Ships 'n XARA

[Jparshall]

I'm a naval historian (at least at night) and am using XARA to do all the illustrations for a forthcoming book I'm writing on the Battle of Midway. I thought I might share one of my pics; my latest version of the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu. Feedback is most welcome--I am self-taught, and am still trying to figure out how to do shading, fractal cloud fills, and that sort of thing. Any tips on increasing the realism would be gratefully received. Sorry the damned thing is so gray--warships are kinda blah that way, I'm afraid.

Cheers,

-jon parshall-
Imperial Japanese Navy Homepage
http://www.combinedfleet.com

[This message was edited by Jon Parshall on October 02, 2001 at 17:58.]

[Jparshall]

I'm a naval historian (at least at night) and am using XARA to do all the illustrations for a forthcoming book I'm writing on the Battle of Midway. I thought I might share one of my pics; my latest version of the Japanese aircraft carrier Soryu. Feedback is most welcome--I am self-taught, and am still trying to figure out how to do shading, fractal cloud fills, and that sort of thing. Any tips on increasing the realism would be gratefully received. Sorry the damned thing is so gray--warships are kinda blah that way, I'm afraid.

Cheers,

-jon parshall-
Imperial Japanese Navy Homepage
http://www.combinedfleet.com

[This message was edited by Jon Parshall on October 02, 2001 at 17:58.]

[Egg Bramhill]

Welcome to the forums. Your line drawings are excellent and I wouldn't think there was much you could do to improve them. I visited your site quickly (By the way the "m" is missing off the .com so the link doesn't work correctly. You may wish to correct it)
These drawings would transfer well to a Flash file. It would be great to Zoom into portions of the flat-top. This was a line drawing I created in XaraX and exported as a flash file.

Flash line drawing

Line widths can be a problem, as can some of XaraX's more advanced features but they do import into swf in the main.

Egg

[This message was edited by Egg Bramhill on October 02, 2001 at 16:26.]

[Egg Bramhill]

I've been thinking about your questions re shadings and fills. I messed around with the "Ceramic", giving her a grey hull. I created a square and gave it a fractal plasma 2 colour grey fill. I cloned this and gave it a 50 % transparency and rotated it 90 degrees. I then created a bitmap copy of these squares, which I used as a fill for the hull. Further to this I applied the odd occasional shape on the hull and gave this a grey/rusty fractal plasma fill, then feathered these and applied transparencies. Finally I gave some shading to the bow and stern.
For computer reproduction I'm not sure it's really necessary, but it well may increase the image if it's going to print.
See attached files.

[Egg Bramhill]

Egg

[Jparshall]

I'm very intrigued by the Flash thing--the ability to zoom is really very cool. And these images have a *lot* of detail that don't come out in the 1000+ pixel GIF, particularly in the aircraft, which are perfectly to scale and actually have authentic Soryu squadron markings. The ability to zoom in would be a very cool feature to have on my Web site. I don't own any Flash tools, though--what's the general procedure for importing/exporting a Xara line drawing into Flash format?

Also, regarding the fills on SS Ceramic, you basically did what I did, but took it a notch farther. I used a fractal cloud fill on the main hull to give it a more mottled appearance (these ships were hand-painted with rollers by guys hanging from the railings on ropes--you can't tell me that the paint job was a model of uniformity!)--but I didn't do a transparency on top of that. I take it the reason for rotating the "grain" of the transparency is to add a little more randomness and depth to the fill? I may have to give that whirl...

Regarding the flight deck, I used a 2-tone fractal cloud fill, and then scrunched the axes so they're very long in one dimension and very short in the other. I think the effect is... okay. Are there better techniques around for creating a weathered wood appearance? These decks were teak, so they were fairly light colored, but they also had tire skids all over them, so...

Thanks very much for the encouragement and advice!

-jon

[a4hire]

Hi Jon
I think that your ship images are very nice. I enjoyed seeing them.