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Repetto World Speaks Ballet

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Post pobrano z: Repetto World Speaks Ballet

French ballet shoe company Repetto is running “Ce monde parle ballet” (The World Speaks Ballet), an advertising campaign in which young women turn their lives into dramatic stages. The first commercial in the Repetto World Speaks Ballet campaign, “Drama”, features a smartphone-powered public display of choreography. The second commercial, “Escape”, plunges into the imagination of young woman who has only one desire, to escape the bed of her one-night stand conquest. The third commercial in the series is yet to be revealed.

Repetto World Speaks Ballet commercial Drama

Repetto World Speaks Ballet Credits

The Repetto World Speaks Ballet campaign was developed at Marcel Paris by creative director Rémy Aboukrat, copywriter Kevin Salembier, art director Julien Boissinot, agency producer Rémy Guizerix.

Filming was shot by director Edouard Le Scouarnec via Ubiquity Films with director of photography Kaname Onoyama, producers Clément Gaucher Holmann and Gautier Lacaille, director of production Pierre-Arnaud Andrieu, choreographers Sébastien Bertaud and Maxime Thomas.

The campaign features dancers Marion Barbeau and Marion Gautier de Charnacé and actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz.

Colourist was Emiliano Serantoni at Firm Studio. Post production was done at Prodigious. Sound was produced by Clemens Hourriere.

Music for Escape is “Sexy World” by Norma Gladys. Music for Drama is an original song composed for the campaign.

CSS

The Tenth Fourth

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Post pobrano z: The Tenth Fourth

We made it a decade! It’s our tenth birthday! 🎉 This is an extra-special one, as we hit those double digits. Each year on July 4th we mark the occasion with a post. In that tradition, allow me to ramble on a bit about the past and present.

The very first post ever on this site was literally a CSS trick. It’s a classic, too. „Header Text Image Replacement”:

.headerReplacement {
   text-indent: -9999px;
   width: 600px;
   height: 100px;
   background: url(/path/to/your/image.jpg) #cccccc no-repeat;  
}

Funny, I just used that trick a couple of days ago.

The post is interesting to me for a number of reasons. For one, I certainly didn’t come up with that technique. At the time, I was just learning CSS myself and writing down interesting stuff I’d come across and used in my own work. I think I felt like I learned it a little more deeply by writing it out as an explanation like that.

For another, at the time, I was entirely unaware of where a trick like that fit into CSS history and larger discussions about CSS and semantics and accessibility and all that. A year later, I started getting interested in stuff like that and did stuff like rounded up many possible techniques for image replacement. Ultimately, even making a „museum” for it.

Before I go too much further here, I gotta mention the fact that we just re-opened the shop in honor of this anniversary. We made up some nerdy web related T-Shirts, and would love it if you would pick one up to help support the site:

CSS-Tricks was a WordPress site running on PHP and MySQL back then. Today, it’s… a WordPress site running on PHP and MySQL. Although WordPress was 2.0.1 back then and 4.8 now. PHP was 5.2 then and 7.1 now. MySQL 5.0 then and 5.7 now. All those seem fairly small version bumps for a 10-year span, but really they are quite significant technological advances.

Back then we made sites with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. These days, sites are… HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

I try to keep a design history the best I can. Let’s do a little blast-to-the-past of header styles:

This one isn’t to be underestimated: it takes serious work to keep a website running. There is always something that needs to be done.

  • There is always some bit of software that needs to be updated.
  • There is always some weird bug that needs attention.
  • There is always some business opportunity that needs work to get going.
  • There is always some part of the design that really needs a look.
  • There is always some SSL certificate to worry about.
  • There is always some server or DevOps thing to think about.

I have a whole section of my TODO’s called „Site Work” that is full of things I need to get done around here. For example, right this second, I know there are some assets that are loading in a way I don’t want them to and I need to look at it for performance reasons. I’d like to do some stuff with embedded Pens to make them a bit wider by default, but need to be careful not to screw up any layout. I know markdown is behaving weird in the forums for the 692nd time, and that a private forum is showing publicly in a place I don’t want. That’s like 5% of the list!

I shudder to think what would happen if all this work wasn’t done constantly. The site would fall to pieces.

And that doesn’t include what you might actually think is the hard work involved in running a website:

  • Writing new content
  • Editing submitted content
  • Updating old content
  • Managing the publishing schedule and planning future content
  • Community management
  • Promoting and marketing the site
  • Finding sponsors
  • Make sure sponsors are happy
  • Social media

If you do all that work, on both lists, the hope is that you just keep to keep on keeping on. Everyone gets paid for their effort. This is not a hockey-stick growth kind of site. It’s a modest publication.

Speaking of slow growth, that’s the deal:

That’s not representative of just doing the same ol’ same ol’ year in and year out. That’s representative of more and more people working on the site and more and more money being invested back into the site.

One interesting aspect of this is how the bulk of that traffic is generated by search. Of course, I have no problem with that. I’m very happy that this site shows up in search results and can be useful to people that way. At the same time, having an active readership is a very valuable thing. Not just people who show up in search, but people who read the site regularly like they do the news. Definitely a balance there. That’s why we do things like invest in the newsletter, to make sure we have ways to read CSS-Tricks that come to you and are worth your time.

On a personal note, I’m still living in Milwaukee, back here after a 7-month stint in Miami. My fiance Miranda got a job down there at FIU and we took the opportunity to move down, skip the Wisconsin winter, and be close to our Florida friends. I don’t post publicly all that much about personal life stuff, but this will be a huge year for me. The Miami move to and back was big! Miranda and I are getting married this summer! We’re also expecting a baby in the fall! And we’re also planning to move to Oregon in late summer! Crazy times. There almost couldn’t possibly be more going on, especially factoring in all this running multiple businesses stuff and a fairly aggressive speaking schedule this year.

