Can This Be Done In Xara, Are there any tutorials available?

[marcelrobi]

Hey Guys, this for my own curiosity I have attached a picture and would like to know how much work is involved in creating backgrounds like the one found in the picture. How would one go about starting to design something like this? If there any tutorials that you know of that could help me that would be great. Thank you.

[gwpriester]

You could reproduce this but not in one step. You first need to create the gradient fill which might be accomplished using a 4-color fill (Fill Tool > Fill Type drop down menu) Then a new filled area top right with a lot of feathering.

The wavy lines can be accomplished with a series of blends. The stars can be achieved using a custom brush.

The best way to accomplish this, is to experiment and see if using Xara's tools if you can reproduce this.

I am sure that certain members of this forum who love a challenge will submit their attempts. But you will lean more if you tackle it yourself.

[James Allen]

Hi marcelrobi,

For this I would make the background using rectangles with various fills and transparencies, and lines. The rest is pretty straightforward.

With the fills, I make a transparency and clone (ctrl k) it, move the transparency and change its attributes (colour, size, percentage). So a set of ten such clones over each other only takes a couple of minutes. This whole background took a few minutes in Xara. A few more to add instructions, etc.

[marcelrobi]

Thank you gwpriester and James Allen, this was exactly what I was looking for ideas on how to blend the colors in the background and the sort of logic behind it. I can sort of see a logic to doing these fancy backgrounds. I saw this the other day and saw a lot of potential in being able to design stuff like that. I hope to find sometime and experiment with this.

Out of curiosity, would there a better program out there I should consider to get these type of results easier? From my understanding so far Xara is more for a vector type graphic.

[pauland]

would there a better program out there I should consider to get these type of results easier?

How much easier could it really be?

From my understanding so far Xara is more for a vector type graphic.

And you now have what you wanted as a vector graphic - a superior representation of the image that will scale well when resized.

Many professional illustrators produce such images using vector software.

What are your comments meant to mean?

[James Allen]

Out of curiosity, would there a better program out there I should consider to get these type of results easier?

You bet – Xara Designer Pro 6. I’m still using Xara 4.

From my understanding so far Xara is more for a vector type graphic.

Yes – it is a vector graphics program, but it does plenty with bitmaps, animations, webpages and 3D.

[marcelrobi]

Perfect thank you very much everyone.

[Rik]

Nice one James.

Sometimes, it's how to make a start... So, a good file to share and show.

Gary: I agree with you that it's about playing with the various tools to see what they do and what can be done.
But, I say that with hindsight and with the knowledge that I should have done that in the first place.

Since the line profiles arrived, it's become even more fun. I've found that facility to be quite handy, quite a few times.
You can see that James has also used line profiles in his file.

[handrawn]

Hi Rik - line profiles have been around a long time - am I missing something here ?

[James Allen]

Nice one James.
Sometimes, it's how to make a start... So, a good file to share and show.

Thanks Rik. There are some complex backgrounds that can be made so quickly in Xara, we should show them off while we can.