Anybody who has checked out the Screencaster’s Flickr Group will see a lot of great stuff posted there by a lot of great people – it’s up to almost 400 images with over 120 members!. Recently there was a really remarkable piece created by Gilles Pinard who has posted several other awe-inspiring works done in Inkscape. I commented to him on Flickr, but he chose (quite rightly) to respond via email since his reply was fairly lengthy.

I thought the reply might actually be very interesting for others to read, so with Gilles’ permission, I’m posting my Flickr comment along with his response right here. Thanks Gilles for such inspiring Inkscape work even if the bar is set so sky-high!

My Comment:

I can’t help but imagine you worked from a photo as reference for this. I just examined the svg file and the detail is staggering. There are so many objects just for the reflection on the chrome pieces for example. It looks like you used trace bitmap functionality for some of it and free-drawing for other parts. Care to share?

Gilles’ Reply:

Thank you for your kind comments on the Drums illustration. Yes, I do work from photographs to produce pretty much all of my drawings, often compositing elements from different pictures, and making alterations or modifications whenever it suits me. And, no, I do not use the automatic tracing feature of Inkscape. I have tried it a few times in the past, and it simply does not work to my satisfaction. First, because the tracer is unable to interpret the different parts making up an object, I end up having to manually break apart pretty much all of the objects, split their paths at selected nodes, join those endnodes with new segments, and recombine all the objects differently. This process is so cumbersome that it is simpler and faster to do things manually right from the start. Second, since the outlines are traced as “strokes converted to paths”, they are hardly usable when the time to alter their shape comes.

In fact, the method I use to replicate the contours of a photographic element should be no mystery to you, Mr. Querin, since you are the one who kindly taught us that technique in the Screencasters’ episode number sixty-nine. I learned it from you, and I have been using it ever since. Be assured that, every time I use it, a kind thought goes your way. As for the text placed on the metallic plates of the different drums, episode number eighty-eight, showing how to use the new extension to bend a path over a curved surface, arrived in a timely fashion for me and, naturally, kind thoughts were going HeathenX’s way as I was using that new feature. No, really, all the techniques used in my drawings have been learned from you two. And if I ever venture to develop some new technique of my own, I then create a short tutorial to fill the gap, so that other people could replicate the same thing, assuming they have learned what you teach in your video tutorials.

One should not be impressed by the apparent complexity of the shapes making up the miscellaneous reflections on the chromed parts of the drum set. Since those reflections are all distorted in the first place, small variations in their contours is of little consequence. So I simply draw loosely with the mouse and, voilà! I usually use {Ctrl-L} to simplify the shapes and, at times, manually adjust a few critical nodes here and there, but, by and large, the process is uncomplicated.

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