My main focus is CodePen, which has had a tremendous last year. After taking funding, hiring an amazing team, and releasing lots of big stuff, we’ve got ourselves to that wonderful spot all businesses desire: profitability. The roadmap of ideas on CodePen is absolutely never ending. I’ve never felt like we have more work in front of us as strongly as I do right now.

I’d like to give special thanks to all the sponsors that make the site possible. I can’t thank every single one, but I will give a special shout out to Media Temple, who has been a long time sponsor and supporter of CSS-Tricks.

And of course the heartiest of thanks to all you readers, without whom there would be no reason to have a site at all. The discourse that happens here is top notch and I couldn’t be happier to facilitate it. And lastly, as you likely know, this site is by front-end developers for front-end developers, so if you have something to say, feel free to reach out.

See the Pen Conways Fireworks by Ben Matthews (@tsuhre) on CodePen.

The Tenth Fourth is a post from CSS-Tricks

CSS

Repeatable, Staggered Animation Three Ways: Sass, GSAP and Web Animations API

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Post pobrano z: Repeatable, Staggered Animation Three Ways: Sass, GSAP and Web Animations API

Staggered animation, also known as „follow through” or „overlapping action” is one of the twelve Disney principles of animation as defined by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book „The Illusion of Life”. At its core, the concept deals with animating objects in delayed succession to produce fluid motion.

The technique doesn’t only apply to cute character animations though. The Motion design aspect of a digital interface has significant implications on UX, user perception and „feel”. Google even makes a point to mention staggered animation in its Motion Choreography page, as part of the Material Design guide:

While the topic of motion design is truly vast, I often find myself applying bits and pieces even in smallest of projects. During the design process of the Interactive Coke ad on Eko I was tasked with creating some animation to be shown as the interactive video is loading, and so this mockup was born:

At a first glance, this animation seems trivial to implement in CSS, but turns out that is not that case! While it might be simpler with GSAP and the shiny new Web Animations API, doing so with CSS requires a few tricks which I’m going to explain in this post. Why use CSS at all then? In this case — as the animation was meant to run while the user waits for assets to load, it didn’t make much sense to load an animation library just to display a loading spinner.

First, a bit about the anatomy of the animation.

There are four circles, absolutely positioned within a container with overflow: hidden to frame and crop the edges of the two outermost circles. Why four and not three? Because the first one is offscreen, waiting to enter stage left and the last one exists the frame stage right. The other two are always in the frame. This way, the end state of the animation iteration looks exactly like its beginning state. Circle 1 takes circle 2’s place, circle 2 takes circle 3’s place and so on.

Here’s the basic HTML:

<div id="container">
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
  <span></span>
</div>

And the accompanying CSS:

#container {
  position: absolute;
  left: 50%;
  top: 50%;
  transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
  width: 160px;
  height: 40px;
  display: block;
  overflow: hidden;
}
span {
  width: 40px;
  height: 40px;
  border-radius: 50%;
  background: #4df5c4;
  display: inline-block;
  position: absolute; 
  transform: translateX(0px);
}

Let’s try this out with a simple animation for each circle that translates X from 0 to 60 pixels:

See the Pen dot loader – no stagger by Opher Vishnia (@OpherV) on CodePen.

Looks kind of weird and robotic, right? That’s because we’re missing one major component: Staggered animation. That is, each circle’s animation needs to start a bit after its predecessor. „No problem!”, you might think to yourself, „let’s use the animation-delay” property. „We’ll give the 4th circle a value of 0s, the 3rd of 0.15s and so on”. Alright, let’s try that:

See the Pen dot loader – broken by Opher Vishnia (@OpherV) on CodePen.

Hmm… What just happened? The property animation-delay affects only the initial delay before the animations starts. It doesn’t add additional delays between every iteration so the animation goes out of sync like in the following diagram:

Math to the rescue

To overcome this, I baked the delay into the animation. CSS keyframe animations are specified in percents, and with some calculation, you can use those to define how much delay should the animation include. For example, if you set an animation-duration of 1s, and specify your start keyframe at 0%, the same values at 20%, your end at 80% and the same end values at 100%, your animation will wait 0.2 seconds, run for 0.6 seconds, then wait for another 0.2 seconds.

In my case, I wanted each circle to wait with a stagger time of 0.15 seconds before performing the actual animation taking 0.5 seconds, with the entire process taking 1 second. This means that the 4th circle animation waits 0 seconds, then animates for 0.5 seconds and waits for another 0.5 seconds. The second circle waits 0.15 seconds, then animates 0.5 seconds and waits for 0.35 seconds and so forth.

To achieve this, you need four keyframes (or three keyframe pairs): 1 and 2 account for the stagger wait, 2 and 3 for the actual animation time while 3 and 4 account for the final wait. The „trick” is to understand how to convert the required timings into keyframe percentages, but that’s a relatively simple calculation. For example, the 2nd circle needs to wait 0.15 * 2 = 0.3 seconds, then animate for 0.5 seconds. I know the total time for the animation is one second, so the keyframe percentages are calculated like so:

0s = 0%
0.3s = 0.3 / 1s * 100 =  30%
0.8s = (0.3 + 0.5) / 1s * 100 = 80%
1s = 100%

The end result looks something like this:

With the entire animation, including stagger time and wait baked into the CSS keyframes taking exactly one second, the animation doesn’t go out of sync.

Luckily, Sass allows us automate this process with a simple for loop and some inline math, which ultimately compiles into a series of keyframe animations. This way you can manipulate the timing variables to experiment and test whatever works best for your animation:

@mixin createCircleAnimation($i, $animTime, $totalTime, $delay) {      
  @include keyframes(circle#{$i}) {
    0% {              
      @include transform(translateX(0));            
    }
    #{($i * $delay)/$totalTime * 100}% {     
      @include transform(translateX(0));            
    }          
    #{($i * $delay + $animTime)/$totalTime * 100}% {     
      @include transform(translateX(60px));            
    }          
    100% {
      @include transform(translateX(60px));             
    }
  }      
}

$animTime: 0.5s;
$totalTime: 1s;
$staggerTime: 0.15s;

@for $i from 0 through 3 {
  @include createCircleAnimation($i, $animTime, $totalTime, $staggerTime); 
  span:nth-child(#{($i + 1)}) {
    animation: circle#{(3 - $i)} $totalTime infinite;
    left: #{$i * 60 - 60 }px;
  }
}

And voila — here’s the final result

See the Pen dot loading animation – SASS stagger by Opher Vishnia (@OpherV) on CodePen.

