Inkscape Tutorial: Vector Puzzle Pieces

this is Nick with logos by Nick comm and in today's tutorial I'll be demonstrating how you can create these vector puzzle pieces that connect together fluidly 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 well minimize this and we'll get started here at Inkscape by the way if you'd like to know how you can make Inkscape appear dark and 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 is make sure the view is set to custom then we'll zoom in at 1 to 1 we'll open up the align and distribute menu and we're going to want last selected chosen from that drop-down and then we'll open up the Edit objects colors gradients and Stroke menu so the first thing we want to do is to is to create an ellipse so let's go over to the circles and ellipses tool and just click and drag on the canvas to create an ellipse like that I'm going to bring the opacity down in half and I'm just gonna make this red and I'll go back to the Select tool and we want to make the width of this 600 and the height of it 300 so we're gonna erase whatever that is in there for you for me it's for 64 I'm going to write 6 0 0 then hit tab to skip over to the height and then how you type in 3 0 0 and hit enter we won't want what we want to do now is give this an outline so I'm gonna hold shift and click on the color black to give that an outline and you can't see it but it's it's there it's very small I'm gonna come over to this stroke style tab and this is set to 0 point 1 2 3 I'm gonna change this we want this to be a 5 point strokes to just hit 5 and hit enter and what we'll do now is if you notice over here once we added that 5 point stroke the height is now 305 and the width is 605 so we want to make sure the height of this is 300 so we're gonna change this back to 300 but before we do that we want to make sure that we have this button over here turned off where it says effect this far is button to the far left we want to make sure that's turned and we want to turn on the lock icon right there and then we could change this back to 300 just take 3 3 0 0 and hit enter and now we have our oval it's 300 pixels high with the 5-point stroke so the next thing we want to do is create a rectangle so we'll come over to the rectangles and squares tool and create a rectangle going over the center of that ellipse when you get rid of that outline by holding shift and clicking on the X and I'm just gonna make this blue and then I'll go back to the Select tool and I'm gonna make the height of this 200 so I'm gonna erase whatever erase whatever value that is in our height type in to 0-0 hit enter and then hold shift and click on the ellipse and make sure it's centered on the vertical and horizontal axis and with them both selected still we can go to path cut path and then click off of that to deselect everything and then we could take this piece right here and press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and take this piece right here press Delete to get rid of that and we'll get rid of this right here by pressing delete so we're left with this object right here now what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to zoom in to show you if you notice the edge of this is like a sharp corner we're gonna come over to the stroke style tab we're going to change the join to rounded and we'll change the caps around it and it will give it a rounded a rounded cap like that which is what we want for this and this line right here is going to make up the edge of the puzzle pieces that that curve up and down like that if you look at the shape going within the pattern that's gonna make up the edge of it right there so what I want to do now is I want to create the circle part of the puzzle piece which is this right here where the circle kind of dips in and goes back out so to do that I'm gonna have to create a customized shape that kind of looks like a a peanut so let's do that now I'll go to the circles and ellipses tool and I'll hold ctrl and shift and click and drag to create a perfectly round circle and we want to make sure the width and height of this is let's go back to the Select tool we're gonna make this one 50 so whatever the width is 3 or just race it and type in 1 5 0 hit enter and then I'm going to duplicate that by right-clicking it and going to do okay and I'm gonna make this half the size so it'll be 75 I'll make this 75 and hit enter and I'm going to move this off to the right over here and then hold shift and click on the other circle and make sure it's centered on the horizontal axis and that will click this button over here to the right that says align left edges of the objects to the right edge of the anchor to stack them next to each other like that and once we have it arranged like that let's go ahead and click on it to get our rotation handles and I'm gonna hold ctrl and grab this bottom right corner and rotate it counterclockwise three steps while holding ctrl so we'll go 1 2 3 and what I want to do now is duplicate that by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and I'm going to flip that horizontally and vertically and what I want to do now is come up here and turn on this icon that says snap to custom nodes you're going to turn that on then we're gonna take these objects and just snap it to the edge right there so it's these two big circles are sitting next to each other and these top ones these small ones are sitting on top of the outside of that like that and that's exactly what we're looking for is that object right there so we'll click off of that to deselect everything