February 2015 Video Tutorial -- Creating a Casino Poster Part 1

[Gare]

@Mikeymopar—

If all your posts are in moderation, I can't help that, but if you're having a hard time with posting a GIF that animates, Rik does it and he can help you.

I can also help: export it as a SWF file, and not a GIF. Take not of the dimensions.



Then delete the entry I've marked in green, and you're good to go.




My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

Hi Gary!

Thanks for the file.
the command Ctr + shift + E lead me to a saving action of the programme. When I used shift Ctr S I could convert them to editable shapes. Then at 6.18 minutes into the video you mention that one needs to select the red innercircle and something else. This something I simply cannot make out what it is. I hear the word not good enough for me to understand what other item I need to select.Furthermore I noticed that you use DSP extreme 10 (which I also work in). I noticed that you had another drawing tool in your flyout bar that actually works. However much I try to get that pentool into the drawing toolbar, it seems to work a bit like the shapeditortool?
Yep.......I scrutinised your video over and over and over again

I hope I make sense.

Hélène

It makes perfect sense and I think this is the first time in a video I called out a wrong command. Ctrl+Shift+S is indeed "Convert to Editable Shapes, found under the Arrange menu.

Second flaw: you created early in the tutorial a circle that at this point straddles the black band, yes? I want you to select it, and then select the black band. There are two ways to do this: 1.) go to wireframe quality mode and it's easy to see the center (red) circle and select it), 2.) Hold Alt while the Selector tool is the chosen tool, and the cursor turns upside-down. This means it is in "Scribble select" mode. And all you do is scribble over both the center red circle and the black band and magically, both are selected. NOW, press Ctrl+4, the Slice Shapes command. NOW, you have two alternating black and red circles and they can be rotated as I show in the video.

And everyone should remove the green outline around all the checkers. Select both bands, and then choose None from the outline width drop-down on the Standard Bar.

Oh, my toolbar is not the same as those used by others because I customized it using the Window>Control Bars command, then selected the bottom entry, I checked Tool Palette. The trick with this guy is you need to hold Alt while you drag a button on or off the toolbar or the Standard Bar.

I used the Pen tool a lot in this tutorial although many users are more comfortable making lines with the Shape tool. If you're comfortable editing a line or two in the Windows Registry (do not do this if you're not confident or don't understand Windows Registry—to make the Pen tool stay on the flyout, not just appear on the toolbar as a standalone button, in the Registry, go to (Use Ctrl+F to FIND)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XtremePro x64\10\Options\FlyoutBars
Set ShowPenToolOnFlyout value data to 1.


Hélène, my apologies also for my enunciation. I'm American, I speak US English, which can be easy to misunderstand if one is from a different country that also speaks English. Also, I think my voice was a little muffled because I had just finished eating lunch, pastrami on whole wheat with Grey Poupon mustard, and Romaine lettuce.

Sorry for over-sharing and I hope this helps with this tutorial and future ones.

My Best,

Gary

[mwenz]

...
I used the Pen tool a lot in this tutorial although many users are more comfortable making lines with the Shape tool. If you're comfortable editing a line or two in the Windows Registry (do not do this if you're not confident or don't understand Windows Registry—to make the Pen tool stay on the flyout, not just appear on the toolbar as a standalone button, in the Registry, go to (Use Ctrl+F to FIND)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XtremePro x64\10\Options\FlyoutBars
Set ShowPenToolOnFlyout value data to 1. ...

Or use XaReg to edit the various options.

[stygg2003]

While waiting with bated breath for Part 2 of the Casino Poster I just had to put some extras in as Rik did. Don't take it serious folks, just done for a bit of fun, although it did remind me of a Casino night some time back in Salford, Manchester. Darn it, Big Swing Band gave away my age.

Stygg

[mwenz]

Oh I dunno. I have listend to swing since I was a teen. I was a teen when rock was king...Summer of Love and all that.

[Gare]

While waiting with bated breath for Part 2 of the Casino Poster I just had to put some extras in as Rik did. Don't take it serious folks, just done for a bit of fun, although it did remind me of a Casino night some time back in Salford, Manchester. Darn it, Big Swing Band gave away my age.

Stygg

The wait won't be long, stygg, as I'm videoing (is that a word?) some of the steps on making a custom brush right now. And yep, if you saw my SWF in post #31, you're looking at the hand-drawn "extruded" shapes we're going to play with. Add to that some Poker chips and a set of dice Rik lent me (he wants them back when we're done ), and my Goodness, it wouldn't be a Casino Night without some playing cards...the whole deal will be engaging (Gary hopes) and more than anything, technical tricks will take a back seat to good composition.

By the way, stygg, I LOVE your choice of fonts, really, truly, I could use your piece asd an example of good typography if I do the tutorial I want to in April. The only thing? I don't think tilting the phrase "Happy Hour" contributes to an otherwise thoughtful, delightful composition. Text such as yours (and I did try to match your fonts, but only came close) can "embrace" and integrate with the rest of the written idea. Text that tilts like that detracts from reading the notice as an overall text phrase, it stops the reader for a moment when it should lead the reader into completing this terrific deal on beer!

The other reason why I advise away from text at an angle when everything else is at a different angle, is a personal one, a sorry vision of how layouts were done in te early 1970s. I used to see this done by paste-up artists when I worked at my first ad agency, hated it then, but realize now that because we own programs such as Xara, we can do anything we can imaging with text.



Thoughts on this revision?

Stygg, this shows great "Thought Work" and that's where all great Art begins.

My Best,

Gary

[mikeymopar]

@Mikeymopar—

If all your posts are in moderation, I can't help that, but if you're having a hard time with posting a GIF that animates, Rik does it and he can help you.

I can also help: export it as a SWF file, and not a GIF. Take not of the dimensions....

hmmm....i think it didn't post coz of my post count because i've posted gifs all over the place in other (phone) forums. i'll give the swf format a go here to see if it works any better or if it also goes to moderation

[Gare]

It reads beautifully from where I'm sitting!

Congrats, mikeymopar!

-g

GIFs can play in a pop-up window, but will not play as just embedded files...you need to click the embedded file first. No idea why.

[mikeymopar]

swf it is then. Thx Gary!

[steve.ledger]

It reads beautifully from where I'm sitting!

Congrats, mikeymopar!

-g

GIFs can play in a pop-up window, but will not play as just embedded files...you need to click the embedded file first. No idea why.

This is due to the forum software creating a thumbnail.
The GIF format has limitations when it comes to resizing on the fly.
Resizing a GIF is not a small task. The software which creates the thumbnails on the server (Imagemagick) would need to strip each frame out from the animated compressed one, resize each frame individually and then put them together and compress to make the resized GIF. So for thumbnails you get a static frame (unless the thumbnail is the same size as the gif).