Create Flat Vector Avatars with Inkscape | Free Templates Included

[Music] this is nick with logosbynic.com and in this tutorial i'll be demonstrating how you can create these flat style vector avatars using inkscape and if you'd like to learn more about how inkscape works be sure to check out my inkscape master class it's a collection of over 60 videos where i go over every tool and feature in inkscape and i explain what it is and demonstrate how it works i'll put a link in the description of the video if you want to check that out so we'll get started here in escape the first thing we want to do is just set up our documents that we're all working with a similar view i just want to come up here to where it says view make sure we have custom selected we'll come over here to zoom make sure you zoom in at one to one and then i'm going to open up the align and distribute menu with this button over here or you could just press ctrl shift and a as you can see here where it says relative to we're going to want to have this set to last selected and then i'll open up the fill and stroke menu which is over here or you can just press ctrl shift and f and we'll have that open as you can see there so to get us started basically what we're going to be doing is we're just going to be using really basic common shapes in inkscape to put together avatars or faces and i'll just do one as an example here i'm going to grab the squares and rectangles tool right here and i'm going to click and drag to create a rectangle like that a little longer in height a little larger in height than it is in width because this is going to represent our avatar's head and up here this little note at the top right this little circular note i'm just going to bring that down like that to give this rounded corners and i'll give this a color just to color in the face here maybe like a shade of orange or something like that over here in the fill tab under the hsl tab i'm just going to adjust the color a little bit maybe give it a little more vibrance like that there we go that looks pretty good and now that represents that's going to represent the head i'm going to put some eyes on here now so let me grab the circle tool and i'm going to hold ctrl and shift so that it makes a perfectly round circle like that and just click and drag there we go i'll make the eyes black or a dark shade of gray like that put this towards the center like that create another eye so i'm going to right click this and go to duplicate and hold ctrl and move this over here like that now i'm going to create another rectangle right in the center here which is going to represent the nose so let me grab the the rectangle tool again make the nose put that right there i want to make this the same shade as the uh the head here but slightly darker so i'm going to grab the dropper tool which is over here i just like to press d on the keyboard to grab that it's a lot more convenient click on that to give it that color and i'm just going to make this a little darker like that looking pretty good now i'm going to grab the select tool i want to make sure this is all centered up on the page here so i'm going to hold shift and click on the head right there and i'm going to make sure the nose is centered on the head and i'm going to take these two circles the eyes hold shift click them both group them together with this button up here that says group selected objects then hold shift and click on the head and then center that up on the uh horizontal axis like that or the vertical axis rather now let me click off of that to deselect everything i'm going to click over those objects right there so i select them both and just hold ctrl and scale them up a little bit you may have to scale them up or down depending on how big or small you made them so just go ahead and manually adjust it as you see fit and what i'll do now is i'll just put like a little bit of a little mouth down here so i'm going to grab the circles and ellipses tool hold ctrl and shift and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle like that and i only want half of that circle so what i'm going to do is i'm going to convert this to a path i'll go to path object to path i'm going to grab the bezier pen which is i'm just going to press b on the keyboard to grab that it's this is it's this icon right here i don't normally use these tools so i just have the keyboard shortcuts memorized and then i want to turn on snapping up here i want to make sure i have snapping enabled and i want to have this one right here enabled that says snap to cusp nodes including rectangle corners and this one right here snap to smooth nodes including quadrant points of ellipses i want to make sure those two are enabled i'm going to snap to the left side of this circle click snap to the right side of that circle click and then finish the shape up around the outside like that grab the select tool hold shift click on the circle so we have them both selected and go to path difference and what i want to do now is i want to make this a shade of red like that this is going to represent the mouth i want to put a rectangle up top here to represent teeth let me first put this over here i'm going to hold ctrl and scale that down a little bit let me hold shift and click on both of those objects and make sure i have them centered up like that i might want to take these eyes and nose and move them up a little bit i'm going to put another rectangle right here to represent teeth so what i want to do is i want to i want to make sure that the rectangle is the same width as this half circle so i'm going to click on the half circle up here where it says width i'm going to triple click that so we have it all selected and i'm going to copy whatever that number is i'm going to hit ctrl c on the keyboard and now i'm going to create a rectangle so i'm going to come over here create a rectangle like that we're going to want square corners in this rectangle so i'm going to click this button up here to make sure the corner is sharp like that and now i'm going to paste the height in there so i'll grab the select tool and again where it says width triple click that and then just hit ctrl v to paste the height in there like that that's what i'm looking for i'm going to make that white to represent teeth maybe make that a little smaller i'm going to hold shift click on the mouth group those two together with the group button up here oops there we go let me make that a little smaller again make sure we have it centered up it looks like it already is and what i'm going to do now is i'm going to add some ears to the sides of the head here now if you see me scrolling um you see me zooming in and out like this you could just hold ctrl and roll up and down your mouse wheel to zoom in and out and to move around the page you can just press down the mouse wheel and move around the mouse so let me grab the circles and ellipses tool i'm going to hold ctrl and shift to create another ellipse or a circle rather like this i want to make this the same color as the skin tone here so i'm going to grab the dropper tool over here and make that the same color now i want this to be positioned beneath the head so i'm going to come up here to where it says lower selection to the bottom and click on that and let me just turn off snapping for the time being because that may get in the way of where i want to position the uh the ears here so let me bring this over like that i'm going