Inkscape for Beginners: Vector Helix Tutorial

this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create this vector helix icon using Inkscape and at any point in this tutorial you could look down at the bottom left hand side of my screen to see which mouse clicks and keystrokes I'm using so I'll minimize this and I'll get started here in Inkscape and by the way if you'd like to know how you can make Inkscape appear darken with these custom icons a link to that information will be in the description of the video so the first thing we want to do here in Inkscape is make sure that the view is set to custom then we'll zoom in at 1 to 1 and then we'll open up our align and distribute menu and then we'll open up the fill and Stroke dialog so we have them both open right there and the first thing we're going to do is create any lips so let's grab the circles and ellipses tool and just click and drag on the canvas to create any lips like that let me go back to the Select tool I'm going to change the width and the height of this the width I'm gonna erase that and type in 150 and then hit tab to skip over to the height and I'll make the height 300 3 0 0 and then hit enter so we have a 150 by 300 pixel ellipse like that and what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna take the opacity and bring this down about in half and then I'll duplicate this by right-clicking it and going to duplicate and I'll turn that duplicated copy red and then I'm gonna duplicate it again right click duplicate and I'll turn it green and then I'll hold ctrl and grab this top arrow up here and just click and drag that down about that much and then I'll hold ctrl and grab this bottom arrow down here and pull that out about that much and I'm actually gonna hold ctrl I'll come up here and bring this up a little more we want this see this red part that's sticking out that's what we're paying attention to we want that to be pretty small in comparison to the rest of it so I'd say that's a pretty good proportion right there and once you have that positions like that you just hold shift click on the red shape and go to path difference and then we'll take this black shape right here we'll duplicate that but instead of right-clicking and going to duplicate it I'll just hit control D on the keyboard and I'll turn that green and then hold ctrl and the keyboarding just click and drag this off to the right about that much and I'm gonna zoom in on this top portion over here so I'm just gonna press plus in the keyboard a couple of times and I'm gonna grab the Bezier pen which is right here where you just press B on the keyboard snap to the top of the very top of the ellipse right here actually no we got to turn on the snap tool first this little green squiggly line that says snap two pads we'll turn that on and then we'll snap the cursor to the top of this green ellipse and then click and hold ctrl and bring this line straight out to the right until it snaps to the top of that red shape and then click and then hold ctrl and bring this line straight down I'm actually gonna zoom out by pressing + on the keyboard - on the keyboard zoom out a little bit hold ctrl and bring this line straight down until it snaps to the bottom click still holding ctrl bring it to the left until it snaps and click and we could let go of control bring it back to the starting point so we have that shape there like that then we could turn off the snap the pads will go back to the Select tool hold shift on the keyboard and click on the green ellipse and go to path Union then I'll take this black ellipse right here and I'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and then I'll hold shift and click on the green shape and go to path difference and then I'll duplicate this green object right here by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard will make that blue and we'll flip that horizontally and then hold shift and click on the black e lips and click on the button down here that says align right sides and then click off fit to deselect everything so what we can do now is we take this black e lips and press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that then we'll click on the blue shape and we just want to drop this below the other shape so we'll just click this button up here that says lower selection to the bottom what we want to do now is we want to click on this red shape up here and whatever the height of that is click and drag highlight that that number value and hit ctrl C on the keyboard to copy that and then we're going to go to the create squares and rectangles tool and we're gonna create a rectangle going over this object that's wider than the entire graphic just make sure it's wider than the entire graphic like that and let me go back to the Select tool and then we'll come over here we'll change the height of this and just highlight that erase that and hit control V on the keyboard to paste it in you want that height to be the same as the height of that red shape and then hold shift and click on the green shape and click the button that says align top edges and then click off of that to deselect everything so let's click on just this blue shape and hit control D on the keyboard to duplicate that and then hold shift and click on the green shape and go to path intersection and then click on the other blue rectangle and then hold shift and click on this blue crescent shape and go to path intersection and then what we want to do now is click and drag over all of that right here and group that together and we now have the beginning of the top here so we're going to use this to construct the rest of the graphic so what we're gonna do now is let's turn on the snap the cusp nodes tool up here turn that button on and let's duplicate this object by hitting ctrl D and then we'll flip this vertically and then horizontally and then we'll come over here we'll just take this object and snap it to the