January 2014 Video Tutorial : Drawing Plastic and Chrome What's the Diff?

[Crow Haven]

Those look great Stygg and csehz!
I don't have the ability to view Gare's video tute unfortuantely with my extremely slow dial-up connection. Instead I used Gare's info from his "Xara Extreme 5 The Official Guide" book (pgs 154-159) on creating chrome and created another chrome ball based on that using Xara Extreme 3.

[stygg2003]

Hi Csehz and Maya, really good efforts from both of you and Csehz I like the abstract From following the guide book Maya I'd say that's pretty good, I use to have the guide books but can't find any of them now. Will make an attempt at the sphere and room later to day, both of your posts will help.

Stygg

[csehz]

Maya your chrome ball and generally your drawings are so beautiful that we have to do something with that slow dial up connection How you will upload your Tips&Tricks tutorials to XaraXone in this way, for example how to create an eye? :-)

I also got up in the morning and just sit beside of the yesterday's abstract sphere, well it sure needs evolution :-) Maybe for the magnify effect came up with this idea to do a double mould, first a circular envelope and then a perspective



Thanks Stygg sure you will have better luck with the chess floor

[stygg2003]

Maya do you think Csehz was giving you a hint about the eye drawing, would make a great Tips and Trick though

Stygg

[Albacore]

Thanks for the tut. Gary tried it and it looks good. I want to stay on topic here but in my job I have to use many metal gradients none of spheres but a few in chrome and many in gold. Well the gradients have piled up both used in Xara & Illy and as it is easier to save them to my swatches library in AI that's where they reside. If you think this is the place to make them available fine if not either shift or delete this post.

[csehz]

Albacore you are very generous to share this fill collection, really thanks and already would like to try them with some copy and paste with CTRL - SHIFT - A

[Gare]

If you think this is the place to make them available fine if not either shift or delete this post.

Peter, you're very welcome for the tutorial. Thank you very much for all the shiny presets, and I will leave your post here—it's relevant.

But just so no one sees the XaraXone thread on TalkGraphics as exclusive or an island, I'd appreciate it if you also gave them away on the ClipArt forum; can you just copy your link and refer it on the ClipArt area?

Here's the link

Thanks, and great work!

Gary

[Crow Haven]

Thanks for your kind comments Stygg and csehz! I wish I had a faster connection as downloading at 3 Kb/sec and frequent connection drops makes a lot of things impossible.

Albacore -- thanks so much for sharing your gradients, those are a big help!

[Gare]

Well guys this is as far as I've got with the tut. but will have ago at the next stage of inserting the chess floor image into a drawing. If you were drawing a room with walls, ceiling and floor would you see in the chrome drawing the two walls, ceiling and floor plus whatever was facing front on to the sphere? I mean like another wall with a door perhaps ? :rolleyes:

Stygg

Stygg, you're being too literal with my instructions. Don't follow my example to the letter—your reflections are a little too details, when the emphasis should be: sky at top, horizon in the centre, and ground on the bottom. There is no single formula for drawing metallic spheres, and I'd suggest you concentrate on the metallic and take a pass on doing the plastic version for the moment. I think I overwhelmed some members with Too Much Information (TMI) :(.

Let me back up and provide some more examples. I did this years ago; a chrome logo for The Administrator and me. I've attached the Xara file.



You see, it's all about "sky on top, grounds on bottom", at least this is one tried and true visual solutions. I have a friend Rod Norman who taught me how to draw this stuff with makers in the 1970s and I'm pleased that I even came close to the work by Airbrush Genius Charles White III.

This might have been in the Xara Xtreme Official Guide; I don't recall. You can see the entire process in the attached file.



And here's another volley of "chrome versus plastic":



The interesting thing is that if you take the eyedropper tool and sample what appears to be the red herringbone reflection in the bottom of the green plastic sphere...it's not red, although it looks that way, doesn't it? Optical illusion: it's olive colored!


@stygg—you've demonstrated time and time again that artistically, once you "get it", you understand the essence of an artistic principle, you fly, man...you fly. So take it slow and easy with the chrome, remember "sky, horizon, and then ground", and let's see what you cook up, okay?

@ csehz-You are soon going to become a Professor at Xara Academy! (we actually registered the domain name a few months ago, but there's nothing there right now). I love your approach to the tented studio reflections!

@ Maya—I think I'm going to ask you to be the Featured Artist at XaraXone this Spring. Get your portfolio together, okay? I'm serious: you draw hit after hit like a good FM station!

My Best,

Gary

[Crow Haven]

Gary, that's very kind and I'm flattered you'd consider my work, but there's so many others here who can offer far more in Xara art and techniques than I!