Next Project Attempt

[Cliff]

I wish I were better at Corel or Adobe Paint, this would not have been such a pain and might have more life in it.

[Greybeard]

Hi Cliff.
Great logo, but then I'm biased, having been a Snoopy fan for longer than I can remember.
I take it that's a jack plug lead he's waving over his head ?
(Tried walking on water - got wet. :) )

If you care to, please PM me, as I'd love to have a try at tweaking it, then I could send it back with instructions of what I'd done. Hopefully that would then move you forwards a little.
Regards
John

[Cliff]

Thanks John
Tried to zip the orginal bmp an attach it to a PM but coud not figure how. The drawing is of an Air Force patch created a long time ago for a group of communications trouble-shooters (Tech Control). I had been looking for it for some time and now that I found it will try to get it carved.

Cliff

[Greybeard]

Hi Cliff.
Well after several interuptions I finally finished Snoopy to my satisfaction.
I hope you like the effect - I certainly learned a lot doing it.
I've placed the badge in a rectangular region, but you can alter that to your own design, as the badge is a separate pattern.
That's one thing about graphics work, like most things, you never stop learning :)

Regards
John

[Cliff]

Excellent work, I wish I had your talent for shaping.
I've been re-working the orginal by hand to remove the jagged edges. I found the graphic was only 72 dpi so I've increased it to 300 dpi and I'm attempting to smooth it out one pixel at a time.
Your work looks great.
Thanks

Cliff

[rgant05]

Ok, John.... now you have to answer some specifics for the rest of us who are trying to learn this. Did you do it in Corel Draw? Looks like you regenerated the whole patch from scratch (well, I guess by tracing). Did you use mostly carefully select gray scales for the various depths? Noticed you may have used transformations on the outer ring and also some on snoopy to give slightly rounded edges on him. Also curious as to how you did the ribbon with the Water Walkers text on it. Did you use a linear fill from the center outwards to get it to go from above the surface in the middle to below on the edges? Did a great job on it.

[Greybeard]

You're right, RG both on the fills, and the fact that I worked from scratch.
I use corel draw 8 for my graphics work, with corelPhotopaint for manipulating any bitmaps, and the following notes are really only applicable to the conversion of clip art type images, like this one, rather than photos of people or animals.

The first thing I do is to import the coloured image into corelDraw.
I have stopped using corelTrace, as it generates hundreds, if not thousands of nodes on each line as it tries to follow the original jaggies around the bitmap image.

What I do use is the Bezier drawing tool, and generate a simple line that loops around each separate area of colour.
Then switch to the node editing tool to change all the segments to "curves".
Changing all the nodes("vertex" in Designer) to "cusps" then allows each closed loop to be pulled into shape to follow the original accurately, but with the minimum of nodes.

I always make the colour of the line a high contrast to the colours in the bitmap I'm working over, and fill each area with a different colour, so I can see what I've done. As I go, I tend to change the fill colour to match a previous area that I know will finish up at the same depth.
This is definitely a trial and error approach, but it helps the learning curve greatly.
Once all the areas have been drawn, only then do I start to consider the method of filling to get the surfaces and depths that are needed, and as I go, I delete the outline of each area. If the logo needs a line around some part I make that separately, just to give easier control over it.
(Control freak - Moi ?)

In Draw there are a variety of fill options, and I make full use of them all.
A solid fill will obviously give you a flat area in the final carving, but the shade of grey that it has will determine its depth with relation to the other areas.
If there are areas that I know will finish up flat, I change those to a shade of grey first, and make a guess as to what shade is needed.
Then any areas that need simple curved surfaces, like a cylindrical curve, can be filled using a two colour blend(black and white). Being of a mathematical turn of mind, I tend to use the control boxes in most fill tools to set the % black I want, all the time bearing in mind the relationship of depth to colour intensity.
The problem becomes more difficult when you have a complex surface to generate, like Snoopy needing a slight curved edge all around a complex outline.
For this, I use the Blend tool, and this, though fairly simple to use, needs lots of practice and exploration, to discover its full possibilities.
One of the discoveries I made was that it's easiest to get predictable results if the inner shape has the same number of nodes as the outer one. So generating the inner by duplicating the outer at a slight reduction in size will give you a good starting point.
Once the graphic starts to fill up with lots of different areas, it becomes a lot easier if you switch back and forth from "Normal" view to "Simple wireframe". This allows you to select the right line out of a nest of overlapping ones !
The oval frame was made by dropping two blends on top of each other, the outer curve was one, and the inner curve the second. Then it had a black oval inside as the general background, and to keep that separate from the blends.

How's that for starters ?
Regards
John

[rgant05]

Thanks so much John for taking the time to describe your techniques in Corel. It has helped me in several areas, introduing me to more tools. There is so much to learn in a program like that, I don't know if anyone ever learns all of it, but doing is the only way and verbal pointers and hints really help that along. Thats why I like to attempt doing stuff like that for others needing it (or even if they don't) just for the purpose of learning. I learned several things to try, just from your description. Thanks again.

Roger

[Greybeard]

Hi Roger, glad to help.
When typing it out it occurred to me that what I do as second nature is the result off using corel for at least 15 years(can't remember just how long !) but I'm still learning.

Each new tool I've got to know has been the result of trying to solve a particular problem, and just guessing that there had to be an easier way.
So with that in mind, I thought that rather than try to follow Jon's lead with tutorials, I'd offer my solutions to very specific problems.
An example comes to mind. Say you wanted a ribbon like the one at the bottom of the Snoopy logo. What I'll start this evening is work out the best way to pass that info over. Not just "Do this, this and this" but try and explain what happens in the process.
Don't hold your breath, though, as it may take a bit of sorting out.
Regards
John

[rgant05]

You're right John, about learning being a process that is dictated by need. I went for about 5 years without using Corel Draw (last version I used was Version 6). I used to do a lot of things that were based on what I needed to do. I could do things in Corel that would amaze the "word processor" type freinds that I had. And could whip out a project quickly, based on what I knew which was more in the printing and publishing area. After 5 years of not using it and now upgrading to X3 version, I started out feeling like I had never seen the program before. Mainly feeling that way because although I had used solid fills and screen and texture fills, I had never had a need to "think in 3D" before. Using the transformations, gradient fills and all have been quite a challenge to get back into. There are many ways to learn it and repetition is the only way to internalize it. But confirming what you just said..... fulfilling a particular need or requirement is the only real way to learn it. I went back on one of Jon's tutorials last night to pick up the COPY (with the right click) and flip that I had forgotten about years ago. I didn't need it until last night so even though I had watched the video before (several times), it wasn't until I really needed it that I learned what I had already seen done. I like your idea of the explaination of why and exactly what you are doing with a particular technique. Sometimes when you just stop at "do this" you aren't able to use that particular tool again for other task unless it is exactly the same as what you did before... when it could actually be used for many things if you only understood how it works. I'll be looking forward to what you come up with. Both you and Jon have a tremendous resource because of your level of experience, that I am sure you don't realize what you have to offer, so I for one want to echo THANK YOU