February 2013 Guest Tips and Tricks - Making Surreal Backgrounds with Xara Fractals

[Gare]

Hi and welcome tx—

That line you, or anyone gets, is due t Xara's native anti-aliasing.

If there is a fractional amount, let's say 95.15 pixels per inch or something with a bitmap you've scaled, the screen doesn't resolve this fractional amount properly at all resolutions, including viewing resolutions.

So if you zoom, that visible line might go away at certain viewing resolutions.

It's Xara, not Stygg's tutorial.

It's irritating though!

My Best,

Gary

[dcahall]

Just had to give Stygg's good tutorial a try.

Of course I always have to "do my own thing" with these so I combined Stygg's tutorial with stuff from a thread about curving a show plus some stuff from one of the exercises in Gary's book and I hope a little from Gar's tut on reflections. So, now you guys have something throw some darts at :-)

[Gare]

You get an A+++ for integrating both what you learn with your resources.

Oh, um Stygg might throw darts, but I'm from The USA, New York specifically. We don't throw darts because we don't have pubs.

Our sport is throwing insults at California.

-g

[dcahall]

Thanks for the kind feedback. I really had some fun trying to incorporate off of these things with the tutorial. You might notice that the boy is an adaptation of the one in your Clock Tower image. I used the shape tool to create a bunch of pieces that he is made of.

Yeah, that darts comment was kind of out of line as I think about it. I really did not mean it to be negative. I was really saying, go ahead and give me feed back so I can continue to improve my skills. As you have seen several time before, I am not an artist. I have been doing this stuff as a retirement hobby.

Sometimes I wish I had a good use for this stuff because it is fun. I really like using the Xara tool and I really appreciate the skills people like you, Frances, Stygg and several others are willing to share with people like me.

[Gare]

As you have seen several time before, I am not an artist. I have been doing this stuff as a retirement hobby.Sometimes I wish I had a good use for this stuff because it is fun.

I've been "doing Art" for most of my life, and for most of my life, the pursuit of self-expression via creating stuff on paper has not paid the bills or filled the fridge. Sadly, this is why many gifted people turn to art as a relaxation and/or a passtime.

It is certainly relaxing, or can be if you immerse yourself in it. But for all my experience, the pursuit of Art is usually a reward in and of itself. The process of creation doesn't have to have a "good use" as you put it.

Let your experience and own person thrill of having said something in a non-verbal way be your payoff.

My Best,

Gary

[stygg2003]

Glad you enjoyed the tut. dcahall and I like the variation you've created, really good. As Gary always says, if you learn from resources and improve or add to the original well that must be good. I notice this is the second time you finish your post with "throw darts at it" stop putting yourself down, were all learning here and hope to improve as we go.

Stygg

[dcahall]

Yep, no more "throw darts at it". That comes across negative which is not what I meant.

Thanks for the good words. I did have a couple of problems so I improvised a little. I am going to go back through the tut and see what caused me the problem and let you know what they were. I do remember that one of them was with the profile. You said select option 3 but I did not have multiple options. I just made the setting like what your screen capture showed.

I will add another post when I go back and see where I had a problem.

BTW: I do not know if it makes a difference but I am using P&GD instead of Designer.

[dcahall]

Went through the tut again and think I messed up the first time (although I honestly was satisfied with the final picture). The only question I might have is the dimensions in two places.

1. On step 4 under "Whipping up a Cloudy Sky" you say the dimension should be 735x992 pixels. Did you really mean for it to be that tall. Yes, it got fixed when you do the Clip View but I wondered if you meant for it to by 992x735.
2. On step 1 under "Creating the Ground Plane" you say the dimension should be 627x509. Should the width be the same as the original box (672)?

I also did one additional step. Since this wound up with a pretty tall image, I created a final box that was the size of the total image I wanted, put it to the back, did Ctrl-A to select all objects and finally did a Clip View to wind up with the final image (below).



Once again, just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the tut and feel that I learned some very useful things for future endeavors.

[stygg2003]

The dimensions I give in the tut. dcahall are correct and your final image is pretty good. If what you finally see is what you like then that's it. You made some changes and your image turned out good. The line you see between the sky and ground base is due to Xara's anti-analising and not a fault in the tut. as Gary explained in an earlier post.

Stygg.

[dcahall]

In my first one try I eliminated the line by slightly overlapping the sky and ground and applying a small amount of feathering. You have taught me something here that I think will be very useful. I do not think I would have thought of doing multiple layers of fractal fills to achieve the sky like this.

Looking forward to more tutorials. It is always fun to learn how to make better use of a tool.

I wish that you, Gary, Frances and a couple of others could/would write tutorials for another product that I own (ArtRage 4) so that I could learn how to use that software better. It is a great artist tool but I am not artist and sometimes I get really frustrated because I cannot figure out how to use the software to achieve some things.