to hold ctrl and shift and scale that down it looks a little too a little too big position that right about there now i'm going to create a a duplicate of this circle by pressing control d and i'm going to make it the same color as the nose right here so again we're going to grab the dropper go like that there we go now i'm going to lower this down i'm going to lower this one step lower this another step so that it goes beneath the head there and to do that i'm pushing this button right here lower selection one step i'm going to hold ctrl and shift scale that down and that right there is what i'm looking for so i'll hold shift now and click on both of these circles so i have them both selected and i'll group them together group selected objects and now i want to duplicate them because i'm going to use them for the other ear over here so instead of right clicking and going to duplicate i'm just going to press ctrl d on the keyboard to duplicate it and then i'll hold ctrl and just click and drag this over to the right side like that and i'm going to lower them to the bottom maybe i'll move this over a little closer like that i want to hold shift and click on the other ear over here i want both sets of ears selected and i want to group them together and then hold shift and click on the head and center that up on the vertical axis like that now let me zoom out a little bit so i can see how this is coming out it's looking pretty good one thing i want to do is make the head a little more elongated so let me convert this to a path i'm going to go to path object to path and now i'm going to go to the edit paths by nodes tool i'm going to click and drag over this top portion of nodes over here and just hold ctrl and move them up like there because we're going to put some hair over the head here and i want to make sure i have more room to work with so let me grab this select tool what i'm going to do now is i'm going to create some hair for our avatar here so to do this i'm going to create an offset of the head here so i'm going to go to with this head selected i'll go to path linked offset and that's going to create a copy of it and the copy is going to be located behind the head so let me just come over here and pick a color for the hair i'm going to go with like this shade of brown over here you're not going to see it change colors on your screen because it's positioned behind the head but once you've done that you can take this little node and pull that out and you'll notice it's coming out like that now let me finalize that by converting it to a path we'll go to path object to path and i want to grab the select tool and lower this to the bottom so it goes beneath the ears and now i just want to cut off the portion of the hair that is below the ears so let me grab the bezier pen again i'm going to start right about here click to create a point hold ctrl bring the line straight through like that create another point now we can just let go of control and finish the shape around the outside like that grab the select tool hold shift click on the object there and go to path difference and there we go now we have the sides of the hair anyway i'm going to add some hair to the top up here so to do that i'm going to grab the rectangle tool again and i'm just going to create a rectangle over the top here to create some hair to put on top of the head i'll position this right about here and i'm going to make this shade a little lighter just to add a little bit of depth to the design here and what i want to do now is i want to leave this corner sharp but i want to make these three corners rounded and to do that i'm going to use a live path effect called fillet and chamfer so let me first convert this to a path i'll go to path object to path now i want to open up the path effects menu so i'll go to path grab the path effects menu and right here where it says plus click on plus to add a new path effect and the one i'm looking for is corners or the fillet and chamfer path effect click on that and down here where it says change only selected nodes make sure you click on that to have that box text and i'm going to grab the edit pads by nodes tool and i'm going to click and drag over this node on the top left then hold shift click on this click and drag over that node on the bottom left and then again hold shift and take this node over here on the bottom right so that we only have these three nodes selected because i want to make these three corners rounded now where it says radius i'm just going to click this little plus icon and you're going to notice it rounds the corners it rounds those corners as we do that while leaving this corner sharp that right there is what i'm looking for so let me let me finalize that by going to path object to path i can now close out of the path effects menu we don't need that anymore place that right about there this is starting to come together now one final thing i want to do is just add a little bit of a a little bit of an accent piece right here to make it look like um like light is reflecting off the hair so i'm going to take this object i'm going to duplicate it by pressing ctrl d and then i'm going to hold shift and click on this one of these lighter shades down here for the for the color we originally used for the hair to give that an outline otherwise known as a stroke now let me remove the fill color from this object i'm going to click this little red x over here to the bottom left and i'm going to hold ctrl and shift and scale this down a little bit like that i just want to position this right about here i just want to take a sample of this line right here i don't want the entirety of this line if you want to come over if you want you can come over here to the stroke style tab to adjust the thickness of this line yours the thickness of your line may vary depending on what you most recently used so i'm going to make this a little thicker and now i just like i said i just want to grab a sample of this line i don't want the entire line so i'm going to grab the bezier pen click to create a point hold ctrl bring this straight through like that then bring this straight through like that back to the starting point grab the select tool hold shift click on the object and go to path cut path and that's going to slice that into two individual pieces so let me click off of that and take just this object and just get rid of that by pressing delete on the keyboard and now we have this i'm going to go come over here to where it says stroke paint and i'm going to adjust the color of that a little bit make that little there we go just a little lighter than the hair over here so if we zoom out you can see we're pretty much done we have created our vector avatar i'm going to leave a link in the description of the video to where you can download 12 of these vector avatars for free and then you can use them however you want you can mix and match different parts and elements and pretty much do whatever you want with them so i'll be releasing them into the public domain so feel free to use them however you want whether it be for personal or commercial use and if you have any questions just leave a comment below and as always thanks for watching you

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 54,157

Keywords: inkscape tutorial, flat vector avatars, inkscape avatars, logos by nick, logosbynick, nick saporito

Id: NDWHO2JdNcs

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 06 2020