Cartoon Car

**Grafixman** · 12 April 2006, 02:23 PM

Logo making seems to be eluding me these days, but the traffic jam of funny cars at the Xara forum tickled my fancy. So here is a cartoon car created entirely in PI. The sketch I scanned in and used as a reference for 2d path work in PI was totally hideous, however, so I'm not going to include it. The final artwork(

) looks reasonably OK, though. C'mon Kiwi. I know you want to...

**-=Drifter=-** · 12 April 2006, 02:27 PM

Cool. It needs some goofy characters inside it.

**sallybode** · 12 April 2006, 05:05 PM

I love the cartoon car, and it would look good rumbling under the purring engine too.

**Kiwi** · 13 April 2006, 08:05 AM

Love your car GM!

Yep, you're right, I would like to be able to do one as good but my artistic ability might be a bit lacking here

Will try anyway later but don't hold your breath as my (ball anim) is about a third of the way to finishing. (Becoming an obsession

)
Love to know how you did the shaped lines on your car in PI?

**Grafixman** · 13 April 2006, 12:14 PM

You could probably do it easily in Xara. Then export the lineart for coloring in PI, or just simply finish the entire thing in Xara. The hard part for me was to get the flow of the lines right. Lines leads the eyesight, and for styles like these, I guess I was going for a flow from the center upwards, curving to the left and right, while the bumper forms a smiley mouth. Very subliminal, but that's how I feel caricatures and cartoony styles work.
I have a set of 2D path on lines I keep in my pallette. I just drag them out and switch to path edit mode. I usually just duplicate and edit them as I go along. Attached is the zipped PI8 file of those objects. Very cumbersome compared to Xara brushes, but I guess I do things the hard way, just to punish myself...

Bob, goofy characters.... I guess I would have to draw a group caricature of the members here in TG ...

.
Nah, caricatures eludes me, too.

**-=Drifter=-** · 13 April 2006, 12:26 PM

**Kiwi** · 13 April 2006, 12:29 PM

Thank's GM!
I saved your lines and had a look at them in PI ... a few months ago I tried doing the same thing but found it too time consuming.
It was for that same reason that I found Xara (Stroke shapes) but now realise there is a bit more to xara than just that lol.
Makes your car even more special, knowing the extra work it took to get looking right.. Well done!

**sallybode** · 14 April 2006, 01:52 AM

Yes, your car is very special.

And I can see the editable vector properties when I node edit it, but how in the world do you get the thick and thin line weight? Do tell, G-man.

**Grafixman** · 14 April 2006, 02:32 AM

Open the shape on path dialog box. There are options for changing the start and end sizes, as well as the number and spacing of the shape you're deforming on the path. The original shape was just an oval, or a rounded rectangle, I think...

**sallybode** · 14 April 2006, 03:15 PM

Are you working in PI 8? And exactly what is the way you pull up that palette or dialogue box, I did a search in both PI 8 and in 10 and couldn't find what you had done.

You know stuff this program doesn't know it can do, by golly.

Sometimes I have to play this card, I am blonde you know.