consistence and identity. I'm using this LibriVox cover-making as a training ground, looking to build a style that can be described as friendly and characteristic. I love both music and literature so in the hope of finding more cover-making techniques not only for audiobooks but also for books [ I like manuals and short stories ] and musicians, I joined LibriVox some months ago as a volunteer.
Here are some background thoughts.
Identity is a key element to me; anything needs its own space and time. Afterall, the books and voices are different, even if you hear them say the same words!
I have a lot of typefaces, the more libre font the better. A reason I started making my own. Using a kit with only four or eight typefaces like Garamond, Bodoni, Gill Sans and Futura would make me sick in no time!
About the consistence. I use full colors, sometimes pantone ( but they work best for backgrounds ), no effects or blur, no gradients. Opacity when I need to be quick. No strokes only path. Most of the times geometric: squares, rounded and booleans; some "free"hand with the pen tool.
I listen to the voice and the story, assign it some color combination ( a problem when there are more voices ) but we only have two weeks to finish. It seems a lot but it isn't. Some books are long so I don't have the time to finish them. I started to make them in one-two sessions; around four to six hours. If you check the page of Master Zacharius on LibriVox you'll find a download for the bookcase; that means a back cover is also needed! ( not mandatory but I'm doing it anyway )
A mother's song. I imagined an harp, an instrument used a lot in the past. This harp would make the letter M with the strings in the center and the colums at the sides. In the process I removed the strings because the composition was too static, certainly not like a mother song.. So i decided to make a woman face, giving the space to prominent lips. The colors have low contrast to give the impression of gentleness :)
I think that's all? :))
Thank you Roberto for giving me some insight about your creative process. To make my own work more coherent over time I guess I should do something similar – find a design language that works for me and stick to it. The problem is, with an application like Inkscape, there are so many possibilities. One day I want to use plain bezier shapes, the next day I want to try the Power Stroke LPE. Then maybe mesh gradients, oh wait I want do plain shapes again – you get the idea. It’s not the end of the world I guess, but it would be nice to one day find my own style.
Having the ability of multiple choices can be overwhelming at the beginning, but knowing different styles will come in handy as you never know what you might need one day.
My suggestion is to limit yourself, learning one tool at a time and then, combine more tools as time goes by. You'll get more comfortable with some tools and some others you won't use at all.
I prefer minimal and realistic drawings. They are opposite styles, yet I can make awesome things just by using blur ( for realistic ) in addition to opacity, the pen tool and the square.That's all I use actually :) Check my CG gallery https://rm.cgsociety.org/ [ that I need to update!! 😅 ]
That’s awesome. Especially the Game Boy, that would have been a great photorealistic model even if it was made in Blender or any other program, but Inkscape? That’s just brilliant.
It would be interesting to see the free thinking we have seen examples of in the audiobook covers, in a photorealistic style. Or do you like to keep these two opposite styles separated?
Probably a realistic approach would be overkill as the limited time at disposition, considering this is done on "free" time, wouldn't allow much details. Less details, less realism.
Some people prefer to use old paintings or drawings! And that, indeed, ties well with old books.
I’m sorry, I didn’t express myself clearly: For the LibriVox project I think the style with solid shapes is perfect. I like that kind of style a lot. I’m just saying that I would love to see the combination of surrealism and photorealism in another project, perhaps it could be a gallery exhibition with huge giclée prints? Just an idea.
Huge drawings are something I want to make; I know some that are doing common offset printing with their illustrations, signed and numbered, but I don't really like the result.
I was thinking about buying eco-friendly materials and try with the geometric first but I don't want the usual painting or the common printing? Are giclee really different? I'm not sure I ever saw one.
I used to draw with pencils, and already tried to make some painting at a smaller scale.
Making prints has been a long-standing dream for me too. I’m not sure how the quality of giclée prints compares to offset prints, as I have not compared them side by side. However, I do own a few ”art prints” from Society6 (I think that’s the same thing as giclée prints). I’m not an expert on print quality but I think they look as good as one could wish for – the colors are nice and vivid and the details are sharp.
(After doing som web based research, I realized some people in the graphic industry (page in Swedish) prefer the term art print since the term giclée can be a bit confusing).