corner right here like that I'll take this object hit control D on the keyboard to duplicate that click and drag this over here and snap that to that corner right there what we could do now is we could turn off the snap the cusp nodes we're done with that and then we can click and drag over this entire thing and just ungroup it all bring the opacity of it all the way up and click off with the deselect and you'll see we now have the structure we just have to color it in and put a little fine finishing touches on it what I want to do now is I want to click on this green shape and then hold shift and click on the green shape beneath it and we'll just make sure that they are one object by unifying them together so we'll go to path Union and then we could take this blue shape over here and just send that to the bottom so it's not sticking out above the green shape and we'll do the same thing over here well click on this blue shape and then hold shift and click on the blue shape and eath it oops I click the wrong button with them both selected we can go to path Union and what we'll do now is we can just start to color this in you can click off the to deselect everything you can see I used a gradient to color this in over here and I put a little bit of a glare effect on these two sides so to create the gradient let's click on this green shape over here and the gradient I used I created it by coming down to the color picker over here I'm going to bring this all the way to the right and like this is this sharp pink color right here think it's FFF zero zero six six I'll make it that color then I'll come up to the fill tab and under the HSL tab I'll come up to the H row and just hit the up arrow until it gets to 247 like that and then I'm gonna give this a linear gradient click on the linear gradient tool button and then press G on the keyboard to get the gradient tool and I'll take this stop and put it up here I'll take this stop and put it down there I'll just click on this stop up here and I'm gonna bring the opacity all the way up I'm gonna come back down here to the color picker and slide this all the way back to the left and I'm gonna give this other stop right here this yellow shade right here which is ffcc zero zero and click on that and you'll see we have our little gradient beginning there so what I'll do now is let's click off of that to deselect let's click on that red shape and then hold shift and click on this red shape and then hold shift still and click on that red shape and we'll make this all that same shade of yellow that ffcc zero zero but I'm gonna come over here to the L row and slide that to the right to make that lighter like that click off of that deselect and the next we just have to color in the rest of this so let's click on this object right here give that a linear gradient and go to the drop down and just choose that gradient we already created pressing G on the keyboard to get the gradient tool and I'll just put this stop up here put this stop down there that's pretty good and then we could just click on the green shape give that a linear gradient as well go to the drop down choose that gradient we already created put this stop down here and this stop up there and then finally we'll click on this blue shape give that a linear gradient go to the drop-down choose our gradient put this stop up here this one down there that's pretty good go back to the Select tool press 1 on the keyboard to zoom out to a hundred percent one last final step is to put this little glare of light on each side so let me actually zoom back in on that a little bit I'll press plus in the keyboard a couple of times let's click on this shape right here and let's duplicate that by hitting ctrl D turn that white bring the opacity down in half and then I'll duplicate that again by hitting ctrl D I'll turn that copy green and then hold ctrl and just move this off to the right until it's about halfway through were looking at the intersecting area here we want the intersecting area to be about the same thickness as the white area outside of it doesn't have to be exact just somewhere in the ballpark and I'd say that's close enough so I'll hold shift and click on this object right here and go to path difference and I'll do the same thing right here click on that hit ctrl D to duplicate that make that white bring the opacity down about in half hit control D again to duplicate it turn that copy green hold ctrl and just click and drag this off to the right until it's about halfway through and hold shift and click on the white shape and go to path difference and with this now I'm just gonna bring the opacity all the way up then I'll give that a linear gradient now press G on the keyboard I'll take this white stop and put it towards the top up here and I'll take the transparent stop and put it down about over here like that I'll do the same thing over here I'll click on that white object bring the opacity all the way up give that a linear gradient put the white stop at the top over here take this stop and put it down there about like that we can go back to the Select tool let's press 1 on the keyboard to zoom out to a hundred percent click and drag over the whole thing and group it together and if you notice here the thumbnail I'll actually have I gave it a slight slant to the right so if you want you could do that as well I'm just gonna double click that I'm gonna click it again to get back to get the rotation handles and up top they'll be this little slider arrow you just bring that to the right a little bit give that a little bit of a slant you can scale it up or scale it down or you know do whatever you'd like and that's that's pretty much it that's how you can create that simple helix graphic using Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 30,832

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners

Id: cdZZ_3Ii0jo

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2016