There are two main caveats with this method:

First, you need to make sure the defined stagger time/animation time isn’t too long that it overlaps the total animation time, otherwise the math (and the animation) will break.

Second, this method does generate some hefty amount of CSS code, especially if you’re using Sass to emit all the prefixes for browser compatibility. In my example, I had only four items to animate, but if yours has more items, the amount of code generated might not be worth the effort, and you probably want to stick with JS based animation libraries such as GSAP. Still, doing this entirely in CSS is pretty cool.

Making life easier

To contrast the verbosity of the Sass solution, I’d like to show you how the same can be easily achieved with the use of GSAP’s Timeline, and staggerTo function:

See the Pen dot loading animation – GSAP by Opher Vishnia (@OpherV) on CodePen.

There are two interesting bits here. First, the last parameter of staggerTo, which defines the wait time between animating elements is set to a negative value (-0.15). This allows the elements to stagger in reverse order (circle 4–3–2–1 instead of 1–2–3–4). Cool, huh?

Second, see the bit with tl.set({}, {}, "1");? What’s this weird syntax all about? That’s a neat hack to implement the wait time at the end each circle’s animation. Essentially by setting an empty object to an empty object at time 1, the Timeline animation will now repeat after the 1-second mark, rather than after the circle animation had ended.

Looking forwards to the future

The Web Animations API is the new and exciting kid on the block, but out of scope for this article. I couldn’t resist providing you with a sample implementation though, which uses the same math as the CSS implementation:

See the Pen dot loading animation – WAAPI by Opher Vishnia (@OpherV) on CodePen.

Was this helpful? Have you created some smooth animations using this technique? Let me know!

Repeatable, Staggered Animation Three Ways: Sass, GSAP and Web Animations API is a post from CSS-Tricks

Web Tools

How to Create a Bokeh Photoshop Action

Post pobrano z: How to Create a Bokeh Photoshop Action

Final product image
What You’ll Be Creating

Welcome to our Photoshop in 60 Seconds series, in which you can
learn a Photoshop skill, feature, or technique in just a minute!

Photoshop in 60 Seconds: Bokeh Effect

That beautiful bokeh effect achieved by out-of-focus photography can now be applied to any photo! Recreate the look with a quick Photoshop Action for all your portrait or landscape photography. Browse our incredible selection of Photoshop Actions available on GraphicRiver and Envato Elements for more great effects.

In this quick video, learn how to create a Photoshop Action that produces a warm bokeh effect. Use a custom brush, layer styles, and more to achieve this look!

 

How to Create a Bokeh Photoshop Action

Start by creating a custom brush. Hit F5 to bring up the Brush panel. Using a Hard Round Brush, adjust the Scatter to 1000%, and then Save your custom brush so that we can use it later for the action.

Custom Bokeh Brush

Now go to Window > Actions and set up a new bokeh Action in the Actions panel. When you’re ready, click Record to begin recording the next steps.

Open your photo in Photoshop. Here I’ll be using this Woman Stock.

Woman Stock via Pixabay
Quick tip! Build layers of blurred bokeh with various levels of depth or choose a photo with a background that’s already blurred.

Copy and Paste two backgrounds from this Noise Blurred Backgrounds set above your image. Select both layers and lower the Opacity to 20%, and then set the Blend Mode of the first one to Hard Light and the second one to Screen.

Add overlay blurred backgrounds

Create a New Layer and use the custom Bokeh Brush we created earlier to apply a few bokeh. Set the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay, and then Right-click and go to Blending Options, adding a quick Inner Glow with the following settings:

Add an Inner Glow Layer Style

Duplicate (Control-J) the layer, bringing the copy down slightly, before going to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and blurring it with a Radius of 5 pixels.

Set a New Layer to Color Dodge. Paint soft brown colors (or use the Eyedropper Tool to select dark colors from the photo) for more intensity. Lower the Opacity to 22%. Follow up with a New Adjustment Layer for Exposure, setting the Exposure to 1 and the Opacity to 20%.

Add a Color Dodge Layer for the Bokeh Effect

When you’re finished, remember to click the Stop button on the Actions panel to use this action for future photos.

Here is the final effect.

Bokeh Effect Photoshop Action Tutorial

Experiment with this action on more images for awesome results!

Bokeh Effect Example
Woman Stock via Pixabay

Want to see this in action? Check out the video above to see this lesson at work!

A Bit More Detail

Learn how to create more photo effects from our experts! Check out the following tutorials below:

60 Seconds?!

This is part of a series of quick video tutorials on
Envato Tuts+ in which we introduce a range of subjects, all in 60
seconds—just enough to whet your appetite. Let us know in the comments
what you thought of this video and what else you’d like to see explained
in 60 seconds!

Web Tools

Adobe Alternatives: Vector Applications

Post pobrano z: Adobe Alternatives: Vector Applications

Welcome to another entry in our series exploring the wide world of software created by developers other than Adobe! In this article we’ll be going through a collection of awesome vector art applications, with something to suit you whether you’re a high end graphic artist, a web designer creating SVG for sites, or someone newer to vectors looking for something simple and clean.

Just as with all the software we’ve looked at in our series thus far, every application on this list is available without needing a subscription, and is also under $100. In fact, every application on this list, with the exception Affinity Designer, is completely free. So if you’re looking to do vector work on a budget the going is good!

