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Author Topic: Inspired by Kongorilla!
JinjaBeard-
y
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JinjaBeardy
Post Inspired by Kongorilla!
on: September 28, 2012, 13:34
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I started digging into Inkscape features after Kongorilla's excellent post, and discovered the 'Inset path' feature. I used it to create these strange fills. Whaddya think? If anyone's interested I'll post the technique, it's dead simple though.

Image

I'm still breathing and it's better than the alternative
kongorilla
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kongorilla
Post Re: Inspired by Kongorilla!
on: September 28, 2012, 19:33
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Good stuff! Keep digging and sharing. Do you do your multiple color drawings with one queue, or do you split the art up before (or after?) making the queue? Or is it all on the fly?

As fun as it is to watch a polargraph draw now, can you imagine if we came up with a multiple gondola machine that could do all the colors at once? That would be hypnotic.

The only reason I dug up Inkscape's halftone feature was because this guy -
http://www.madox.net/blog/2011/10/11/image-to-svg-cutout-script/
- hadn't answered my question, so I scrounged for an alternative, and came up with an even better solution. But what I was going to do with the output of Madox's script was bring it into Inkscape and inset fill the boxes like what you're doing, and use Sandy's new "shortest vector" filter to eliminate the unnecessary teeny tiny boxes. So, for me, your post provokes a weird "come full circle" feeling.
JinjaBeard-
y
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JinjaBeardy
Post Re: Inspired by Kongorilla!
on: September 29, 2012, 10:55
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Blimey! I spend too much time watching the Polargraph now 🙂
Regarding the colour separation, I split the drawing into multiple colours, and draw them in sequence lightest-darkest.
The basic sequence is like this:
I start by using 'trace bitmap' using the colours option, usually 6-8 works ok.
1. clean up paths, deleting/merging similar colours until I have between 3-5
2. seprate each colour into a separate layer, simplyfy/edit each as required (the one above required a lot of editing because Inkscape created overlapping paths)
3. select a path, do a copy/paste in place
4. Inset, repeat as many times as needed to get the effect desired - in the above piccy, 5 times for each path
5. go back to three, selecting the newly inset path and repeat until the fill is done. This sounds tedious, but in fact (on Windows) its 'Ctrl-C, Ctrl-Alt-V, Ctrl-( ( ( ( (' - it got very quick after a while!
6. save out a version of the pic with a single layer for each colour
7. Load each colour file file into the PG Controller, tweak 'shortest vector' etc and then draw each layer in sequence with pens of your choice (in my case I exported each queue to a file on an SD card and then printed them on the PG standalone)
8. bask in artistic warm feel good glow 🙂
I'm experimenting with a new drawing at the moment, very different in style though even though the technique is similar.
Steve

I'm still breathing and it's better than the alternative
JinjaBeard-
y
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Posts: 38
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JinjaBeardy
Post Re: Inspired by Kongorilla!
on: September 29, 2012, 17:00
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Right, here's the next experiment - Using 'Path Inset' to generate paths so close together that you get an almost solid fill, which is how the black fill was done (with a standard black Sharpie, fine point). Also using Inset/Outset sort of creatively.
There are 10 paths inside the letters, and the resulting gcode had 9,400-ish commands, so not too bad.
Image

I'm still breathing and it's better than the alternative
kongorilla
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kongorilla
Post Re: Inspired by Kongorilla!
on: September 30, 2012, 21:52
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The lines outside the lettering make me think of Roger Dean logos. Wild stuff!
sandy
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sandy
Post Re: Inspired by Kongorilla!
on: September 30, 2012, 23:40
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Hey I think this is brilliant - great effect and thanks for writing it up Steve. I like how there's a big manual aspect to it actually, not just an automatic thing like most of the _from bitmap_ type of processes.

I'm really glad that this stuff can be done in inkscape - I held off implementing anything very "creative" in the controller because a) it's hard to do, and b) specialised tools exist to do it better. But though I was sure that was true, I didn't actually know if those specialist tools were actually available to be used - very pleased to find that it can be.

The reason I'd still like to put _some_ vector creative stuff in the controller is so that I can link in the pen size to the shading density. I could probably do that by isolating closed vector polygons and figuring out a shading pattern for them. Not sure how to deal with very large (n-points) polygons though, given the limited memory of the arduino. There's probably a smart way of doing it that I don't know.

cool stuff!
sn
JinjaBeard-
y
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JinjaBeardy
Post Re: Inspired by Kongorilla!
on: October 5, 2012, 18:10
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Glad you like it 🙂 I have lots of ideas for this technique.
Thanks for the comment Kong - Roger Dean is one of my favourite artists and when I was a teenager I used to use A-level art classes as an excuse to re-create his album covers (badly), so I guess that's coming out in that image!
Sandy, I agree strongly that the manual aspect of it is a good thing, it makes it feel more like 'art' and less like 'process', if you know what I mean. I have been trying to do some more complex images and have run into a limitation/bug in Inkscape, when the path gets quite complex, after the first inset it just has a bit of a fit and doesn't create the path - and then more often than not crashes. I've moved over to Illustrator for this next image and have found that while it isn't very intuitive, it can handle the much more complex paths I'm now creating - I'll write up the Illustrator technique and post a new image tomorrow, hopefully.
The more complex image I have been working on this week has been very intensive on the manual side, but I'm really encouraged by the results so far. My Polargraph is drawing even as I type this... only 4 more pen changes to go, total of 60,000 plus commands 😉

I'm still breathing and it's better than the alternative
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