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Showing posts from 2014

Make mirrored designs using Inkscape's Clone tool

Inkscape 's cloning feature makes it easy for you to make mirrored designs. This way, what you draw on one half will be mirrored on the other half. Here are the steps: 1. Create an initial design (I used Inkscape's Calligraphic Pen tool here), then select it: 2. Group the still selected object (CTRL+G) [Yes, you can have a group of 1 object in Inkscape] 3. Clone the selected group (ALT+D) You now have two objects: a group and a clone of that group. If you haven't changed Inkscape's default duplicate settings, the clone will be on top of the original and you might think nothing happened. The clone would still be the one selected so you can flip the clone horizontally by using the 'Horizontal Flip' (H) button The design will now look like this (clone still selected): The design looks like a black ribbon here (omg, tuwad na daan). Just move the clone to the right (or left or up or down) using the arrow keys (or SHIFT+Arrow Keys). Here I

Making a Repeating Chinese Pattern in Inkscape

Fabric pattern for visual storytelling One of my favorite movies is "The Last Emperor" (1987), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. One of the reasons is the patterned and textured costume designs (by James Acheson) that, despite the relatively low costume budget (compared to that of a major Hollywood film), still makes me want to reach out to the screen and touch them, after 27 years. The challenge was how to unify the different period costumes (many of which were antiques) in order to tell the story. The key was on the fabric patterns used. One of those patterns is this Escher-like tiling: This pattern is worn by persons of power in the Qing Dynasty scenes, as seen above, and on the shoulder cape of Dowager Empress Ci Xi (portrayed here with relish by Lisa Lu): Aside from being a trim for caps and capes, this pattern even doubles as faux mountain pattern scale armor for the imperial guards, as seen in this picture from The Foxling blog : A different pattern –