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As a kid I loved playing with spirograph. It was always great fun. Now I realize I can create the same fascinating patterns in xara x. Try it yourself - it is wholesome fun for the whole family!
First step is to create an appropriate brush: Draw a circle. Give it a line thickness, line colour, and no fill. With your friend the circle selected, click on the freehand line tool and choose "make brush". It will ask you for a name - I called mine "Sammy".
Second step is to create the shape the brush will be applied to. Draw another circle - again without any fill. It should have a visible line weight. I drew mine about the same size as the one that became the brush.
The third step involves applying the circle brush (Sammy) to the circle. I did that by dragging and dropping from the line gallery. In the line gallery I found Sammy and dragged him over to the line edge of the circle. As you get close enough for dropping to work, the arrow cursor modifies to have a little line - see that, release the mouse button you've been holding while dragging, and you've dropped the brush onto the line.
The fourth step is to modify the brush to generate an interesting pattern. With the circle that has the brush applied selected, click on the freehand line tool and choose "edit brush". Now play with the settings and you'll see the patterns generate interactively. Most of the editor's little sliders do nothing to this brush. The important ones to adjust are the "offset" and the "spacing". Random settings kind of mess things up in my opinion. Do what you want - see if I care! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]
The fifth step is the most important! Remind yourself you are having fun. After you make one, you can easily create others in fewer steps by simply making clones and editing each one's brush settings.
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
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Thanks for the tip Ross, I hadn't thought of doing spirograph this way I had used the rotate option.
Attached result of my earlier efforts.
Christine
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By starting with more than 1 circle the results are even more spectacular.
I could play with this for hours, if only I didn't have to go to work...
Christine
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Not really but it really is addictive.
I have attached some variations on the theme.
Christine
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I tried with star shape and applied clipview in center and overlaid with plain circle(trans) and gave circular fill, turned out quite nice.
Just one question regarding these brushes.
Where would you use them?
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Great stuff, Ross and Christine. Thanks for the original idea, Ross, and thanks for playing with it even more, Christine!
joroho
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I just posted a "Creating Spirographs" tutorial on my Photoshop site yesterday. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Oooo scary! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]
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That is scary Mr. theKeeper! How would you answer Panfer's question "where would you use them"?
I'd have to say the point is having some fun. That said I can imagine them being useful in an illustration or as a background. Christine's examples, that look like lace, would look nice perspectivized and set on a table. All in all, someday somewhere there will be a use for almost any technique you add to your collection...
Regards, Ross
<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>
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With a technique close to this I used to draw spirals, its possible to draw spirograph like lines.
1 Draw the object you will use to attach the points of your line
2 Blend this object around a circle (or another shape)
3 Convert it to shapes and remove one of the two superposed objects at extremities
4 Check "snap to objects" and draw your line, using shape editor and snapping the points in the order you chose
optional:
5 Eventually remove some rows of points to obtain different kind of shapes like illustrated here
6 Eventually superpose two different shapes and use boolean operations (add, intersect, ...)
7 Eventually use contouring ...
Enjoy !
(and this is not finished!)
ivan
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here some samples of uses.
Enjoy!
But there are also other techniques (I played a lot with Spirograph when I was a child ...)
ivan