we're gonna grab the Bezier pen by pressing D on the keyboard and we're gonna come over here and snap to this node once it snaps go ahead and click bring the line over here snap to that node click and then snap up here click and over here and click and then back to the starting point and then we'll go to the select tool I'm gonna turn that green and I'm gonna get rid of that black outline by holding shift and clicking the X and I'll just bring the opacity of this down about in half so what I'll do now is I'll take this blue circle I'll click on that and I'll hold shift and click on this other blue circle the two small ones and I'll unify them together by going to path Union and then I'll raise them to the top and hold shift and click on the green object and go to path difference and now we can click over all three of those objects and unify them all together by going to path Union and there you'll see we have it's kind of like a peanut shape this is gonna make for the the rounded part of the puzzle piece that dips in and goes back out kind of like that so let's flip this around 90 degrees clockwise or counter clockwise either way put this over here and we're going to give this a five-point outline as well so I'm gonna hold shift and click on the color of black to give that an outline and just make sure it's five it's a five-point outline we want a rounded cap and around and join and let's turn off the fill and we want to make sure the width of this is 150 so let's come up here and just change that to one five zero hit enter and then hold shift and click on that line right there and just make sure it's centered on the vertical and horizontal axis and then we can click off of it to deselect everything so what I want to do now is I want to take this line this little curve the line I'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and then hold shift and click on the peanut shape and go to path cut path and then click off it to deselect everything and we could take this object right here and just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that and it will take our little rounded shape up here we'll hit control D on the keyboard to duplicate that and hold shift and click on the curved line and go to path cut path and then click off that to deselect everything we'll take this little line in the middle here and just press Delete on the keyboard to get rid of that we'll take this line we'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D flip that horizontally and then take this bottom corner and just snap it onto that bottom corner over there and then we can click and drag over all three of those shapes and go to path combined and what I want to do now is I'm just going to zoom and make sure everything looks good over here all right what we could do now is I'm gonna duplicate this by hitting ctrl D on the keyboard and I'll rotate this around 90 degrees clockwise and I'll take this and snap actually I'll put this over here snap these two corners together and then I'll duplicate that by hitting ctrl D I'll flip that horizontally put this one over here snap to that corner now we can take this object right here hit ctrl D to duplicate that flip that vertically and take this object and snap it to the top up there and we now have the shape of our puzzle piece so what I'm going to do now is click and drag over all of that and go to path combined and then just hold ctrl and shift to scale it down a little bit you can make the stroke width a little smaller once you bring it down I'm gonna change this to maybe three see how that looks that's pretty good maybe I'll scale this down a little more and what you could do is if you duplicate that by hitting ctrl D and take this duplicated copy and rotate that 90 degrees either clockwise or counterclockwise and you could snap it on to the side of the other puzzle piece and I'll duplicate that again by hitting ctrl D and you'll see we have puzzle pieces that we can connect together like that I'll take this one duplicate that I'll put this over here and this can go on infinitely we have puzzle pieces that could connect together now if you want an individual piece let me show you something I'll duplicate this one by hitting ctrl D and I'll bring the opacity of this back down in half and these are all individual stroke pieces connected together it's not an actual path it's not something you could color any if you try to color it and you're gonna get something like that so what I'm gonna do now I'm gonna just gonna go to a path break apart and it's gonna break it apart into all of its individual little pieces again and now with all of them selected I'll go to path stroke to path and then path Union now we'll go to path break apart and click off of that to deselect everything and I should get rid of that object and you now see we have a solid fill puzzle piece that you can make any color you want but the difference with these is you can't connect these together these won't connect together the way they should if you notice you'll look let me bring the opacity down a little bit to show you they don't exactly fit together if you want pieces that fit together you have to these ones over here and that's pretty much it that's how you can create some vector puzzle pieces using Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 31,024

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape for beginners, vector, vector design, vector graphics, vector logo, vector tutorial, vector icons, vector puzzle

Id: 1lCfgRBz8t0

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2016