These programs are also fully cross platform, (except Affinity Designer), with great software for Linux, Mac, Windows and even ChromeOS, so whatever your setup is there’s something here for you.

On a side note, you won’t see the popular Mac-only application Sketch here I’m afraid, and that’s not because it isn’t an excellent program. At the moment it’s widely praised as being the leading solution for UI design. However as I said at the start of this series, I’m only including an application if I have personally tested its latest version, and as I chose to retire my Mac earlier this year that’s not going to happen any time soon with Sketch. However if you are on Mac and working heavily with UI you should definitely check it out.

And now let’s get underway with our Adobe alternative vector applications!

1. Affinity Designer

In the same way Affinity Photo is currently the leading Adobe alternative in the photo editing space, so too is Affinity Designer the leader in the vector editing space. If you’re a professional who leans hard on Illustrator and you’re looking for other applications with comparable power, right now Affinity Designer is, in my opinion, unsurpassed.

Like Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer has the uncanny ability to just
allow you to pick it up and start being productive almost instantly.
Everything in the interface is intuitive, clearly and accessibly placed,
yet powerful. When using Affinity Designer I feel like all the speed
bumps have been cleared and I can just race ahead. If you have any
experience at all creating vector art chances are high you’ll be able to
go in blind and be productive right away.

It’s also my feeling that Affinity Designer is currently the application that’s most in tune with what creative professionals need in their day to day workflows, and by a pretty large margin. If you haven’t looked into Affinity Designer yet, watch this video on the latest version 1.5 to take a peek at what this awesome software can do:

At the core of any vector application is its pen tool, and Affinity Designer’s is excellent. It has four modes: pen mode for straight lines and bezier curves, smart mode for automated smooth rounding of curves around nodes, polygon mode for straight lines only, and line mode for, well, lines. It’s also very easy to convert any node into any one of the aforementioned node types by just selecting it and hitting the desired node type button on the UI.

When it comes to keeping an eye on your work Affinity Designer has some excellent features. It has an incredible zoom function that can move in by up to 1,000,000% – essentially infinite for all intents and purposes. It allows you to preview your work in the default of vector mode, but also in 1x pixel mode, 2x pixel mode, and outline mode as well. Additionally you can split your screen and view it in two modes at once, with a divider you can scrub left and right to transition between views:

Affinity Designer also has an advanced grid system that allows you to setup grids however you like, but with more than just standard square grids. You also get: isometric, 2:1 isometric, dimetric, oblique, trimetric left, trimetric right, triangular, horizontal triangular, 2:1 triangular, and two types of custom grids you can fine tune even further with control over spacing, divisions, gutter, angle and snapping. This is probably the best grid system I’ve seen in any software to date.

Just about everything in Affinity Designer is live and non-destructive. Boolean actions are non-destructive and shapes can be moved around and adjusted afterwards. Adjustment layers are non-destructive and can be stacked, sorted and edited after the fact too. Blending modes are instantly previewed the moment you hover over them in the dropdown list. These are the types of features that really smooth out and speed up a workflow.

Unique to Affinity Designer is its system of “Personas”, of which it has three: vector, pixel and export. You start in “Vector Persona” by default, which is where you find all your vector tools, but if you hit the “Pixel Persona” button you’ll find yourself in a full featured raster editor all within the same program. This ability to use advanced vector and raster tools in a single application is a phenomenal feature that makes Affinity Designer hard to beat.

For example, Affinity Designer has brilliant vector brushes, allowing you to create a real hand painted look and retain all the precision of vector work. However it also has raster brushes you can use in its “Pixel” mode to give you the essentials of digital painting. You get the best of both worlds.

Recently, Affinity Designer been making moves to allow for professional level UI / UX development, something that will be welcome news for Windows based web and app designers. It now includes artboards, symbols, and constraints to give you semi-responsive layout adjustment, among other features that help the process along. The devs have put together a presentation page where you can check out all the details: Affinity Designer for UI / UX.

For professionals depending on high level software, Affinity Designer is rising fast as the number one contender. As would be expected with a top tier application there are plenty more features than can be described in a single article, so you might also find it helpful to follow along with our Affinity Designer Quick Start course, where I step you through all the essential features of the software.

Affinity Designer is $49.99 and offers a 30 day trial which, particularly with the help of our course, is definitely ample time to play with all its awesome features.

2. Inkscape

As can often be the case with software
from the Linux / open source world, Inkscape contains a lot of power
that may at first seem hidden behind a user interface that takes some
time to learn. You won’t instantly pick up and run with Inkscape like
you will Affinity Designer, but don’t let that allow you to miss out on the punch being packed by this application.

Even if you’ve used Inkscape in the past and didn’t take to it, it’s time to take another look because some great new features have been added in version 0.92, released in January this year. Check it out:

There is a long list of new inclusions, as you will have seen in the incredibly fast video above. One of the standout additions is the new and much sought after gradient meshes. At present, among the applications on this list, only Inkscape has this feature. The devs behind
Affinity Designer did say they plan to add it, however that comment was a couple of years ago and while they assure it’s on the roadmap, there’s no ETA at the moment. So
if you love mesh gradients and want to try some new software without spending hundreds of dollars, or any dollars at all in this case, Inkscape
is your ticket.

Another significant new feature for anyone creating SVG for web is the switch from 90dpi to 96dpi to match the CSS standard. Additionally you can directly edit your SVG’s XML structure directly inside the interface, making Inkscape a strong prospect for web graphics creation. And further to that point, the 0.92 release notes also say: 

“Many SVG2 and CSS3 properties are now supported (e.g. paint-order, mix-blend-mode). Not all are available from the GUI.”

BSplines make an entry in version 0.92 too, making the laying out of controlled smooth curves a breeze. And the freehand drawing / pencil tool now has smoothing and real time path simplification making Inkscape a great drawing tool.

