Season greetings card drawn in a hurry (about 15-20 minutes). I love Inkscape for its remarkable versatility and simplicity!
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That's a really nice simple idea. i'll have to explore making my own cards next year

Like that you actually put it on a virtual card, rather than it just being a normal image. Nice touch.
Snowmans nicely done too.

While drawing this, I found the outline preview mode (CTRL+ numpad5) very useful, as it speeds up the rendering. Without it it would have took me an hour or even more to draw this card...

those red balls look very familiar, where have i seen those before?

I don't know......

In only 15-20 minutes? Amazing!

Yes, it was that fast because I reused a lot of graphics (the red balls in the background, the sky with the stars, the logo, everything was already existing). The only real work was on the snowman, and it took me about 15 minutes to draw it and about 5-10 more to finish the job (export the PNG, open it in Photoshop and export an optmized jpg that was included in greeting mails).

I know this post is old but.. on the greeting card.. how did you create the snowman? how do you guys create characters at all?

I just drew the snowman from scratch. There is unfortunately no simple way to learn how to draw characters from scratch. You just have to keep trying an learning to draw in Inkscape. Maybe the most simple way is to find an image of a snowman (or whatever you want to draw) and draw your own character based on that image.

Molumen wrote:I just drew the snowman from scratch. There is unfortunately no simple way to learn how to draw characters from scratch. You just have to keep trying an learning to draw in Inkscape. Maybe the most simple way is to find an image of a snowman (or whatever you want to draw) and draw your own character based on that image.

What would be the best tool to do this?

xlordt wrote:What would be the best tool to do this?

What would be the best tool to draw a character? Probably pencil and paper

All the tools are suitable to draw characters. You can start by drawing basic shapes (circles, rectangles etc...), then by transforming them (with the node tool) you can achieve any shape you want. The you color the character by using gradients to create some light/shadow effects or by just filling its elements with plain color (depending on what you want to achieve).

But before that, I'd recommend you to train yourself in working with bezier curves (and vectors in general). A lot of users that are familiar with bitmap editors (Photoshop, Gimp, Photopaint, Paint.NET or else) can be confused by the different approach in vector editors (inkscape, corel draw, illustrator etc...)

I would recommend a trip to the library or some Google searches for "How To Draw" ... there you will find the fundamentals and all of them apply to drawing in the digital world. In some ways more so.

You will find that many will suggest you sketch out the rough build of a character with the central line of flow and markings for proportions. You can do these things in a light grey color on a separate layer which means - no erasing. Then on a new layer you can do the ink work with the calligraphy tool, pencil tool or Bezier Tool.

These might help you out:
http://www.mangatutorials.com/