Little tip on colouring line drawings

[steve.ledger]

Thanks Bob - very relaxed easy to follow video.

[handrawn]

Not if you convert to editable shapes afterwards as Bob does.

in this case you would end up with two shapes if it was a one step contour.. and with inset path you would retain just the one shape?

so in Bob's case yes of course...

[covoxer]

in this case you would end up with two shapes if it was a one step contour..

Yes, that's what's illustrated on the tutorial. Then Bob deletes inner shapes manually producing exactly the same result as if he applied Inset Path.

[Bob Hahn]

One thing that puzzles me though is why do you use a 1 step contour instead of using inset path?

Because I didn't know about the inset path button (D'oh!) Or didn't pay attention to it, or realize what it did.

Now that makes things even easier now. I think I'll have to make a short follow up clip showing that step instead.

Who knew that I would learn something from my own videos!

[MarkMyWords]

Excellent video Bob, this is about the best Xtreme can do with filling shapes.

As for macros, well this process doesn't lend itself very well to automation, I've tried, the user must decide on what lines to remove and then discard some shapes as Bob shows. Even so, once you have done this a few times and learned the hotkeys it can be quite a time saver.

For some more complex images I will select each specific fill shape and copy-paste them in place to another layer as I give them a colour, this way the "extra bits" and duplicate shapes will be left on the original working layer and can be safely discarded all at once.

[Penny O'Rorke]

Bob, thanks again.........I learnt a lot from that, a very good tutorial......

[jonnycross]

Thanks for taking the time to explain this Great Job
regards Jon

[ZEBtoonz]

Great video and idea, Bob! Thanks for sharing it! I'm all for automation and finding ways to speed things up and be more efficient.

So I tried this method on one of my drawings with lots of detail, effect lines, etc. It worked fine but there were gaps I missed and unnecessary lines I should have deleted but forgot, etc. Then I had to find the shapes to delete that were formed by intersecting lines that were supposed to be blank and so on and so forth. So, even though I'm new to this method and a bit of "an old dog" when it comes to new tricks, I just found it more time consuming than my usual procedure. I probably should give it more time but it felt a bit like a Wallace & Gromit approach to achieving what I wanted.

What I do is make a layer named Color and place it under my drawing. Then I use the Freehand Tool to create each shape or I use the Pen Tool to click around the shape and then push and pull the shape to fit. And that's about it.

Like I said, I could give it more time so that I am more accustomed to the method and then take a drawing and time how long it takes to color. Then, use my current method and time that, and compare the two.

Another thought I had, though I haven't tried it out yet, is to create my drawing in Xara, export to a format recognized by Inkscape that has a fill tool I believe, do the fills there and then export just the color back into Xara. But it may just be more work than it's worth. I have also tried exporting my linework from Xara as a TIFF and putting it in Photoshop for coloring. But, I still prefer doing the whole thing in Xara as it is all vector and always editable and easy to change and control.

So there are many ways to get from A-Z. Whatever works for you is what's best. By the way, how do you make your video clips? I'd like to try some, then you can comment on mine

[dogbertbh]

I know if I make a U shape with my freehand tool and then make a blue box and press CTL-J it will fill the open shape with the blue color. I use this quite a bit with the monthly scribbles.

Is there any way to use this feature to fill in these shapes without the steps of closing them?

[Bob Hahn]

What I do is make a layer named Color and place it under my drawing. Then I use the Freehand Tool to create each shape or I use the Pen Tool to click around the shape and then push and pull the shape to fit. And that's about it.

That technique was the exact same way I did it myself. Creating each shape with the shape editor tool and shaping it to fit.

I like drawing and adding colour to a drawing, but having this step of creating shapes just too add colour, I can do with out. It's not drawing and it's not colouring. There has to be a quicker way. Maybe Xara's programming masters can come up with even a better way of filling shapes in future editions of Xtreme.

I tried Indscape's fill tool, but it didn't give results I liked.

I'm on a Mac, and recently updated my OS to "Snow Leopard." The QuickTime update in Snow Leopard now has screen recording capabilities. So that's what I've been using for my latest videos.

I have VirtualBox on my iMac running Windows XP, which runs Xara Xtreme. Maybe I'll make a clip showing that too!