And in another addition there are now live on-canvas gradient editing tools, where previously gradients had to be edited via the UI. Now you can just double-click anywhere on a line that represents the gradient to add a new stop, select stops and shift or recolor them, and drag around the end points to control where the gradient applies.

When it comes to the toolkit, Inkscape has everything you’d expect to find in a vector application, as well as some things that are not all that common.

The pen tool is excellent, and very powerful. It has the
regular functionality of placing straight line nodes and bezier curves, but it also has a “spiro” mode
for automating the creation of smoothly rounded shapes, version 0.92’s “bspline” mode for
creating soft curves and waves, and “paraxial” mode to create shapes using only right angles.

It has a fantastic sculpting tool which allows you to modify your
shapes by pushing and pulling near nodes to modify the edges of shapes, which is a very organic
editing process. If you’ve ever done 3D sculpting of terrain or
meshes, this tool feels very similar just in 2D form.

There’s also a
nice calligraphic brush stroke tool, the standard rectangle and ellipse tools, and several other shape tools.

And perhaps on the less serious side, though certainly useful as well, Inkscape’s spray tool is a lot of fun. Select any shape you’ve created in your document
then you can spray that shape repeatedly around your canvas, or single click to stamp it.

Once you have all your paths down there is the ability to add “Path
Effects” which are live alterations to paths that can be tweaked or
removed at any time. And the path simplification feature works very well, which is particularly helpful when
used to clean up messy vectors that were created with the freehand tool or by using the “Trace bitmap” function.

To help speed up your workflows Inkscape has a symbols library in which you can create a drag-n-drop
collection of reusable assets. It also has a system of clones that allow
you to duplicate an object then edit all instances of it simultaneously
in real time.

„The Great Friend” by Luiz Rezende

The community driven process behind Inkscape shows through in the degree to which it can bring in external components. On top of its in built tools Inkscape has a robust extension system and ships with some useful extensions out of the box, with the ability to install more should you like. It can also have custom scripts written to control its behavior.

One thing I definitely
appreciate in Inkscape, and this seems to be another running theme with
Linux / open
source tools, is the extensive list of settings you can use to get the
software setup to best suit your preferences. You have control over UI
layout, keyboard shortcuts and tool defaults to name a few things. And
yet another thing Inkscape
has in common with its FOSS peers is its extensive documentation and
wiki
content to help you along. You might need to put in a little time while
picking up this tool, but you won’t want for information as you go.

If you want a tonne of power but don’t mind a learning curve to get it, and you like to have a lot of control over your software, Inkscape could be the right tool for you. And if you’re on Linux, bringing this tool into your workflows is a no brainer.

3. Gravit Designer

Gravit Designer is a serious up and comer in the vector art space. It might not quite be on the same level as the very top players just yet, but it’s already very powerful and developing fast. Between the time I started on this article and the time I finished it a whole new release came out with a laundry list of excellent new features, including cloud save & sync, placing linked images, measurement guides, Sketch file imports, a new gradient editing system, international text support, a localized Chinese version, improved SVG export, and a new API providing support for plugins.

Gravit has a reputation for being the most powerful browser based vector editing program available today, and that it is, however it also provides desktop versions so you can work in whichever mode you prefer. Generally speaking, my experience was the desktop versions seemed to be more stable, but the web versions ran faster.

And by the way if Gravit’s default purple interface is not your thing, never fear,
in the latest version there is the option to use a light or dark theme
instead.

Right from the moment you start using, Gravit has some cool features. For example, it gives you the option of working with an infinite canvas. Just
leave the page height and width fields empty when you create a new document and you’re away. The only
restriction in this mode is you can’t set a canvas background given Gravit
won’t know what size said background needs to be drawn at.

And while we’re on the topic of creating new documents, one of the latest features is that when you do so you can select “New from template”, which shows you a selection of template categories. After choosing one you are presented with numerous existing templates you can grab from the cloud and iterate on. Even though this feature is new it’s already well populated. I look forward to seeing where it will be a little ways down the track.

Once you’re into your document there is more content ready for use in the new Library section. It already has a sizable library of in built shapes, illustrations, icons, emojis, stickers and decorative lines. All of these are freely accessible and can be dragged and dropped into your document.

When you move into designing the first thing you’re likely to look for is the pen tool, and the one in Gravit works as expected, providing straight line and bezier curve functionality. However the bezigon tool is a little different, and allows you to create curves a little more easily on the fly by holding ALT when you place points–the bezigon tool will then automatically create smooth curves between these points for you.

When working on the canvas Gravit has very good snapping guidelines making it quite easy to place objects aligned properly. The color picker magnifies the area you’re selecting it from, making it quite easy to hone in on the color you want. Selecting shapes is easy as you will get a clear outline of shapes as you hover over them, making them stand out from one another.

Gravit also supports multiple fills & strokes, and the feature is very neat and well
done. Each fill or stroke behaves much like an individual layer. They
each have their own blending mode and opacity settings, can be stacked
in any order, and can be shown or hidden.

Gravit’s multiple fills, and it’s color „mixes” tab

One thing I absolutely love in Gravit is the color management system. You get your regular run of the mill color picker and swatches, but you also get an automatically generated collection of swatches showing all the colors in your current document, and an excellent “Mixes” tab that provides you with several tints, shades, tones and mixes based on your current color.

Instead of artboards in Gravit you have pages, each of which can be individually sized; a feature very useful for complex designs and UI work. Speaking of pages, Gravit also has a feature that stands out among
vector programs, and that is it has a Powerpoint / Keynote style
presentation system built right in. You just create each of your slides as pages, then go to View > Play/Presentation and use the arrow keys to proceed.

Sadly I did encounter a couple of little glitches. There is a “background fill” feature demonstrated on one of Gravit’s tutorials that allows your document background to show through any shape no matter what is stacked below it. However it would not work for me, and I tried every combination of app version, browser and GPU I could come up with because that seems like a really cool feature. I also
had a strange offset on transparent fills, where the shapes behind them appeared out of position, and some flickering on the background fill.