Checking various print shops I find very little information about the environmental friendliness of art prints. It’s a shame because that is indeed an important aspect. Most companies (Swedish ones at least) seems to emphasize on the fact that their prints are archival stable. But alas, no information about eco friendliness. 🙁
Here also ( Italy ) labs seem to prefer the name art print [ I have one and the best part is the feeling of the paper ] They always brag about the quality but no talks about the composition and the materials used; I think it's either not a priority or not feasible at all. I would be happy to make my own paper and using pigments for colors, as well the stencils to help with the geometric stuff. For the realistic trought, I was thinking about having some screens displaying the pictures and people would play with them zooming in and out; moving the drawing; a sort of "old" paintings evolution. The technique is similar, making shapes and smoothing them..
Sounds like a really cool exhibition. Making your own paper really makes a lot of sense, organic components plus the fact that the artworks would have a more luxurious feeling to them.
One a side note, if you are going to use cotton fibers: I remember hearing somewhere that whether organic or non organic, cotton plantations consumes enormous amounts of water, and cotton grows in areas where the available fresh water is already limited. But using organic cotton is probably much better than using the genetically modified variety.
Speaking of realistic, a few days ago I tried combining gradient meshes with the Blur filter (with the ”Blur content only” setting checked) to even the gradients out. I think it’s a promising technique and it could be really useful for asymmetrical shapes with highlights and shadows.
I'm aware that what is sponsored as "ecologic" doesn't always mean so. Unfortunately there's a lot of speculation so I don't have much hope on that 😪
I still have to make something with gradient meshes. I'm so into the blur technique that I don't think I will ever replace it.
Its what made me stick with Inkscape more than ten years ago and still love to use it like that 😅
Well, at least you have thought about the issue. I think that’s a good start.
It was interesting to see that this level of realism could be achieved with vector graphics + blur. I started using Inkscape about five years ago. First it was the price tag that appealed to me, but over the years I have discovered a lot of useful features that would be difficult to live without now, e.g. better snapping functionality, bezier tool shortcuts, better align and distribute. Basic things that I use a lot. And besides, using an open format (svg) feels a lot better than being locked in with a proprietary format.
I tried many softwares, for different tasks, and what always attracted me the most was the fact you could see the shapes like a standard drawing yet you could also write and read it like a book! I even though about making a drawing and keep the whole text on printed pages! And I'm totally going to do that!!
I think it could produce an interesting result, a very postmodern/meta type of thing to do. 🙂
Is it worth the effort learning the xml and svg standards? I mean can you do stuff by writing svg code that is difficult or impossible to do in Inkscape?
Of that I can't say. I remember someone making svg glitch-art! I know some html/css but seldom use it for Inkscape. The last things I made were: modify the xml for the theme and trying to make a symbol set. And as far as I know you need to write the code for symbols to work! Those are the only things that come to my mind. 🤔
I used to play around with html and css, but that was a long time ago. This was before browsers respected the web standards so it was very frustrating to make the page look the same in Netscape and Internet Explorer... (Yes it wasn’t exactly yesterday). Glitch art sounds fun though! 🙂 Have you uploaded the results anywhere?
Yeah I read about IE / Netscape saga by one of the Netscape developers' blog. 🤣
He wasn't me making the glitch art: someone used to post a few example, although I can't say if it was on the old forum or somewhere else. Some old sites related to Inkscape aren't anymore!
Yes it was pretty crazy… 😂 I think the chaotic situation was mostly Microsofts fault(?) but Netscape probably introduced some non-standard tags of their own.
Oh sorry, I misread your post. Too bad! it would have been interesting to check it out.
I'll tell If I find it again!
Updates:
- new series about music icons https://opengameart.org/content/pixel-notation
- dogica was added by dafont [yay] https://www.dafont.com/it/dogica.font
- braille hc [ i was talking about it on december ] finally starting to take shape https://fontlibrary.org/it/font/braille-hc
Quick update. I made a first object kit for Inkscape. Could anyone try it and send feedback? Head over to https://rmocci.itch.io/star-life
click download now and no thanks, just take me to the downloads
Thanks
Today I played with the gradient mesh on the new version. After plenty of crashes, this is what I came up with ( download attachment ) I'm not a fan of gradients but I will make more backgrounds; if you have any ideas, please share, I'll listen.
Hi Roberto, Sorry for the late reply. Here’s one idea from a Logos By Nick tutorial on Youtube. He uses the mesh object as a color palette of sorts, which I guess could be a useful technique for other types of illustrations as well. This type of triangle pattern looks good but I think it is a bit of a cliché at this point. But maybe the basic idea can be developed and built upon? I think gradients can look nice sometimes but it depends.
https://youtu.be/YdqndZ6T3MA
Thanks Billy; I'm making a new one with a different color palette; trying to build a technique! 😋
Here it is: this time I used a lot of blues and reds. I think there's less dynamic overall. Will try pink next time! 😁