Keyboard mapping a font?

[Gare]

You're welcome, Staggers, and my personal info is completely fictitious, as are my photos. I do them in a modeling program.



Good luck and do check in. There's more than support at tg; there are experienced professionals who occasionally donate their skills in addition to their opinions and recommendations.

My Best,

Gary

[staggers]

My mammy always told me never to trust strangers <sniff>.

Now I think of it, the message that pic conveys is more of a sort of 'We do not tolerate failure in this organization' vibe. I feel used and dirty now. <sniff again for emphasis>.

[Gare]

Get a grip, son.

Pictures are only groups of pixels.

Reading into them is lie reading tea leaves.

-g-

[angelize]

Getting back to fonts

I have downloaded a trial version of type tool, and I am hoping to try creating a picture or dingbat font that will have series of images that will be one size for caps and a smaller size for lowercase.

[mwenz]

Frances--you might consider a plainer one for the lowercase and perhaps a fancier version for the uppercase characters. Being a font, they are already re-sizable.

Take care, Mike

[angelize]

Yes I have thought about that too and you are right probably different designs would be better. I'm still working on the image designs in Xara and depending on how many I decide to do I may only do lowercase anyway.

[morphonius_821]

Xara seems to be a great all round graphics app and who knows, with that thought in mind, font creation might be one of those things they could add in sometime in the future to round it off a bit more...
P.S hey angelize... ... how you doin...

[Gare]

Staggers had mentioned on this thread that he has no drawing skills and such.

Let me jump in and talk to anyone who considers themselves “artistically impaired”.

Although Xara is commonly called a “drawing program”, you do not draw in it, not really, and not even in a proxy fashion. I’ve been drawing, actually pushing graphite across a papyrus surface for more than 40 years and this qualifies me to make a comparison here. You do NOT have to go through all the elaborate hand gestures you’ve seen charcoal artists perform while creating a drawing. There is no smudging of charcoal with one’s thumb to create shading.

In a vector drawing program, there exists only a fraction of the eye/hand coordination that a traditional artist uses. Most people use a mouse as an input device, some use a Wacom or other digitizing tablet. Even if you used a touchscreen, an affordable one wouldn’t give you the feedback of physically drawing, and there is no tactile feedback, something a traditional artist uses to guide their strokes.

It took me anywhere from 3 months to half a year of constantly using a computer to adjust my artistic skills to using only an input device. I didn’t do any worthwhile art for a year after adopting a PC as an art tool; the apps were running me, not the other way around. Everything I did looked like the examples in the software.

My point, Staggers, and anyone who wants to design a font, is that traditional artistic skill is not necessary. To design a character for a font, you click a point, you click another point to make a line, and if you’re unhappy later with the line, you use the Selector tool in Xara to select and then move a control point, thus changing the line. If you need a curve, you use the Shape Editor tool to drag on a path segment to make it a curve. Alternatively, you can click+drag with the Pen tool to produce a curve between your current control point and the one you create when you release the left button.

It is NOT rocket science to create shapes in Xara. It’s as difficult as the three steps I outlined above! What might be intimidating or off-putting is the work you see by expert artists. These people have been using the program for centuries :), these people came to the party already understanding shading, perspective and all that dimensional jazz. Your ambitions as a typeface designer are leagues more modest and light years more attainable than, say, one of Ron Duke’s classic car illustrations.

All you’re doing in Xara, to create a character in a typeface, is hitting points on your monitor that correspond to points on inflection, sudden changes in course, along the outline of the font.

Please trust me on this one. I have experience in the relatively undemanding sport of creating typeface characters, and the entirely different and advanced discipline of creating illustrations with Xara.

Unless you have a No. 2 Ticonderoga in your fist, when you sit in front of the computer, you’re not really drawing.

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

Gary is absolutely correct and very eloquent in his post.

Many people say thay cannot draw because they cannot create a straight line.
1. Most artist must use a ruler or other straight edge to draw a straight line.
2. A computer can make your line straight for you if it is needed.

Making shapes for a font character (glyph) does not require the skills of Ron Duke, Bob Hahn, or any of the other Artists that use a Xara Application.

Use the Shape Editor Tool, Pen Tool, or Straight Line Tool to make your lines then use the Shape Editor to push, pull, bend, or move things until you have what you want.

Your choice of font creation tool will do the rest for you. Some minor tweaking with the font tool may be needed but nothing to sweat.

[staggers]

I've been reading the TT manual, and getting increasingly interested. You were right, Gary, about what a good program it is.

And by coincidence I had with me today the guy who's going to be creating the original glyphs, and I watched him playing with his own graphics prog. He drew a cartoon person, and then morphed it all over the place. He's read and understood what's required of him in his mission, should he choose to accept it.

A couple of newbie questions....

Q1. Is there any particular character that one should maybe start with (because of its relationship to others)?

Q2. The file will be saved as an .eps file, as that's the only relevant format available in the prog he's using. Is there an ideal format for importing into TT?

Regards

Staggers