I also had a little trouble with documentation as Gravit has gone through a transition from an old website and app name to a new one, and the docs don’t seem to have made the same journey just yet. That made it a bit hard to find out what all the tools in the software actually do. This is a fast moving software and to a degree some issues are to be expected, so just be aware little things might pop up for you too.

Gravit is completely free to use, and the dev team behind it have said they fully intend to keep it that way, without of any type of intrusive monetization. Rather they plan to go with features along the lines of attaching a marketplace you can dig into for resources should you choose. They also already license their software’s engine to third parties, which is part of why they say they have been able to keep the software free and clean thus far.

If you want an intuitive interface, powerful tools you can access online or on any OS including ChromeOS, and you like the idea of accessing integrated collections of usable assets, try out Gravit Designer.

4. Boxy SVG

Boxy SVG is a web-based tool that is squarely focused on working with SVG, so if you need to create SVG assets to use in websites it might be the vector application for you. It’s a relatively simple program, but if you need web friendly graphics I feel that can actually be a positive. The reason is you can’t accidentally do something in Boxy that won’t translate well to SVG, because every tool available to you is designed for creating SVG. And because Boxy is browser-based displaying SVG right on the canvas, you’re already seeing the way your designs are going to look in a live site.

Boxy SVG may be web-based, however when you install it in either Chrome or Chromium, (and possibly Vivaldi), it will look on your system just like a regular application. You’ll be able to launch it as you would a native program, and though it will be running a browser instance it will look just like a normal program too. 

That said, if you’d rather just run Boxy straight out of a browser window you can do so via the live demo.

This live demo currently seems to have some differences to the version on the Chrome app store. For example, the demo has masking tools while the Chrome app doesn’t, and the Chrome app has a library of drag and drop assets while the live demo doesn’t, so you might find you want to use each one a little bit.

In the Boxy toolkit you get all the regular tools: straight line, bezier curve, freehand, text, rectangle, ellipse, triangle and other assorted shapes.

On the SVG specific side of things there is a “View” a panel designed to let you directly control the view box, as well as settings for the preserveAspectRatio property including alignment settings and toggling between meet or slice.

The “Arrangement” panel allows you to control alignment of objects relative to the view box, or to other objects. Here you can also control object rotation, flipping, ordering, as well as grouping objects.

There are some solid path modification tools including boolean operations, (unite, intersect, subtract, exclude), compound path tools for joining or splitting, push button object to path conversion, and push button opening, closing and reversing paths.

And to help you speed up your work, there’s a library containing a collection of drag and drop
assets you can make use of, or you might like to just check them out in order to see what Boxy
SVG can do.

When it comes to exporting, Boxy SVG might be SVG focused, but you can still output your work as PNG, JPEG or WebP. You can also output in HTML instead of SVG if you choose, though the code produced is only marginally different.

If you’re looking for a highly accessible tool, and particularly if you create SVG for the web, Boxy SVG might be a great new additional to your arsenal.

5. Vectr

Vectr is a very simple application. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, and what you find in the interface is very clean and straight forward to use. I’d describe it as all the essentials in a compact package.

When you first jump into Vectr it takes you through an excellent series of interactive tutorials to get oriented
with the software, though most of what is covered will already be
familiar to users of other vector design applications.

In
the toolkit is a bezier curve pen, a freehand pencil, a text tool,
image uploader, rectangle tool, rounded rectangle, ellipse and a
collection of extra shapes. You also get the ability to create multiple
pages within a single document.

All paths and shapes in a Vectr document can
have multiple backgrounds, borders, outer shadows and inner shadows
applied to them, as well as have their opacity controlled. Backgrounds
can be set to flat fill, image, linear gradient or radial gradient. 

When working directly on path adjustment, converting points from straight to curved or vice versa is a simple matter of double-clicking on the point. There is also a very accessible corner radius tool on every point. And Vectr has some super quick to use on-canvas contextual tools with which you can flip shapes,
bring them forward / backward, or perform boolean actions. These kind of helpful little features are great for getting a flow while designing.

Of particular interest is that Vectr has a plugin you can install into a WordPress site to
get a fully fledged image editor embedded in your post and page editing
screens. Any image you create using Vectr inside of WordPress will
automatically get its own URL on your site you can share with others.

Vectr being used via WordPress

Vectr is free, however you are required to create and sign into an
account with them in order to save your work. There aren’t any local
save options, all saving is pushed to the cloud. The only local option
is to export in either SVG, PNG or JPG format, but there doesn’t seem to
be any way to save your work and preserve pages, layers and so on. I
hope they decide to add a local save feature at a later date because not
having access to source files to create backups could be problematic.

The upside is that
whatever you work on will be available from any web browser you can use
to sign into your Vectr account. On their roadmap is the plan to attach a
marketplace to Vectr where you can both sell your work and buy from
others, so it might be fair to assume this is how Vectr plans to fund
itself, meaning the software is likely to remain free.

If you’re looking for a light tool to get some work done fast, or when you’re on the move, check out Vectr.

  • Website: https://vectr.com/
  • Platforms: Linux, Mac, ChromeOS, Windows, Online
  • Price: Free

Which Vector Software to Choose

We’ve covered five awesome vector applications and while all of them will let you create great vector art, each one is probably a little stronger for different kinds of use cases. My best summary of how to choose would be as follows:

  • If you’re a pro working in a design studio Affinity Designer will almost certainly be the right fit for you. It’s high level software that’s under active development, and it will get you productive fast.
  • If you don’t mind a learning curve to get at some power Inkscape might be your software of choice. If you’re on Linux, this is undoubtedly for you. Probably best for freelancers and solo artists who can pick their own software.
  • Gravit Designer is the most powerful web based vector editor, and is rapidly increasing its feature set. If you’re looking for an intuitive UI and a strong web based / cross platform vector editor definitely check this out. Just be aware you might need to work around the occasional glitch.
  • If you’re a web designer creating SVG for websites, Boxy SVG might be your perfect fit. It’s totally focused on SVG, and being browser based you can feel confident what you see on the canvas is what you’ll get in your live sites.
  • For a simple program that has all the basics, if you don’t mind cloud-only saves, and if you’d like to able to do a little graphics editing directly inside WordPress while working on content, Vectr could be great for you.

