Ride the wave...

[Ross Macintosh]

I was playing around some more with the contour tool. The result was this wave-like thingie...

Riding the xara wave, Ross

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[Ross Macintosh]

I was playing around some more with the contour tool. The result was this wave-like thingie...

Riding the xara wave, Ross

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

[geodd]

What you have captured there with the Magic of Xara is a Plasmadorfin. A dolphin like creature that inhabits the vast, plasma filled interstices of space. Their impressions are rarely felt on Earth! Please, please Ross a few clues on how you manuvered Xara into the position to do this.

[Ross Macintosh]

Yes it does have a dolphin-like character. Achieving the effect is much easier than it looks. In previous posts I've discussed the technique at length. Here I'll quote myself from an earlier post:

"the contour tool can create some interesting effects. I think we can all agree that when Xara Ltd. created the tool, such effects probably weren't on their mind. Jonathan Payne discovered that hidden in the straightforward tool were some interesting capabilities. See the thread Enter the Void - Experiments in Contouring to see examples and learn more. Also see Gallery seemed too quiet... for a couple animated gifs made using the technique and Pretty Poison for some other neat examples.

The technique involves giving a shape a multicoloured linear fill and a transparency. You then contour it (inside) with many steps. The magic happens when you Ctrl-select the original shape from within the contour and edit its fill and/or its transparency. Each edit results in modifications to all the contour steps. It is of course necessary to have a very high level of transparency. With many transparent contours one atop the other the effect is generated. It is a lot of fun to play with and exciting because it is hard to know what to anticipate...

Hope this encourages you to try it. If you do - here's a good tip: Start with a multicoloured linear fill that has some tight colour changes (drag colours from the colour bar onto a linear fill's editing arrow). That fill can later be changed to conical, circular, or elliptical and still keep all the colours. The tight colour changes work wonders in the contour."

Best of Luck with the Contouring - Ross

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