The Young Person's Guide To Xara X

[Erik Heyninck]

You, being a botanis must know a lot about roots. And a culture is not a language but the roots in which your individuality is firmly planted. And so much beautiful Flemish poetry was written in French. Amitié, mon cher, amitié.

Be convinced that I'm not that elitarist either. But I do believe one buys the dream, not the machine. By the way: this is also a good trick against temptation: don't start running on "what one can do with it" but try to find out what YOU will use it for. It's allright if it is a toy, or even a collection item, but investigate your motives. Some nice surprizes await you.

And please: read my "what's this" topic, and go on with sharing your pathways into Xara's jungle.

ERIK

[ivan louette]

Please, Erik, post here some URL for this product; that may be interesting. I did the same with PlantStudio, Spiraliser and Hot Door Multipage. The two former can create images which may be very amazing to use in Xara X.

I love XVIIth century flemish paintings for their qualities in botany, but I am also a fanatic of James Ensor and I am laughin when I imaginate what he could have made with computer graphic products like Xara X ...!

Regards
ivan

[Erik Heyninck]

what Xara is for the web and graphics is Ultrafractal for...fractals and Opera for browsers.


site: http://www.ultrafractal.com

and some very good tutorials at
http://parkenet.org/jp/ufjumpstart.html

you can download a free trial with time limit, and register avec a secure server. Very cheap 35US$. The architect comes from Holland. A genius.
a toi, amitiés, ERIK [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_razz.gif[/img]

[epiphane]

This youngster of 51 who is a Corelian 7 or is it a 7 Corelian..... (sounds like a rank in the Space Federation, eh?), has been looking over your shoulders for about a year.

I've never really been sure what Xara is besides a vector drawing program, but since it's users seem to reallllyyy like it I've been hanging here around getting a feel for it.

I do this drawing/painting stuff for fun (Draw/PP/Painter) & I'll probably try out this CD that you all are talking about. These links & tutorials are greatly appreciated....please continue thinking about us youngsters.

cu....
Peter

[Egg Bramhill]

Some great ideas here. Maybe someone could persuade Xara to contribute a free copy of XX for the best young artist if we held a competetion?
Meanwhile if you like illusions tryillusion web page
Egg

[Erik Heyninck]

Thanks you Egg for commenting on this topic.

It might be a good idea, besides the plug-ins and the future sister-programmes, if the best of images were to be shown in the gallery with the possibility for others to go to a "how I did this"
page. If there were some kind of counter on each tut, the more succesfull could eventually be awarded by Xara. There might be room for experienced users, intermediate ones and starters, so everyone could engage themselves in the creation of more than useful (which are, of course, important too) things.
Remember Oscar Wilde's saying: "the artist is the creator of beautiful things."

Just imagine those Art-Nouveau designers having Xara's possibilities...

I greet thee. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]


O, just another idea: You know ComputerArts Special, the magazine?
They just did an 100% illustration issue, and one on Photoshop. Being British, they might just do something for Xara too. (Rule o Xara, o Xara rule the (electronic) waves...)

[This message was edited by Erik Heyninck on January 13, 2001 at 05:36 AM.]

[Steve Newport]

Hey, kind of like the idea about the contest for the younger artists here, it sounds like it could be a lot of fun providing there are enough to enter! It's also a good idea to try and get younger highschoolers to start using the program to get them introduced early into the world of graphic design.
I got CorelXARA 1.5 a couple years back with no previous knowledge and no tutorials or instructions and quickly learned what powers and possibilities it has to offer. With many years of playing around and building techniques of my own I finally had gotten the smarts to go to Xara's website. And after seeing all that's here I picked up on some of the techniques used by the pros and started using it more and more. I can now officially say that I am a Xara Addict! Seeya all later [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Steve Newpor

[amoore]

I wasn't criticizing your suggestion by mentioning Gary's tutorials. I was trying to add to your resources. Efforts at newbie-assistance are all to the good, AFAIC. Go for it!

As for pies and arcs, they're not my strong suit. However, I can immediately think of two ways to make pies. One is to slice a circle shape with lines, and the other is to modify a circle shape using guidelines and the Shape Editor tool.

Gary's current tutorial includes a drag & drop routine for creating pie wedges.

I have to go out for a while. If no one else has come up with an explanation by then, I'll try to lay something out for you when I come back.

Allison

[This message was edited by Allison Moore on January 13, 2001 at 11:34 AM.]

[Erik Heyninck]

Allison, I'm Flemish and sometimes I interpret too quickly in a foreign language. So: simply friends, ok?
As for the pies and arcs: I come from DRAW and was searching for a possible hidden tool. Frustration being a good energy source, I found out how to make them, be it with a few bizarre details.

[Klaus Nordby]

Ivan wrote: "Perhaps another idea (more superficial but funny): Xara's programmers are extremely modest. My proposition is a little video presentation (humoristic like english people can do) which shows them and their program at work, speaks about the history of the product (from Archimedes computers, ...) and last but not least presents the work of Gary and the entousiastic forum !!! Perhaps could it be shown on TV too ???"

Sounds a bit too much to ask of our (usually) repressed British friends! A more modest - and realistic start - would simply be for Xara Ltd. to put the names of the program's creators in the opening screen or the "About" screen. After all, if a mega-corporate entity like Adobe can give their programmers full screen credit, why not? Why shouldn't Mark and the rest have their 15 seconds' worth of public glory?


K