I guess it’s a bit similar to “Explore the Universe”… But anyway:
Other works in this “series”:
Tag Archives: Inkscape
Ride a Comet with Pan Colonial
Another faux “vintage travel poster”:
I had originally wanted to draw this back in October, but I didn’t manage to draw a decent comet. I am fairly happy with this one, although I realize that it’s not “perfect”.
Other works in this “series”:
Imperial Dragon, WIP#3
Here’s another idea I had. It’s probably not a secret that I like swords – think they are very… elegant. In addition to my personal sense for aesthetics, the sword is probably the most iconic weapon mankind invented – the only other ones that come close are a nuclear mushroom cloud and perhaps the AK74. The associations with each of these differs vastly, though – Mushroom cloud only gets associated with utter destruction and the madness that is MAD; and the AK74 stands for revolutions and communism.
The sword, on the other hand, is far more symbolic – we associate it with knights, king Arthur (Excalibur), justice, even with slaying dragons. In Somnium, the sword symbolism is used by the Sword Worlds, a group of worlds all named after famous swords from myth and history.
But Empire also uses swords. It’s an empire, with an Emperor (well – Empress) as the head of state. It’s gotta have knights in shining armor, right? And knights have got to use swords. These are probably mostly ceremonial, although I imagine that melee weapons are used alongside very low-powered sidearms in ship-board combat. You really don’t want to use anything too destructive on board a spaceship – it’s far too easy to cause damage to the life-support or, on unarmored vessels, even the hull.
If the sword is used as a ceremonial weapon in the Empire, it is conceivable that it is also used in the Imperial coat of arms. The image above is a quick sample; and to be honest I think it’s working quite well – probably because it adds some contrast to the dragon and red background.
Update, a few hours later:
I’ve reconstructed the basic seal because the center star and the circle of stars just weren’t completely symmetrical. They’re still not “perfect”, but especially the circle is now much better. Here are the three variations:
I did not notice that the sword’s hilt was partially covering those two stars – I still need to fix that. Other than that, this is probably as good as it’s going to get without professional help.
Edit: I also need to center the dragon. That’s why I should not post after a night without sleep. 🙂
Imperial Dragon, WIP#2
Maestral of the Inkscape Forums suggested I try the dragon without outline:
And here’s an attempt without outlines at all:
I think I prefer the dragon without outline, but for the stars in the center I prefer it.
Finally, here’s a version with the outlines replaced by gradients/shadows:
The Imperial Dragon
First WIP, three variations:
The Imperial Dragon is the insignia of the Imperial family and decorates their personal property, flagships, and so on.
I spent way too much time on this – the dragon is based on a dragon from OpenClipart.
I do like the basic design but I fear I may need a professional designer to clean this up for me.
Update: Golden Dragon. Too yellow.
Home for Christmas
I know it’s a bit early, but if the supermarkets can carry Christmas candy by late September, I can use it as the tagline for another “vintage” travel poster:
I tried to create an “Earth by night” look for the shadow (night) side of Earth. I think it looks fairly decent, although it’s not perfect. The sun’s reflection needs some perspective work (I couldn’t fix it) – think that would help a lot.
Other works in this “series”:
Travel the Final Frontier
Third “vintage” travel poster:
As you can tell, I am enjoying this 🙂
Other works in this “series”:
See The Milky Way…
Second attempt at a “vintage” travel poster.
This is kind of a spoof on Dr. Tyler E. Nordgren’s awesome “see the milky way” US national park posters which you really must check out (and buy a print!).
Other works in this “series”:
Explore the Universe…
I got distracted. This is the result. 30 minutes work.
Very different style from my first mock advertisement featuring Pan Colonial, and not perfect but I am happy with how this thing turned out.
Better Coastlines with Inkscape
I just came across a very simple method for creating better coastlines in Inkscape: Use the calligraphy tool instead of freehand line drawing.
At first glance, the calligraphy tool seems unsuited to creating coastlines, because it creates an outline and not a line. So I have been using the freehand tool in the past – and it has always been problematic; the coastlines never seem to be “nice” and rugged, and while drawing the color of the line I draw is in a weird shade that I can’t see too well.
Today i was working on some fjords. I created them by drawing the basic coastline, then creating a second shape – the fjord – which I would then subtract from the first path. Let me illustrate with an example:
This rectangle represents my basic continent. There’s also a colored “ocean” layer underneath, currently invisible to the naked eye.
Okay, it’s a bit boxy. Let’s change that. With the freehand tool, drawing is awkward and difficult to see:
With the calligraphy tool, however, you just pick your color and draw away. Set a brush size appropriate to the scale you are working on – for this box I used a 25p brush width. You can immediately see that this is much easier on the eyes, if nothing else:
I tried to draw roughly the same coastline as in the freehand sample. I filled in most of the gaps but did not bother filling all of them in; you will see why in the second. Even so, I ended up with a lot, lot, lot of individual shapes; I created a single shape using the Path -> Union function.
Finally, I subtracted the “fjords” outline from the base continent box using Path -> Difference.
And this is our result:
Not only did we get much, much nicer coastlines; the little gaps left by the calligraphy tool created a lot of fairly nice-looking islands.
Of course there is also a disadvantage to doing that; it creates a path with a large number of nodes, so you’ll probably want to optimize this for large maps. Still, I think the results speak for themselves – I will try to create an entire map using this method at some point. And I wonder why I never had this idea before…