June 2015 Guest Tutorial Tips and Tricks - Cast in Gold by Frances Proctor

June 2015 Guest Tutorial Tips and Tricks - Cast in Gold by Frances Proctor


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Turning everything you touch into gold isn’t a fairy tale any longer, not when your turn to the Guest Tutorial this month. Oh Lord, who does the copywriting for the Xara Xone!? With the aid of a tutorial file toy download, Frances Proctor will show you how to begin with a free typeface, and steps later you’ll arrive at lettering that looks as though you mined it during the 1840s in California! All it takes to the path to virtual riches is a little time and the latest version of Xara Designer. Get your miner’s cap on for some major fun!

Show off your new goldsmithing skills in this thread.

I enjoyed working through this tutorial a lot, Frances, thank you! It never ceases to amaze me how many different paths one can take in Xara to wind up with similar, sometimes identical results. I never considered applying the bitmap image as transparency, for example. The bitmap was created using Filter Forge, wasn't it?

As a long-time practicing alchemist, when you're finished using Frances' text example, you might feel like trying your new skill out on the traditional alchemist's symbol for gold, shown here. The purist of the (known at the time) metals, gold still holds a fascination for metallurgy workers and jewelry stores everywhere. :)

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My Best and thanks again, Frances,

Gary

Thanks Gary, and yep you are correct the bitmap I supplied for this tutorial was indeed created in Filter Forge, it's a simple perlin noise with a few tweaks. Filter forge is an amazing tool to pair with Xara :) I love the fact that it has six different types of noise to use as starting points and you can edit and tweak them almost infinitely! As well as the basic settings like roughness, scale detail contrast brightness etc each noise panel comes with 4 or five different profile settings (this allows you to adjust the basic algorithm to produce soft cloud like textures or things like plasma or sharp and spikey like electricity and also you can create custom profiles by using any of a number of editable curve functions including a completely editable bezier curve! Now multiply this by the six different noise types and you truly are only limited by your imagination :)

Thanks for this tutorial, it is always itself interesting to follow someones steps in menus where I rather rarely get, so good learning. Well this gold version is made by man fingers :D

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Looks good Csezh although your gold could use a little buffing :)

Nice one csehz, see you struck it rich with the gold, don't spend it all at once :) Not got round to doing this tut. only read it but as you said, it's really good, will pan for gold later today :D

Stygg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by csehz

Well this gold version is made by man fingers :D

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"He's the man,
the man with a heart of xone...
Your Art's your own..."

It took me over 10 seconds to figure out your joke, csehz. :)

-g

A great tutorial, Frances.
And many thanks for getting it up on the Xone, Gary.

The hard work, by both of you, is much appreciated. :-bd

So, here's my effort.
Some of my values are different to the tutorial, but then, I didn't choose the recommended font size!

Thanks for your words, well yes there were not enough buffing on that gold that is sure :D

Gare no jokes in that this man with a heart of Xone, because he already missed these tutorials :)

Very good to see you back!

Thanks, csehz, and for anyone who cares, I'm diligently working, piece by piece to get June Xara Xone up.

Sad to say that my brain bone is connected to my leg bone due to some unfortunate surgery, and my leg is not mended yet.

I will have to make amends.


-g