One of the nice things about involving myself in clubs and activities are the opportunities to practise skills outside of my regular domain of computer science.
GSETA
organised a button-making workshop in the campus University Centre this
past week and I got to touch up the existing logo and design a couple
new buttons for the event.
With the logo, I just converted it into an SVG to ensure smoother lines (unlike the rougher one I carry on my shoulder bag).
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| GSETA logo |
With my first design, I figured "People love flowers!" but what do flowers have to do with animals? Bees!
They're like totally important to our very existence! They're necessary for large scale crop pollination that feeds so many millions. However, they're treated a lot like dispensable tools, so let's feature them (and have an excuse to draw a flower!) I wanted it to look hand drawn so I played with the textures of the petals and kept a rough line look to it (rather than crafting perfect, repeated petals with nice solid colours). I also hand drew the letters rather than curving text in a normal font. However, the effect when printed on paper for the buttons was more of a "my ink cartridge is running low" colouring. :D
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| the beautiful bee! |
The second design I did I wanted to put some emphasis on the environment, so I wanted to show the sky and the Earth. However, the A in GSETA does stand for animals, so what better an animal to situate in a landscape than the noble, tall-standing chicken! I also wanted to make one that appealed to a slightly different audience than the pretty flower, so following a personal interest, I made it an 8-bit chicken. Chasing cuckoos in Zelda recently might have contributed. Behold, a truly free ranging fowl!
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| cuckoo! |
I was concerned that they might not translate well onto paper, but I was quite satisfied and they were quite popular!
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| buttons 7 and 8 on my shoulder bag! |
Using Linux, I used
Inkscape to vectorise an old GIF of the GSETA logo. (It had previously been in vector form but the original vector file has since been lost.) For the two new designs, I worked in the
Gimp using my convertible tablet PC. I do like drawing on paper, but I've been migrating away from paper steadily for a while now and have started enjoying what I can create on a tablet. I like that the Gimp as Free Software can still provide the rich functionality I need to do cool stuff. Creating art digitally is also very satisfying in how organised it can be, particulate in the use of multiple layers. The bee image has 9 layers in it, covering lines, the green background, the two layers of petals, the yellow, the writing, the bee frame, and two layers for the bee's colours. They made changes really simple. :)
Have a good night!
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