Expand/Contract in XaraX

[cdguy]

Hi all!

I was going through a PS tutorial there a while back on creating AQUA INTERFACES and I'm curious as to how I can come up with this sort of a design in Xara.

I've tried to duplicate a shape and resize it, but I can't come up with the same effect as expand/contract in PS. It's easy to resize and dup circles or lines, but what about odd shapes (without having to draw them from scratch inside the 'outer' shape).

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Check out the tutorial on Aqua Interfaces:

Eyeball Design Tutorials

I think you all are the best and thanks!

marcel (a.k.a. the cdguy)

[cdguy]

Hi all!

I was going through a PS tutorial there a while back on creating AQUA INTERFACES and I'm curious as to how I can come up with this sort of a design in Xara.

I've tried to duplicate a shape and resize it, but I can't come up with the same effect as expand/contract in PS. It's easy to resize and dup circles or lines, but what about odd shapes (without having to draw them from scratch inside the 'outer' shape).

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Check out the tutorial on Aqua Interfaces:

Eyeball Design Tutorials

I think you all are the best and thanks!

marcel (a.k.a. the cdguy)

[Egg Bramhill]

And welcome to the forum. I think the expand contract tool in PS must be similar to XaraX's Contour tool. Please see the attached mini tut below. nb on the cloned shape I have used a pale blue as a fill just so you can see the difference from the original. This clone has a flat fill.
Egg

[gwpriester]

Welcome to the Xara X Conference cdperson

If you want a full blown tutorial for creating the image posted below try theApril 2001 Xara X XaraXone Tutorial

And when you finish that one there are more than six year's worth of monthly step-by-step Xara tutorials posted on the XaraXone

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

<a href="http://www.gwpriester.com">
www.gwpriester.com </a>


XaraXone

[cdguy]

Thanks a lot guys!

I'll give your method a shot Egg. I haven't tried the contour on odd shapes yet.

And Gary, for the first 3 months I used Xara, I went through so many of your tutorials that if they weren't there I'd never have figured out anything! It's good to have such a wealth of reference! (downloaded pretty near all of them)

thanks again ;-)

marcel

[ivan louette]

Hello Marcel,

Xara X is full of different techniques to reach close effects well adapted to different circumstances.

You could try:

this one

And if you are interested by other techniques I developped:

go here

Friendly,
ivan

[Bob C.]

Egg:
Thanks for the tut!

ivan:
This is an amazing and impressive list of hints and techniques.

The initial attempts I made with brushes using the first release of XaraX crashed my machine just about every time so I never experimented with them much. The latest and current version has apparently fixed that so I’m eager to try them again. Thanks for putting them together.

Bob C.