Inkscape Tutorial: Metallic Chrome Style Text

so in today's tutorial I'm going to be showing you how you can use Inkscape version 48 to create some chrome style texts similar to what you see here in my screen and this is a concept that could be applied not just to text this can be applied to anything else you may be creating an Inkscape so if you'd like to follow along with this tutorial using the same font that I'm using I provided a link to it in the description so if you'd like to use this particular font it's called hamburger heaven go ahead and download that font and install it before you open up Inkscape and then you'll be good to get started otherwise you can use whatever fine you'd like so let's go ahead and get started we'll open up a new window let's open up a new document and we'll click on the align and distribute objects menu to open that up make sure you have last selected chosen then we'll click on the edit objects colors gradient stroke will open that up then let's go to view zoom one to one and make sure from this list you have custom selected from the view from the view menu you're gonna want custom selected to follow along with what I'm doing and we'll go to file document properties we'll uncheck these two boxes and then close that out so what we're going to do first is we're going to create some text we're going to click on our create an edit text objects button and then go ahead and click on the canvas and just type in whatever text you'd like to use for the sake of this tutorial I'm just going to write Chrome and then you can select your font up here with this view and select font family button click on that and I'm going to go find that font hamburger heaven there it is click apply and then close out of that and we come up here to where it says spacing between letters let's click that up arrow let's space them out a little bit you're going to want to give them a little bit of breathing room in order for this to take effect okay I think that works then we can go to our arrow and click on that and then while holding ctrl on your keyboard click and drag one of these arrows to enlarge that we're going to make that pretty big and then we are going to change this from a text item to an actual vector object so we're going to go to path object to path then we're going to ungroup it with this button right here and they're going to go up to path Union okay now the first thing we're going to do make sure you have it colored in black and make sure that the opacity is all the way up so the first thing we'll do is we will click on our linear gradient button we'll give that a linear gradient and come down here to where it says edit we're going to click on that and from this drop down menu let's click on that let's go to the second stop the second line right there and make sure you have the HSL tab open by default it's going to open RGB you're going to want HSL that's what I use so come down to this this line where says a let's click and drag it all the way up to the right and then come up here to where it says add stop we're going to click that three times we're going to click one two three and that's going to give us a total of five stops right here so for the very first one we're going to click on that and we're going to come down to the L line I'm going to make that all the way we're gonna make that all the way white all the way to the right and then for the second one let's go down to the second stop let's make that gray maybe a little on the lighter shade a little on the lighter side maybe a 171 that should work then we'll come down to the third stop we'll make that all the way white again and then for the fourth stop we're going to leave that black and then for the fifth stop the one on the very bottom we're going to click on that and let's make that white and then once you're done with that we can close out of that menu for now and come over here to where it says create and edit gradients if you don't see this button on your screen there should be a little arrow in the bottom left corner here if you click on that area and on that arrow it'll bring up a menu and one of the menus one of the lists one of the things in that list should be gradients so you go ahead and click on that and you'll bring up a gradient our little gradient handles right here so let's take this box on the left and let's click and drag this up to the top and then let's take this circle on the right and let's click and drag this to the bottom and then hold your ctrl key so it goes straight up and down if you're not holding ctrl is going to be little tilted we want it to go straight up and down let's bring this straight to the bottom like that and let's take this first this first stop right here let's click and drag this down to about there that's our black bands right there going to bring that down and then we're going to click on this one right here this white one we're going to bring this down to about here and then we'll click this very first one over here and we'll bring this about halfway through kind of like that so it should look something like this and once you've gotten there go ahead and click on the arrow again we're going to right click this and go to duplicate we're going to turn that black and then we're going to lower this one step so come up to the button where it says lower selection one step click that once and let's go over to our stroke paint tab and let's turn that on and then let's come over to stroke style let's try giving that an 8-point strokes type in 8 and hit enter ok that should work so we'll use an 8 point stroke and then we'll go to path stroke the path so then we'll come back over to the fill tab and we're going to do the same thing we did previously we're going to give this a linear linear gradient we're going