Hi Lazur,
First, let me just say THANK YOU for your Honest feedback. This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.
Lazur URH wrote:Hello BetaTestingPro,
Let me tell my thoughts about that tutorial.
Basic question, who is the audience?
Starters, advanced users, or professional ones?
The tutorial would be aimed at beginners for sure as I'm not really good enough myself to teach the advanced & pro users yet. Though I do aim to get good enough to do so eventually, I'm still basically a beginner myself. I've always felt that one of the best ways to learn how to do things is to try to teach others what you learn as you learn it. That helps me to retain the information while teaching others what I've learned.
Lazur URH wrote:To me it seems you would like it to be a guide
for those who make their first steps, yet the result is too complicated for that.
Also, it will show them how such things are tended to be done,
while there are several things a professional would never do alike.
And on top of it, they possibly will add these effects to anything they design, which is a common mistake in the field.
For the overall explanation, it is too long and the layout with the steps not aligned visually doesn't help the understatement.
Yes, it is meant to be like a guide for new users who don't know what the tools do just yet. And good point about people making the mistake of adding the effects to anything/everything they design. Thanks for the point on the layout as well.
Lazur URH wrote:Now for the details.
Where would you use such created icons/buttons?
Mainly on screens. It is one of the most advanced things to design right.
You have to bear with making the button available in pixel format,
from very small to large size, while being legible if really used as an icon.
That is, pixel fitted graphic, and less details for the smaller sizes in general.
Also appstore icons get the gloss effect, corners cut by the devices, so glossy effects drawn for real icons is usually not a good thing.
Same with the photograph background: in small sizes they hardly can be recognised.
Again, you are correct that they would be used on screen and not likely in print so the photographic background is probably too much. Thanks for the tip on appstore icons getting a gloss effect and corners cut on devices anyway so there is no need for the gloss in the first place.
Lazur URH wrote:The light and the shades are added through one gradient.
That is not a good way in my opinion.
If there is a light, it should make the background lighter, if there is a shade, it should make the background darker.
But making a grey tone where they appear at the same time?
That should be avoided as much as possible. There cannot be shade and light at the same time.
(I didn't play much around with inkscape layer modes but as I can remember gimp is so much better with it.
In gimp I would use a combination of them, like lightness, to brighten up the background, as on darker backgrounds the white gloss would look unnatural.
Same with the shades. For such reasons, in some cases I would add other tones as well to the white and black, but never a neutral grey.)
Again, good tips Lazur. Your feedback is most helpful and this is the kind of stuff I like to hear, As for Gimp layers, I really don't know much about the GImp or it's layers. I've never really liked the Gimp as I've always found it to be a bit slow & clunky. It always crashed on me in the past and I always ended up frustrated and annoyed so I very rarely even open the Gimp up, much less use it for graphic design.
Usually, if I'm using the GImp it's only for very simple animations and to use it's transform capabilities. I'm sure it's actually a pretty nice program if I simply RTFM, but I haven't done that yet since I have never really liked the GImp in the first place.
Lazur URH wrote:About the positioning: the fact that light doesn't come from the top creates a disharmonic effect.
Even if it would come from there, the effect on the letters is implying the lightsource is on the opposite side.
Also that effect makes the text less legible, the shades are too blurred, on that bottom "B" they seem totally off.
Yes, I see exactly what you mean with the light source on the text being on the opposite side. I'm not sure how I overlooked that in the first place as it sticks out like a sore thumb!
About the shades being too blurred and the bottom "B" being totally off... well, I can only agree with you here. It's just the effect that the built in extension created. I usually don't even use the extension and create the shades for text using rectangle shapes, transparencies and blurs but that seemed a bit much for what this tutorial was trying to accomplish.
Lazur URH wrote:To be more confusing, there is a lightsource in the center of the background image -burnt in the photo-, which would make a totally different effect if it was a reflection, like a "chrome button".
I'm not exactly sure what you mean here by "there is a lightsource in the center of the background image -burnt in the photo-" since the light source is literally the sun. It is a picture of the sunset that I took from the back deck of my house. The ripples and the reflection of the sun was added to hide the houses that would be seen below the trees. But there is no added light source.
