Spirograph Revival - a tutorial

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>

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

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

Not really but it really is addictive.

I have attached some variations on the theme.

Christine

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?

Great stuff, Ross and Christine. Thanks for the original idea, Ross, and thanks for playing with it even more, Christine!

joroho

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]

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>

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

here some samples of uses.

Enjoy!

But there are also other techniques (I played a lot with Spirograph when I was a child ...)

ivan

Ivan - that is a beautiful garden! I especially like the background you developed.

Your ideas about using blends look interesting. I for one will be trying that. Thanx.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

Thanks Ross, for remembering those nice times.
On the dining table where I play with Spirograph, there was allways this kind of oil cloth you see on the background of my image, ...and sometimes I was too exciting and my ball pen shift out of my paper, and ...!

Kindly yours,

ivan

There is a little program called Spirograf, it's freeware and it does just so. If you can't find it in some file server, I can post it here.
It does cool graphics, but you will be limited to bitmap (bmp) saving, or a screen capture.

-------------------------
Joan M. Mas
TypePhases: Dingbats and Fonts for yer computor!
http://inicia.es/de/jmas
-------------------------

Thanks for the link... but I think that this thread is aimed more at including these ideas in a vector based environment, with the ability to seamlesly integrate them into graphics... although I'm sure their will be many people who will appreaciate this program.

BTW, the uses for the brush tool is beginning to amaze me... it is so much more versatile than I ever imagined... I think Xara inadvertantly created a masterpiece with this tool. it was probably intended to simulate natural media and for novelty uses such as the feet... I wonder if they ever even dreamed of these use...

Michael Ward



<img="http://www.cashflowstore.com/temp/sig.gif">

You are all so creative with the brush tool. I never thought the brush tool had so many possibilities. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Joan

I was showing my 10 year old son how to make spirals on the computer tonight. He thought it was "too cool" and wanted to try it himself. He discovered he could make slinky's. I've attached his spiral effort. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

Joan

That is cool. I like the twisting and the colours. The best part about drawing a slinky with xara is they never get too tangled up...

Regards, Ross

Ivan - please send your oil cloth background to Forbo. It would make a great plastic laminate design for countertops. It is funky.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

Joanot's post above had me looking for Sirograf. In my searching I came across some neat stuf about spirograph. For instance here's the math behind spirograph:
x = (R+r)*cos(t) - (r+O)*cos(((R+r)/r)*t)
y = (R+r)*sin(t) - (r+O)*sin(((R+r)/r)*t)

I can hear you all saying "wow it is the sine - I could have sworn it was the cotangent" [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Actually the same site where I found that had a nifty (but ugly) java applet that makes spirographs and illustrates all the variables. You can find it here.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

here is mine. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img] [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif[/img]

I had an idea I had to try. When you have the edit brush dialogue open to the rotatation settings I noticed that the zero degree brush angle result is the same (of course) as the 360 degree result. This had me thinking about looping animated gifs. The example below was created by having only the brush angle change per frame.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

Ross, Panfer...

As to your questions about what spirographs are good for in their construction and use... i apply the same ideals to this with Xara as i do to Photoshop, or any other graphics software:

1) They teach you how to use & understand the given program better.

2) They provide a creative output, using said software, that will strengthen your imagination for future creative projects.

I am of course looking "beyond" the general cosmetics of the designs/shapes themselves.

And beyond that fact, as someone else said - "they're jusy plain fun to do!". [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
I like what everyone's done with them here, and i like Panfer's use of them too. The frame effect looks great.

Thanks thekeeper!
Got it. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

I thought that I'd bump this old thread because of "recent" questions about producing Certificate Borders - I forget the thread and am too lazy to look it up - I found this whilst browsing, and thought that this technique may be of interest.

Thanks for dragging that one up again Keith. Of course since Ross created his animated gif you can now use Flash as well and get smaller file sizes. You can also right click/zoom in.