to click on that and we're going to go to edit now we're going to come up here to this the second stop right here we're going to go to the a column we're to make we're going to slide that all the way to the right and let's click Add stop three times so 1 2 3 and then for this top one let's make this um maybe a 79 we want it to be like a darker gray but not too dark 70 not let's try 90 we'll do 90 and then we'll go to the second one right here we'll make this white and then we'll go to the third one we'll do the same thing we'll make it 90 I'll just type in 90 actually so it's consistent and then we'll go to the fourth one we'll make this white and for this last one we're going to use 90 so type in 90 hit enter and then once you've done that it should look like this your little menu once you've done that go ahead and exit out of that menu and we're good to go so let's go back to our gradient button over here and click on this and let's take this square and let's bring this to the top and we'll take this circle and bring this to the bottom and once you get it down here hold ctrl on your keyboard to bring it straight down like that then we're going to take this first this first stop right here we're going to try to line this up with the black band from our previous uh from from our layer on top and then we'll take this this next one we'll try to line this up with the white band and we'll take this middle one this is the this first one actually and line it up with the the gray the gray band in the middle there so it should be the positioning should be something like that then we're good to go so let's go ahead and click on the arrow again let's click on the very top the top layer of the text let's right click that and go to duplicate and let's turn that red and let's come over here to opacity and let's slide that in half now let's go to path and hit inset and it should end up with something like this it's going to make this text slightly thinner thin the text below it and then we'll go over here to our create circles and ellipses we'll click on that and let's go ahead and just click and drag on the canvas to create new lips going over this text kind of like that let's come over to the stroke tab let's turn that off we don't need that come back over to the fill tab and let's actually make this blue so we can get a better view of what we're doing and then we'll come back up to the arrow and let's let's like shrink this down let's make it a very very like a very thin ellipse we wanted to make it look like it's almost a straight line going through the text here but it's not quite a straight line it's got a very slight curve to it like you see on my screen so go ahead and make that make it look like that kind of like that and then afterwards hold shift and click on the red text we just created and let's Center that up on the vertical axis with that button right there okay now let's click off of the graphic to deselect everything and let's take this blue circle and let's hold ctrl on the keyboard and let's click and drag it down so that the bottom edge of it is going right over that black band on the first layer of text that we had maybe about right there I'm going to make this a little taller you want to make sure the top portion of the text fits all the way within the OL so try not to like try not to make like where you have anything sticking out like that you want everything in case in that oval and then once you have that hold shift and let's click on the red text so you have the blue oval and the red text both selected and then we'll go to path intersection and we're going to bring the opacity on that all the way up and we're going to click to make this white we're going to turn that white so go ahead and click on that and they're going to come up here to where it says linear gradient we're going to click on that and let's come back to our gradient handle and let's take this square right here let's take it let's click and drag this over just above where that oval that we created began I'm going to put it right up there and we're going to take this handle this circle handle right here and bring it straight above it and hold control and bring it up to about maybe maybe about there and that should do it alright we'll come back to our arrow let's click and drag over the whole thing and let's group it together with that button then we'll right-click this and go to duplicate and then we'll ungroup that and let's go to path Union and then we will click on what will make this black and let's lower this one step by clicking that button let's go ahead and lower it one step and then using your arrow keys you can just you could just click the down arrow bring it down a little bit maybe three three steps and then bring it right on to three four maybe four steps kind of like that and then for the blur we're going to we're going to give this a blur maybe a two point blur something like that - let's see how one looks maybe three yeah we could do something like that maybe like a three-point blur and you can come to the opacity maybe drop that down a little bit so it isn't so it isn't so abrupt like that and there you have it that's how you can use xscape to create a Chrome's like a chrome metallic style text or anything for that matter you can do this with a ring or a circle or a star or square so that's how you can do that and if you have any questions or if I messed anything up in this tutorial just let me know and I'll gladly help you out thanks again for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 74,626

Rating: 4.9476271 out of 5

Keywords: Inkscape (Software), inkscape tutorial, inkscape chrome, Graphic Design (Industry), Graphic Designer (Profession)

Id: TQ57XGQ8ulA

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 22 2015