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 moved the horizontally flipped clone to the right:

I can now go inside the original group (right click and select 'Enter group' from the menu) and continue making designs inside. Whatever I do (draw, delete, move, join, break apart, color, etc) inside the group will be done on the clone:

It looks like a face now. I can also flip the clone vertically (V) so the mirror image will be upside-down:

You can use this trick to make a quick-and-dirty ambigram:

Based on a design by Ex Maningo

Samples:

Baybayin "Nanay"

Baybayin "Gago"

Baybayin "ToMi"

Baybayin "Tuko"

If you set the original group's rotation point before cloning (by clicking the group two times (do not double click) until the rotation/skew controls show up and moving the center rotation crosshairs) . . .

. . . you can rotate several clones to make a radial design. (While the original object group is selected, do SHIFT+CTRL+M, go to 'Rotate' tab, set the rotation angle and then clone the group then click the 'Apply' button to rotate the clone, then duplicate the clone (CTRL+D) then rotate again until you get the desired number of clones:

I used this trick to move the points in the original stick figure group in the logo below so the negative spaces resembled the graduation mortarboard cap.

VSU Alumni Community Relations Office (ACRO) logo

Comments

Create 'Fake Identity Generator'-style email addresses and passwords in Excel

Last week I needed to compile a list of several hundred fake customer names with fake (but verifiable) email addresses and passwords to test a client's eCommerce site. Fake data generators At that time, I knew of only two online identity generators: Fake Identity Generator (FIG) and GenerateData.com (GD). By accepting three user-specified parameters (country, gender, age range) FIG outputs a lot of nice fake data, including disposable (but accessible) YopMail email addresses and relatively easy-to-remember passwords. However FIG doesn't provide free bulk identity generation so I had to generate and copy-paste identities one at a time – a very slow process – along with manually creating accounts using these fake identities at the client site (I had no access to the client content management system so I couldn't bulk register the fake identities). On the other hand, GD allows bulk generation of identities (up to 100 at a time) for free (and with more paramete...

Make a quick-&-dirty repeating pattern in Inkscape (using hexagon base)

[Note: This was first published as a Facebook Note on January 29, 2016 . I am making it available here to add to the Inkscape pattern tutorials.] This is based on a tutorial for making hexagonal tiles for David White’s “The Battle for Wesnoth”, but you can skip the 72×72-pixel requirement. You can make your base hexagon in any size that looks good at 100% zoom. First, make a hexagon using the “Create stars and polygons” tool. Press the CTRL key while you’re dragging the cursor to make a proportioned hexagon like this: You may have to move the cursor around to have the hexagon lie on its side. Next, with the hexagon selected, remove the outline by holding SHIFT and left-clicking the ‘X’ swatch in the color palette: Replace the hexagon’s color with what you want by left-clicking the color swatches in the color palette – almost black, in this case: Next, add your main decoration. I just dropped-in a dragon I found at Wikimedia Commons: Group the hexagon and the object (selec...

Baybayin Fonts

[Blogger] I didn't set out to do Baybayin fonts in the first place but one thing led to another so . . . Here they are so far (shapes done in Inkscape and assembled in Fontforge ): Note: the newer ones do not follow the Lopez cross virama but the 'J' shaped 'pamudpod' introduced by Antoon Postma and adapted by the Mangyan Hanunoo. I also use the Bikol 'Ra' and—purists may cringe—I use extra kudlit on the newer fonts to indicate 'i' and 'u' from 'e' and 'o.' Traditionally, the double kudlit was used to double the e/i or o/u syllable. Baybayin Electric (download from this link ): Originally aiming for a more 'runic' feel that's easy to read in small sizes. Ended up with this: Baybayin Electric Monospace version (download from this link ): Baybayin Hilig (download from this link ): "Hilig," in Tagalog, means "passion, favorite thing/activity;" in Bisaya it means "slanting, oblique, ...

Man On A Street

Search This Blog