Revisiting Jigsaw Puzzles!

[Gare]

We started to go OT on stygg's Art Gallery thread, and hopefully, this thread can be a new home to Q, A, and advice concerning the art of illustrating jigsaw puzzles.

Gary Priester wrote about the creation of pieces in The November 2000 Xara Xone Tutorial, and Xcellent, who evidently closed his tg account, posted A Puzzle Piece Mini-Tutorial in 2006.

But the interest in jigsaw puzzle illustration is either not completely satisfied, or it needs revisiting from a decade ago.

I'll go first: Attached is a six shape puzzle starter kit. Now, you'll see when you open it that the pieces could use a little work, just a little and that's why we have the Shape tool. :) Seriously, six different pieces that all can link is a lot better artistic and hobbyist solution to a puzzle than identical pieces. I'd like to thank Wayne Schmidt for posting the design pieces I traced off on his blog.



As Arnie loves to say, "I'll be back." :)

Feel free to populate this thread with jigsaw idea of your own in the meantime.

My Best,



Jigsaw Starter kit.xar

[mwenz]

MalwareBytes doesn't like that site, Gary...

[Rik]

Are you looking for things that would be good to turn into a Jigsaw?
Or have I read it completely wrong?

If you're looking for things to turn into a Jigsaw, then here's one!

EDIT: Ah! I see. The year 2000 tutorial about how to make a Jigsaw Puzzle.

[Gare]

Funny, Mike; I use the same online A/V Ware and it didn't flag me.

Small edit above then, to bring all the resources locally. I traced off some pieces Wayne Schmidt (a jigsaw puzzle aficionado) recommended as a starter.

My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

@Rik,

That would make a lovely jigsaw puzzle, but actually, you might need a little background on this new thread. Can you go check out the links I have in my first post, and see it there's a technique or something you could offer for illustrating a finished jigsaw puzzle or a similar composition?

I did this one a long time ago. It's pretty non-functional as a puzzle, but I ,thought the composition is interesting:



If anyone cares to examine it, improve upon it, or solve it, it's attached.

My Best,

Gary

3D puzzle.xar

[gwpriester]

I did another one here under my pseudonym Gerald Phister http://www.xaraxone.com/guest/guest74/

[Gare]

Back around 2006, when Xcellent posted his tutorial, I thought that a different way to approach making pieces would be to use the Freehand and Brush tool to make the nubs and voids. If you convert a rectangle to editable shapes (Ctrl+_Shift+S), and you draw a nub, for example—you start on the line of the rectangle and then loop outside of that shape and close the loop by releasing the mouse button when the tool is over a different area of the rectangle. A void is created the same way, except you loop to inside the shape.




The steps are in this Xara file, attached, along with a couple of extruded, rotated artsy results of the steps.

Enjoy!

Gare
(I'll try to post something from the 21st century soon! :) )

Jigsaw puzzle micro tutorial.xar

[Christine Farrelly]

or you can cheat like this.

I Created original bitmap in a jigsaw program.

Enhanced in photoshop.

Created vector in Vector magic as PDF.

Bevelled in Xara.

[Rik]

That looks excellent, Christine.

[angelize]

I just had to have a go at this! All done in DP11 all vector. I created a single side and a grid then placed the grid on the guides layer and locked the guides layer. Then I used the grid to align four sides flipping them as needed then joined them up to create my puzzle piece.