Of course, there are still a lot more features in each application than I can cover in one article, so be sure to go check them all out for yourself!

One this is certain, the choices for vector art are very strong right now, so there is likely more than one tool you’re going to love using.

Coming Up Next: Video Editing

In my personal opinion, probably the strongest software in Adobe’s suite right now is Premiere Pro, making it the most difficult to identify realistic alternatives to that will suit everyone. However the landscape is changing and there is a collection of video editors now available that are getting better and better all the time. In our next entry in this series we’re going to check out the top contenders, once again all budget friendly software.

It’s undoubtedly possible for people with certain workflows to take on new NLEs, and I’ve heard several accounts from people who have done just that and transitioned to one of the applications in our upcoming article. It’s not going to be feasible for everyone just yet, but depending on exactly what you do it’s very possible you could be one of the people who now have multiple options to choose from.

And whether you can bring more choice of software into your video editing life yet or not, there are some applications whose feature sets are rapidly expanding to accommodate more and more use cases. That means it’s a great idea to start keeping tabs right now and be on top of new options as they become available in the near future.

We’ll be covering these applications and what they already include in the next article. I’ll see you there!

Web Tools

How to Create a Cute Cartoon Tiger Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

Post pobrano z: How to Create a Cute Cartoon Tiger Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

Final product image
What You’ll Be Creating

Did you know that July 29th is International Tiger Day? According to Days of the Year, Tiger Day aims to protect and expand tigers’ habitats and raise awareness of the need for conservation.

In
this tutorial, you will learn how to create a cute tiger illustration.
I’m sure by now, all my followers can probably predict which tools and
methods we’ll use in today’s tutorial. This means that you’ve become
more professional, and maybe one day you’ll also become a tutorial
instructor! So… getting back on track—yes, we will use basic shapes and
warp effects. As always, in the end, you will get a very sweet and cute
illustration.

And feel free to browse GraphicRiver to get more Tiger ideas and inspiration.

Once you’re ready, let’s get started!

1. How to Create the Tiger’s Head

Step 1

Create a New Document (File > New) with 850 px Width and 850 px Height.

Let’s
start with the head. Take the Ellipse Tool (L) and create an orange
ellipse that almost resembles a circle. Next, we will apply the Inflate
effect to this ellipse. Go to Effect > Warp > Inflate. Enter the
options you see below. Expand this shape (Object > Expand
Appearance).

creating the head shape

Step 2

Let’s add some depth to the head.
Create a Copy of this shape in the back of the original one (Control-C,
Control-B) and shift it down a little bit. Make this copy slightly
bigger and change its color to beige. Select the new shape, make another Copy of it again in the back (Control-C, Control-B), shift it slightly
down, and change the color to dark beige.

creating the head shape 2

Step 3

For the
ears, let’s start by drawing another ellipse. The Fill color is the same
as the head. To use the same color, select the oval, then select the
Eyedropper Tool (I) and click on the tiger’s head. The color of the
selected object will change to the one you clicked with the
Eyedropper Tool (I).

Using the Direct Selection Tool (A), move
down the left and right anchor points of the ear. Make another Copy of
this shape, change it to a slightly darker color, make it a bit smaller,
and place it inside the larger one.

creating the ear

Step 4

Place the ear on the
left side of the head. Rotate it a bit to the left. Take the Reflect
Tool (O) and while holding down the Alt key, click the forehead. In the
new dialogue window, select Vertical, Angle 90 degrees and press Copy.
You should now have two ears on the tiger’s head.

placing the ear and creating another one

Step 5

For
the eye, first, create a brown circle. To make an even circle, use the
Ellipse Tool (L) while holding down the Shift key. Then create a white
oval behind the brown circle and rotate it slightly to the left. 

In the
image below, this white oval has a black stroke for the tutorial purpose
only (for better visibility), so you don’t need this stroke. Make a Copy of the oval in the back, slightly enlarge it, shift it up, and
change the color to brown (the same fill color as the pupil). 

Finish the
eye with a tiny white circle as a highlight. Group the whole eye
(right-click > Group), and you’ll thank me later, as it will be more
convenient for you in the following steps.

creating the eye

Step 6

Place the
eye on the head. Make a reflection of this eye to create the right eye,
similar to the steps you took to make the second copy of the ear. You
will need to select the whole eye and, using the Reflect Tool (O) while
holding down the Alt key, click in the middle of the head. Then check
Vertical and press Copy. You should have two eyes now.

placing the eye and creating another one

Step 7

Let’s
add some “tiger-like” features on our tiger. Draw an ellipse on the
left side of the head, behind the left eye. To place this beige spot
behind the eye, select the eye and place it over the beige spot (Control-X,
Control-F). Take the Direct Selection Tool (A) and move the handles of
the anchor points to achieve the result you see in the second
image. And now, make a reflected vertical copy of this shape and place
it behind the right eye.

creating the tiger-like features

Step 8

For the nose, create a dark
brown ellipse (the same fill color as the pupil) and make a sharp base
using the Convert Anchor Point Tool (Shift-C) by clicking on the bottom
anchor point.

