Inkscape Tutorial: Vector Awareness Ribbon

this is Nick with logos Viacom and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create these vector awareness ribbons using Inkscape and this video is actually a suggestion by a viewer a while back and I thought it would make for an interesting video because it seemed a bit challenging I couldn't immediately visualize how I would go about constructing something like this so it took a bit of experimentation and I was eventually able to figure it out so I'm gonna show you how to do this now here with Inkscape so we'll get started by the way if you'd like to know how you can make Inkscape appear darkened with these custom icons as you see here on my screen the information to that will be in the description of the video so the first thing I want to do is make sure the view is set the custom view custom and then zoom in at 1 to 1 then we'll open up the alignment distribute menu with that button right there we're gonna want last selected chosen from that drop-down and then we'll open up the Edit objects colors gradients and Stroke menu with that button so the first thing we're going to do is create a square so moku come over to the squares and rectangles tool and hold ctrl and shift in the keyboard and click and drag on the canvas to create a perfectly symmetrical square like that maybe about that big and we'll go to the Select tool and we're gonna bring the opacity of this down about in half and by the way let's go back to the squares and rectangles tool real quick for this make sure you have make sure the corners are SARP like this if it's if the corners are rounded like that you'll see this little button show up click that button and it'll become sharp corners we're gonna need that for this tutorial so we'll go back to the Select tool and I'm gonna click on this a second time to get the rotation handles and I'm gonna hold ctrl and grab one of these corner arrows and rotate this around until the corners are sitting upright like that vertically and horizontally and then we'll go to the edit path by nodes tool and I'm going to convert this to a path so we'll get a path object to path and I'm gonna click and drag over these top three nodes right here to select them so we want these three nodes selected and this not selected and with those three nodes selected we're gonna click on this button up here that says make selected nodes Auto smooth so go ahead and click on that and then we're just going to click on these two center nodes right here and then hold ctrl on the keyboard and click and drag these up about that much and then we'll go back to the Select tool and I'm gonna grab this arrow right here to the right and I'm just gonna bring that in about that much so that it takes the shape of like a teardrop or a leaf and this is actually going to make for the inner part of the ribbon right here so what we want to do now is let's right click this and go to duplicate and we'll turn that red and then we'll duplicate it again instead of right-clicking you can just hit control D to duplicate turn that green and then hold ctrl and just click and drag this copy down to about here maybe about that far and then I'll hold ctrl and take this bottom arrow and pull this out about that much and I'm actually just gonna hold ctrl and bring that down a little more like that and then once you have it positioned like that we could hold shift and click on the red shape right there and go to path difference and then the next thing we want to do is we'll take this black shape right here we're going to duplicate that again by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard we'll turn that green and we'll send that to the bottom lower selection to the bottom go ahead and click that button and then hold ctrl and grab this bottom arrow and pull this out maybe about that much that's pretty good right there and then what we want to do is we want to take this black shape and duplicate it again we're just gonna hit ctrl D and then we're gonna flip it vertically with this button right here flip selected objects vertically and then we're gonna turn on the snap to custom nodes for this now we're gonna take this object and we're going to snap the two bottom corners together like that and once you have that done let's click on the green shape hit control D to duplicate that hold shift click on the black shape and go to path intersection and then we're gonna take this black shape right here and then hold shift and click on the green shape and go to path difference so what we want to do now is we're gonna create another rectangle so let's come over here to there are squares and rectangles too let's create a really big rectangle maybe about that big and we'll just turn this blue so we get to see it in comparison with the rest of everything else so we'll go back to the Select tool I'm gonna duplicate this just hit control D and I'll take this duplicated copy and turn that yellow and then I'll hold shift and alt and click on it again so I have both of them selected and I'm gonna click on this button over here to the right that says align left edges of objects to the right edge of the anchor and that's gonna stack those two rectangles up against each other and then we'll group it together and then we're gonna hold shift and alt and click on the green shape right there so we have all three of those selected and we're just gonna make sure this is centered on the vertical axis like that and then we can ungroup it with this button right here on group selected objects and then click off but to deselect everything so we'll take this yellow shape right here and just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that then we'll click this blue shape hold shift click on the green shape and go to path intersection and then hold shift and click on the black shape and go to path Union so as you can see we kind of have the beginning of this right here so in order to make this ribbon a little longer I'm gonna duplicate this green shape by you're pressing ctrl D and then I'm going to flip that vertically and horizontally and then I'm gonna take this down here and snap the corners together like that and then I'll hold shift and click on the other green shape and unify them together by