Howdy. I'm brand new to this forum, and have hardly used Inkscape. I've made a couple of designs in Photoshop [a pain in the neck], and exported them to SVG. Other than that, I have hardly any design experience. Using the search, I've found some leads but not precisely what I'm looking for, and I'm simply not savvy enough to even know what questions to ask from a technical standpoint.

So let me get to the chase and show you what I want to create an SVG for:



This is probably a very complex design - correct me if I'm wrong. The way I see this is in two parts. Part 1 - The Swoosh Ring. Part 2 - The Planet.

Part 1 - The Swoosh Ring

- it has a feather dash/dot/feathered dash/dot... pattern in the radial direction.
- the feathered dashes have a gradient from solid to transparent outward in the radial direction
- the gradient feathered dashes/dots repeat perpendicular to the the radius, along a path that creates the Swoosh
- the Swoosh thins with visual distance so that there is perspective.

Part 2 - The Planet

- I could make the planet as-is using Filters in Photoshop and limit the amount of color contours to say 5 [blue, light blue, white, gray-green, and gray]
- what I'd LIKE to accomplish is to create a mosaic of small square tiles of the Earth colors [as above], with a little transparent space between them. Additionally, the squares would be randomly rotated a little [but not overlap] and come together as ordered square tiles over the distance from the North Pole to the South Pole.

Ultimately, I'd like to be able to change colors and perhaps Swoosh Ring sub-patterns [dash/dots to jets/diamonds, for example] on my end so I could create about 4-6 different versions of this same basic design. Also, I was hoping for assistance with this to use it as a hardcore tutorial [of set of them ] so that I could pound it into my head enough and force myself to learn the ins and outs of Inkscape.

Please let know if anyone can hook me up. I'd really, really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

This sounds like a rather complicated project, by the time you are done you should know Inkscape very well!
Perhaps you might get more help if you broke your project down into elements and tried to get each idea on canvas and then asked for fine tuning assistance; you could assemble the finished project later.
As it is it's hard to know where to begin to help.

Ultimately, I'd like to be able to change colors and perhaps Swoosh Ring sub-patterns [dash/dots to jets/diamonds, for example] on my end so I could create about 4-6 different versions of this same basic design.

For a starter tip, you might play with pattern along path (two versions - extension and path effect!) to get your ring AND be able to switch patterns easily, although not very easily if you want real perspective.



Well, that should get you good and started.