Inkscape Tutorial: Warp Text Into the Shape of an Object

in today's tutorial I'll be using Inkscape to show you how to take text and form it into a shape of an object similar to what you see here on my screen and for this tutorial the example I'll be using is taking the word fish and forming it into the shape of a fish and if you'd like to follow along with this tutorial then you'll need to download the font that I used here called chunk 5 and I'll include a link to that in the description so once you've installed that go ahead and go ahead and open up Inkscape and we're good to go so let's close out of that and let's get to work so the first thing we'll do let's go to view let's go to view make sure you have custom selected zoom we're going to zoom in at 1 to 1 I'm going to click this button open up the align and distribute menu make sure you have last selected chosen and we'll open up the Edit objects colors gradients and Stroke menu click that button the first thing we'll do is we'll create a circle so click on the create circles and ellipses on tool click and drag on the canvas to create a circle let's click on the arrow and in this column right here where it says W for the width we're going to make that 400 Pitt 400 hit enter and then for the height we're going to make that 400 as well 400 hit enter let's take the opacity and bring this down in half so we can see what we're doing and let's actually turn this red okay so the next thing we'll do is we're going to create a rectangle so click on the rectangle tool just create a rectangle any shape or size like that we'll go back to our arrow the width we're going to make the width of that 400 hit enter and then we're going to make the height 100 hit enter and then hold shift in the keyboard and click on our circle so we have them both selected let's Center it up on the vertical axis and align the top edges and then we'll go to path intersection now let's right-click this and go to duplicate and let's flip this vertically by clicking this button right here and let's click and drag over both of them so we haven't both selected and let's click this button right here this is align bottom edges of objects the top edge of the anchor just like that go to path Union bring this thing over here and let's right-click this and go to duplicate and then hold ctrl and click and drag this off to the right right about there and then we'll go back to our rectangles tool we're going to create a rectangle going over this thing maybe to about there and go back to the arrow hold shift click on this second shape right here so we have them both selected we'll go to path difference we get hold shift and click on this first shape go to path Union so there we have our fish now we're going to take some text and flow it into the shape of this fish here so let's go to our text tool and click on that let's click on the canvas so I'm going to use all caps here it's important that you use all caps so that it's consistent all around I'm going to type in fish and let's click on the text editor open that up let's go find that font chunk 5 there it is hit apply close out of that then we go back to our arrow and let's go to path path effect editor and actually no we got to turn this into an object first so let's click on this and let's get a path object to path and that's going to change that from a live text item to an actual Inkscape path item so once you've done that this drop down should appear in the path effect editor we're going to go to uh we're going to click this drop down we're going to go down to envelope deformation that's the tool we're going to be using to make that to make the letters flow into the shape of the fish so click on that and click add and then hold shift and click on our fish right here let's go down to our line to distribute let's let's align the right sides and then let's align it on the horizontal axis just like that and then click off of it to deselect let's click on just the word fish hold ctrl and click and drag this out to here until the corners of the letter F touch the edge of the front of the fish right about there and we could actually take the opacity on this and bring this down a little bit so we're going to want to be able to see the object beneath it so the first thing we'll do over here in our path effect editor we're going to turn off where it says enable left and right paths let's turn that off and then we're going to have all these these four options right here top right bottom left and the first one we're going to click is top so let's click on this button this is top top bends path and we're going to get this green line going across the letters so let's take this green line and try to flow it into the shape of this fish I'll do that right now as you can see at when I do this the word fish will take the shape of however I move that line I'm going to take this node right here and hold ctrl I'm going to move this straight up so it goes up to the top of the tail right there now take this handle and drag this down kind of like here kind of like right down there kind of like that you're not going to be able to get it like sharp corner like that right there it's going to be it's going to have to be some kind of curved flow but that's alright because it'll still look like a fish so I'm just going to play around this a little bit until it fits the shape all right let's say that's pretty good we're going to the bottom Bend path we do the same thing Bend this a little bit take this node hold ctrl and click and drag this node down to the bottom of the tail let's take this handle and bring this in kind of like that we can take this handle and bring this curve out just like that and that should be that should be pretty good maybe I'm going to play with the top a little bit I'm going to get this I don't like how this looks right here going to get this a little closer kind of like that and you can use this technique to take the any kind of object and flow in it to the shape of any object so once you're once you're done once you've got it to a place where you like Inkscape is not going to recognize as an object if you look here when I highlight over each letter it's showing the letter as it previously was so we're going to finalize this by going to path object to path and then that doesn't happen anymore it's now highlighting the actual shapes I'm going to close out of the path effect editor we don't need that anymore let's go back to the arrow click on that and let's go let's actually go to our create ellipses and circles tool let's create any lips going over the the nose of the fish right there maybe like that go back to our arrow hold shift and click on the red fish shape let's Center that up on the horizontal axis and go to path intersection let's go to our create circles and ellipses too let's hold ctrl and shift to create a perfectly round circle that's going to be the fish's eye go back to our arrow we could put the eye right there select both of those and go to path difference and then we can click and drag over this whole thing we could bring the opacity all the way up we can give it one solid color maybe a an aqua shade of blue kind of like that and that pretty much does it for this tutorial just to give you an introduction to the the path envelope effect with Inkscape so if you have any questions let me know and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Logos By Nick

Views: 356,021

Keywords: inkscape, learn inkscape, inkscape tutorial, inkscape logo, inkscape logo design tutorial, inkscape for beginners, vector, vector design, vector graphics, vector logo, vector tutorial, vector icons, vector fish, vector text, inkscape text, vector type, inkscape type

Id: l3BHcregNUs

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2015