going to path Union so let me roll down here a little bit you can see we have the shape of the ribbon here but the problem we have now is that these lines are very fluid there's a little bit of like an indentation there the way we can go about fixing that is we'll go to the edit path by nodes tool and we're gonna select all of these nodes in here we're gonna leave those two nodes as they are we're gonna leave those two as they are but we're just gonna click and drag and create and grab that big bunch of nodes right there and we'll just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of those and now we have nice fluid consistent lines like that then we go back to the Select tool and let's zoom in on this little area right here I'm going to press plus in the keyboard to zoom in a few times now you notice it's a little bit of a white space in there between the Green and the red shape so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hold ctrl I'm gonna take this green shape and just click and drag this over to the right maybe about that much and let me press 1 on the keyboard to zoom back out and I'm going to duplicate that green shape by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and I'll make that blue and I'm going to flip that horizontally with this button right here and I'm gonna take this blue shape and I'm gonna snap the corner of it to the corner of that green shape up there and what we want to do now is let's click and drag over all of this right here and we're gonna make sure we're gonna come down to the distribute panel we're gonna make sure all three of those are spaced out evenly by clicking this button that says make horizontal gaps between objects equal and that'll make sure everything's spaced out evenly and we can click off of it to deselect everything and it will take this you know what let's take the blue shape and send that to the bottom lower selection to the bottom then we'll take the red shape and then lower that to the bottom so it goes beneath the blue shape lower selection to the bottom and what we want to do now is we want to take we want to cut off the tail of this right here so we end up with flat ends for the ribbon right here like this so in order to do that I'm gonna create a rectangle or a square actually so come over to the squares and rectangles tool hold ctrl and shift and click and drag to create a big rectangle like that let's run this yellow we'll come over here to the Select tool click on this again to get the rotation handles hold ctrl and just rotate this around like that so the corners are going upright and then I'm gonna hold shift and alt and click on that red shape right there so we have the yellow box and the red shape selected and I'll just make sure that's centered on the vertical axis like that and then we can click off the to deselect everything so what we want to do now is we want to take this yellow Square and hold ctrl and just move this up a little bit maybe about right maybe about there and we want to make this we want to make the height of this a little bigger because we want the edge of this yellow shape to be running somewhat parallel to the edge of this green shape right here so if I move this up you'll see it's not really parallel they're not really they're kind of running at different angles so what I could do is I could take this bottom arrow and just pull that down a little bit until it's running about parallel with it it doesn't have to be exact you could just eyeball it it'll still come out pretty good maybe about that much let me hold ctrl and bring that up a little more and then what we could do is we could duplicate that yellow shape by hitting ctrl D and then hold shift and click on the blue shape and go to path intersection and then click the yellow shape hold shift click the green shape and go to path intersection and then we can click and drag over all of this bring the opacity all the way up and you can see we have our ribbon shapes so now we just got a color this in so I'm gonna use three different colors to color it in I'll just use red for this one here I'll make this a shade of a medium shade of red not too dark not too light like that and then click off with the deselect everything then we'll click on just this shape right here and we'll come over to the fill tab and under the HSL tab I'll take this Elda row and slide that to the left a little bit maybe about that much and I'll click this shape right here and again I'm going to slide this to the left a little more so that makes a little a little darker okay and moon' maybe not that dark it almost looks black okay that's pretty good and the final step is to add a little bit of a drop shadow going beneath this top ribbon right here so to do that what we can do is we could take this shape right here the lighter red one and by the way we could turn off the snap to custom nodes we're done with that we can duplicate this by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and we can make this a little darker we can actually make it the same shade of this right here we just press f7 on the keyboard to get the dropper and just make that the same shade right there and we'll go back to the Select tool and I'm gonna lower this one step so it goes beneath that red shape and then I'm gonna go to path outside and that's gonna make it a little thicker but we want it to be a little thicker than that so we're to do that a few more times and instead of going to path outset path out set over and over again I'm just going to hold ctrl on the keyboard and hit zero so you control 0 1 2 3 4 maybe one more time that's pretty good and then we could take this red shape right here to the right hit control D to duplicate that and then hold shift and click on the darker red shape we just out set it and go to path intersection and we could actually make that a little lighter that's that looks pretty good let me click off it to deselect everything and there you have it there's our vector awareness ribbon using Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know and there's always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 11,242

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

Id: kExRBcKt70s

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2016