For the snout, create a beige ellipse behind the nose.
Make another Copy of this oval and place it as shown in the image below. Now
make the shadow of these beige ellipses: create a slightly larger Copy
of these ellipses behind (Control-C, Control-B), make them darker, and
move down a little bit. Finally, add another large light brown ellipse
below.

creating the nose and mouth

Step 9

For the whiskers, we will use the Arc Tool.
First, remove the Fill color and set a brown Stroke color. Draw two
whiskers on the left side of the snout. Keep the whiskers selected and
hit the Reflect Tool (O). Make a vertical reflection as you did before
with the ears and eyes.

creating the whiskers

Place the snout on the head of our tiger.

placing the nose and mouth

2. How to Create the Tiger’s Body

Step 1

Let’s
create the chest. Using the Ellipse Tool (L), draw an oval. Take the
Direct Selection Tool (A) and move the handles of the anchor points to
create an upside-down pear-like shape. Place the chest under the head
(Control-X, Control-B).

creating the chest

Step 2

Let’s continue creating the
body with another orange oval. Deform this oval shape by using the
Direct Selection Tool (A). Place the orange shape behind the chest.

creating the body

Step 3

To
draw the legs, start with an oval again (Guess how many times I’ve said
„start with an oval”?). First, a large vertical orange oval, and then a
smaller horizontal beige oval. Select the left and right anchor points
of the smaller oval with the Direct Selection Tool (A), and move them
down using the Down Arrow key on the keyboard. Next, move the anchor
points of the orange oval to create a shape similar to the image
below.

creating the paw

Step 4

Now let’s create the paw. Make a Copy of the
beige shape behind, make it darker, and shift it slightly to the right.
Make a third Copy of the light brown shape behind and shift it further
to the right. Repeat this step twice more: first making a darker
copy and slightly shifting to the right, and then shifting the new light
brown copy to the right. As a result, you’ll end up with a paw similar
to the image below.

creating the paw 2

Step 5

Give this leg to the tiger. Then
make three more copies and give these to him as well. To divide the body
from the paws, make a Copy of the body behind and shift it down. Finally,
change the Fill color to a darker orange (take the same fill color as the
inside part of the ear).

placing paws

Step 6

For the tail, we will use
the Arc Tool again. Do not forget to remove the Fill color, set the
orange Stroke color, and check Round Cap on the Stroke panel. Draw a
line and deform its shape by adjusting handles. Attach the tail to our
predator.

If you like how the tail looks, Expand it (Object > Expand).

creating the tail

3. How to Create the Tiger’s Stripes

Step 1

In this next step, we will add stripes to the tiger’s body.

Draw
a thin vertical oval. While keeping it selected, hold down the Alt and
Shift keys and move the oval to the right. You will see that you just
created a copy of the original oval. Then press Control-D a few times to
repeat your last action. Group all the stripes together (right-click
> Group) and go to Effect > Warp > Arc. Enter the options you
see in the image below.

creating the stripes

After this, apply another effect to
this group of stripes: go to Effect > Warp > Arc Lower and enter the presented options. Expand the stripes (Object > Expand Appearance).
You can make a few copies of this set of stripes, as we will use them
later for the body, tail, legs and head as well. Group all the stripes (right-click
> Group).

creating the stripes 2

Step 2

Let’s
place these stripes on the body. Create a Copy of the orange part of
the body in front (Control-C, Control-F), Cut it off (Control-X), and
place in front of everything (Control-F).

A little explanation here:
when you create a copy in front of the orange body, this copy will
appear just in front of the original shape, not in front of the stripes
which we created. Then we need to cut off the copy and place it in front
of everything, now in front of the orange shape and stripes. Keeping
this copy and the stripes selected, press Crop in the Pathfinder panel
(Window > Pathfinder).

placing the stripes on the body

Step 3

Now we will place stripes
on the tail. Just repeat the same actions as you did for the body.
Place the stripes on the tail. Make a Copy of the tail in front of
everything (Control-C, Control-F and Control-X, Control-F). Keeping the
stripes selected and the copy of the tail in front, hit Crop in the
Pathfinder panel (Window > Pathfinder).

placing the stripes on the tail

Step 4

Similarly, place the stripes on all four legs.

placing the stripes on the legs

Step 5

Now
select only three stripes from the created set of stripes. To select
just three of them, you first need to Ungroup this set (right-click
> Ungroup), select three of them, and Group them back (right-click
> Group). Place three stripes from each side of the head and repeat
the same action with the Crop button as you have done for the body,
tail and legs.

placing the stripes on the face

Step 6

Let’s continue to give more stripes to
our tiger. Take another three stripes and adjust their sizes and
position them as shown in the image below. 

Next, make a reflected copy of this
set of stripes: right-click your mouse and select Transform >
Reflect. In the dialogue box, select Axis Vertical, Angle 90 degrees,
and hit Copy. Move this copy to the right until they’re attached.

creating more stripes for the face

Place these stripes on the forehead. Our tiger is ready!

placing the stripes on the forehead

4. How to Create the Background

Step 1

Since
our predator likes to hunt at night, let’s give it a dark background.
Create a grey-violet square behind the tiger, with 850 px Width and Height.

creating the background

Step 2

Let’s add some leaves from the jungle’s
forest. First, add an oval with a color darker than the background. To
transform this oval to a leaf, we will use the Eraser Tool (Shift-E). To
set the Eraser Tool options, double-click on the Eraser Tool and enter
Angle 0 degrees, Roundness 100%, Size 10 pt, and then hit OK.

Now
start erasing the parts of the oval from the side to the middle, as shown
by the arrows in the image below. Do this on both sides of the oval. The
erased lines do not have to be exactly symmetrical. When you are
finished with erasing, apply the Round Corners effect: go to Effect >
Stylize > Round Corners and select a radius value close to 10
px. Expand this leaf (Object > Expand Appearance).

creating the tropical leaf

Step 3

Make
many Copies of this leaf, Rotate them in different directions, and
resize them to different sizes. Place the created copies behind the
tiger and in front of the background.

placing the leaves

Conclusion

Now our
predator is ready to hunt! You did a great job! Do you think you can
transform this tiger into a lion? Or even a cat? Why not try it out?
Have fun with it!!

Cute Cartoon Tiger Illustration Adobe Illustrator Tutorial