Hi,

as it shoud be obvious from the topic, I am trying to create a silent movie retro background for captions. Here you are some examples:

http://cort.as/1yQk

Besides creating the black background, I am totally lost. Any hint will be very much appreciated. Thanks

Welcome to InkscapeForum!

This should be fairly simple to do, or even to learn to do
Basically, you would draw whatever design you want, make the background black and the paths and any text white. Please see my forum signature to get started.

If you have existing images, it may be even easier. You could use Inkscape's Trace Bitmap to turn an existing raster image into vector.

Thanks a lot for the quick and warm welcome.

I know the basics of inkscape and I understand that I need a patter (e.g. some ribbons etc) and then white on black but my main problem is exactly the creation of those patterns. I will try to get something decent... you will not know of any on-line tutorial on this particular point, right?

thanks!

Oh, there are many, many, many tutorials out there for Inkscape (especially YouTube). I would say to look for one that creates any simple image. You just need to use the Pen or Pencil tool and draw the designs, just like you were using a real pen or pencil. So you'll need a tutorial that covers those tools. If you want to do a symmetrical design, you may want to use one of more shape tools, as part of the process. I have not seen any tutorials for this particular effect, but there well could be one out there somewhere.

I can recommend Help menu > Tutorials. They don't walk you through creating a specific image, like many tutorials, but instead just cover the basics tools and techniques.

The link you provided showed many different types of images. But if you're looking for "ribbons" you may want to learn to use the Calligraphy tool. I would call it more of an advanced tool, but that doesn't mean you can't learn it

Draw a black rectangle as a background, then there are various ways that you can draw the design. I would manually trace over an existing one to start with, then tweak and modify it to make it your own.

My advice would be to work on one quarter (or one half, depending on the design), then clone it, flip the clones and position them to make your frame. That way you can tweak the original corner and all the others will update, too.


I don't usually give out hints about the Easter Eggs in my comics, so don't tell anyone I mentioned this - if you download the SVG file for our "Murder on the Orion Express" strip you should be able to find an example of the sort of thing you're looking for...