To do with boys. Creating Christmas avatars with Inkscape

To do with boys

One of the ways to spread free and open source software ands teach the little ones how fun it can be to useit. That is why we are going with some ideas that you can do with them in these holidays (or those that come, because with the Christmas avatars we are a little out of date.)

A project to do with the boys

Christmas avatars

The program that we are going to use in this project is Inkscape. Available for Windows, Linux and Mac, it is a professional tool, but very easy to use for working with vector graphics. Vector graphics are a special type of graphics that, due to their characteristics, allow you to modify their size without undergoing quality changes.

Inkscape is included in the repositories of the main Linux distributions as well as being available at FlatPak and Snap stores.

The first thing we need is a typeface that includes Christmas symbols.you. You can find some in this page. I used a so-called Christmas3 which is free for personal use. You can also use the Christmas emojis that some GNOME and KDE-based distributions include.

Remember that lfonts must be installed before opening the application you are going to work with. Otherwise it will not detect them. The installation is done by unzipping the downloaded file and double-clicking on each font.

Procedure

The second thing we need is to know the measurements of the avatar that we are going to create. They are as follows.

  • Facebook: 180x180px
  • Twitter: 400x400px
  • Pinterest: 180x180px
  • Youtube: 250x250px
  • LinkedIn: 400x400px

Now that you know the measurements, Open Inkscape and go to File Document Properties. There in custom size you select px (pixels) as the unit of measure and choose the appropriate one. I'm going to use 400 × 400.

In this wizard we select the size and the unit of measure.

Then click on the tab Grids and on the button New next to Rectangular Grid. Close the window.

Grid creation window

As you will see, the working window is very small. You can solve this from the menu View Zoom Zoom In ..

Now draw a circle by selecting the corresponding tool that occupies the entire width of the window. Check in the upper bar that it has the same radius and that the origin and end are 0.

This base circle will serve as the outer border of our avatar.

You can select the color of the circle by clicking on the color palette. By clicking on the arrow to the right of the colors you can select different palettes.

Repeat the procedure creating a circle of the same size, but change color. Subtract the same amount from radius X and radius Y.

We have to draw a second circle that will be the base of the symbol.

Then click on CTRL + SHIFT + A pato make sure the inner circle is perfectly aligned. We do this by clicking on the icons to center on the vertical and horizontal axis relative to Page.

Hover over the inner circle and right-click on Fill and Border. In stroke color choose white and in stroke style a width of 5 pixels. Remember that you can choose the measurements you prefer.

Creation of the inner circle where the typography will go.

You will have to forgive me for the inconsistency in the captures. Inkscape in Ubuntu Studio has a bug that causes it to hang when you change fonts and I had to use it in Ubuntu.

Select the typography tool, draw a box anywhere on the screen and click in its center with the pointer. Select the character that has the symbol you like and adjust the size. Click again on CTRL + SHIFT + A and on the icons to center vertically and horizontally relative to the page.

Selecting the font, symbol and size

Change the drawing color by clicking on the palette and export from File export as PNG.

Export dialog as png image

PNG Image Export Dialog.


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