March 2012 Xara Vector Grunge Effects by iamtheblues Guest Tips and Trick Tutorial

[Barbara B]

TalkGraphics' own Bob Taylor AKA imtheblues has contributed this months Xara Xone Tips and Tricks. His tutorial Building a Xara Vector Grunge Effect is a keeper.

You can use this thread to show off your very best grungy, Xara vector artwork that this tutorial has inspired and be sure to thank Bob for his fine work.

[angelize]

A great tutorial Bob, well done. I found it inspiring!

[mwenz]

Thanks, Bob!

Take care, Mike

[Soquili]

Thanks Bob.

[Gare]

I like what Mike did, and tried to get some serious grunge going on with a logo. Turns out I had about 800 pieces and this dragged the Extrude to a crawl!



—g

[angelize]

I used a technique almost the same as this once to create an old west wanted poster, I used a bitmap transparency instead of the fractal plasma but other than that everything else I did pretty much the same. I did the poster as a prank gift for my husband I had him "wanted" for not doing household chores or some such silly thing

I used the same techniques with a few added steps to make a photo of him look as if it was part of the printed poster. I can't find my original file for that, but here is an example of some text grunged using a bit map transparency and Bob's basic technique.



Here is an extruded version I tried to simplify the grungy text before extruding by removing all but the odd shape that I used to distress the edges further and doing a little subtracting. I had it down to only 7 shapes but those 7 shapes had thousands and thousands of nodes and that still slowed Xara to a crawl!

But the effect is kind of cool!

[MarcT]

Great tutorial, thanks Bob!

I'm playing more and more with profile curves.
Also with bitmap fills, using profiles for dark/light contone.

Marc

[avalon]

Some grunge...reduced in size.

[wizard509]

Gare I like your grunge logo. That's pretty neat.

[Gare]

Thanks, Larry.

Hey, I arrived at an interesting, large, almost sponge-like piece of "grunge". It sort of looks like an old school composition book cover.

Here is is for anyone to play with, attached.

You can make a logo or something and clip it to this shape.



My Best,

Gary