October 2013 Xara Xone Tute: Stepping Into High Gear

[stygg2003]

Well, you're doing 'some great interfering' here because that's a really nice illustration!

Thanks for the kind comment Boy. I'm dreading when the kids want the rotor, the bearings, bearing housing and all the rest that an electric motor comprises of, I mean the last question my grandson asked before going home was, what's a squirrel cage motor granddad!! I thought my god, don't you kids read comics anymore

Stygg

[csehz]

Inspired by Stygg's clock idea for the gears, but going to the extruding direction

[stygg2003]

Inspired by Stygg's clock idea for the gears, but going to the extruding direction

That looks really good csehz, please post your finished image when complete.

Stygg

[Gare]

@ csehz—

Once again you surprise me! I did not think that this month's tutorial was going to "rock the world"; I thought it was a good piece of advice for drawing symmetrical objects, but I never know from month to month whether I've manufactured a winner or not.

Actually, I've always set right-click to "set line color" on the View tab of Options. I have no use for the menu to pop-up, although I'm sure some artists do.

I will be on the lookout for other strange or clever things I do as second-nature and include them in future tutorials if I think they'll be useful.

Xara Xone Academy, eh? Rik, can I have a crest for all the diplomas I shall pass out?

Seriously? This place of learning has no hallowed halls, and there's no graduation ceremony because this is continuing education, sort of like a moebius strip.



@Frances, lovely, ambitious work, thanks for sharing.

@Stygg, I haven't taken an electric engine out of one of my toys in 50 years. But yours looks like the real deal!

-g

[Rik]

This was the idea I had.

[Gare]

I LOVE IT!

ALL the submissions!

tg has outstanding artists when properly motivated!



-g

[csehz]

I did not think that this month's tutorial was going to "rock the world"; I thought it was a good piece of advice for drawing symmetrical objects, but I never know from month to month whether I've manufactured a winner or not.

Yes I can imagine that hard to estimate month by month which topic will be 'successful' or which one will have maybe less visitors, it may depend on a lot of things, the level of particular xaraist and sure also on their actual time to play with Xara. Your level is standard of course, that is the academy one!

Personally for me these three methods were great summarizing of that knowledge which is in the deep of TG somewhere, the second and the third one I knew around, the first one the quickshape way was completely new. But they inspirate so lot of using, still with the gears to extrude or try to animate, I would like to try also rotate the extruded clock once. But also inspirates for other topics like flowers or snowflakes for the coming christmas.

This time I was even so enthusiastic after completing these gear scenarios, that had the feeling I should start from the beginning all of your videos and absorb more small things which did not perceive so far With my hopefully better and better english

Maybe your XaraXone videos a little bit similiar to books, reading next time the same, it gives a new level of understanding. Once maybe I will be strong enough to jump into the vector bevels again :-)

[Gare]

@csehz—

Your English is 10 to the 7th power better than my Slovak, friend. I know three phrases, as you might remember!

Well, I guess as long as the tutorials reside on 1.) YouTube, and 2.) on our backups here in the U.S., yes, you could indeed go back through the tutorials and perhaps see a new thing or two.

Something that struck me this month is that with QuickShapes (including the Rectangle and Ellipse tools), I do not use the "draw from center, draw diagonally (Radius, Diameter, and Bounds)" buttons on the Infobar, but instead prefer the keyboard shortcuts.

This is not bragging, but instead a point of information to explain something. I began using vector drawing programs with CorelDRAW in 1991, and then added Xara in 1995, which if my math is correct, is about 18 years ago.

I think everyone picks up idiosyncratic gestures and moves in graphical software programs to work more quickly. One gets "hooked" on doing something a certain way. That's why I got so confused and upset with version 6 when Export changed from Ctrl+Alt+E to Ctrl+Shift+E, I don't remember exactly why! But this change did prompt me to just put Import and Export as buttons up on the Standard bar.

I don't really want to teach "the way Gary works" because that would be a unique and bad example of how another person should work. But if there are shortcuts I do use that might interest other people here, I'll try to be more obvious about their use in future videos and written tutorials.

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As far as animating your clock (which is marvelous, by the way), I suggest exporting it as a GIF—or better still as an AVI, from the File>Export Animation menu— and don't even try to export it as a swf, because there are too many beautiful, but Xara-proprietary elements going on with the composition.

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I am not certain what purpose the "academy" would serve here on TalkGraphics, but the idea of making Xara Xone a little more structured in terms of education intrigues me. Xara needs some sort of informal validation, as Scott Kelby did years ago with N.A.P.P. (Photoshop Professionals). Scott's organization is not affiliated with Adobe, but the fellow does some pretty brisk business and I'm guessing that's his entire empire and his entire life.

That would be my reason not to try to build that sort of empire; it would take away what remains of my free time!

Let's keep it loose and free here, and let me see if there isn't a way to reward Xaraists who have participated and shared here.

My Best,

Gary

[Rik]

Looking at the tutorial again, and the 3D part.
I though a couple of metallic gears could be done.

It took me ages to polish and buff these to a shine!

[wizard509]

It took me ages to polish and buff these to a shine!

Awesome Rik. Maybe buffing them would have gone a little faster if Mr. Whatshisname had helped. e