Lazur URH wrote:On the technical way, that rotation of the top ellipse shape could be done in a pefectly aligned way, but it's really not for the starters.
It would add many-many seemingly unnecessary steps for the readers,
which is much harder to describe, much harder to follow than learning the ability of doing those things with less complicated tutorials.
Same with the alignment -it is rather confusing to draw the light circle separately from the background.
Point taken, the ellipse has got to go. After reading your feedback, I see that I don't need the ellipse in the first place and if I were to use it, it's in the WRONG place anyway. lol
I get your point with the alignment as well, it would make more sense to draw the circles directly on top of the background to begin with rather than doing it the way shown. Seems like I was working backwards for some reason when I originally wrote this.
Lazur URH wrote:I wouldn't recommand using layers for button designs alike: you cannot group all the objects and move them together, scale down, and such.
The main reason I got into the habit of using layers like this is because my laptop cannot select objects underneath other objects using the ALT + Click method as I could with my desktop PC. However, when I need to group objects to move them, scale them, etc. that is very easy to do by simply selecting all objects and duplicating them, then group them and so on. Again, I only do this because my laptop cannot make use of the ALT + Click method.
Lazur URH wrote:To sum it up:
in my opinion that is too complicated for a starter,
but the result is not as good as an advanced would follow the steps.
f the audience is the beginners,
then concentrating with each tutorial on as less new tools and steps in the workflow as possible would be more helpful.
If the audience are those who know they way around with inkscape, then that deep description of the tools is unnecessary,
but the result should be much more polished, like clipping or masking the raster image is a much cleaner way.
Your feedback is most helpful, Lazur. This is exactly the kind of feedback I've been looking for. All your points really hit home and make a lot of sense. You are absolutely right that if it were aimed towards the advanced users, the result is way too weak and too many descriptions on the tools themselves, etc.
Since the audience is meant to be Beginners, I obviously need to take a much less complicated approach that is easier to understand and I have got to get rid of the zigzagging I used here. I'm not sure what made me do it that way but I think I had come across one done similarly that I kinda liked. lol
Thanks for the reference it was a good read and very good tips over there.
Lazur URH wrote:(Well I don't know why a web or app builder would be advanced in coding but a starter with graphics anyway, I see it totally opposite.)
Actually, I don't find it odd at all that one may be an advanced coder but not good at graphics. I know a good many coders that don't have a clue how to make graphics at all. They have really good ideas for features in their software, but the software doesn't look good at all cuz they don't know anything about graphic design.
Lazur URH wrote:If you would like to see some really good icon/button designs, I will link some designer's portfolio who are specialised on them, for inspiration.
Yes, feel free to link the designer's portfolio for inspiration, that would be great! I love to learn and I love to help other people learn too.
[quote="Lazur URH"I hope these thoughts won't break you down too much.[/quote]
Hehehehe. I do feel a bit embarassed.
But you didn't break me down too much. Not at all. While I'll admit, it is a lot to take in, this is exactly the kind of feedback I wanted. You've helped me out tremendously. Much more than I was expecting to be honest. I've been trying to get feedback from people for quite some time (not around here) but I think they were afraid of hurting my feelings or whatever because I only got one sentence or so out of each of them. And then the input wasn't even close to helpful enough to help me see how I could improve it.
You've given me plenty of information to act on. I know now that this tutorial can pretty much be scrapped & totally re-written in a much easier to understand way. Which is fine by me. I wrote this thing well over a year ago (could be closer to 2 now actually) when I first started learning Inkscape myself. In fact, when I first started writing this it was more a reference for myself than anything else, but it was suggested to me (by my g/f) to turn it into a tutorial for others to learn from as well.
In the past I have written coding tutorials that worked out quite nicely, but this is literally the first graphics tutorial I've ever even attempted to write so I thank you for all the advice you've given.
Now, I just have to get over being embarrassed and get on with writing much easier to understand tutorials.
Thanks a Million for ALL your feedback Lazur. It's way more than expected, but exactly the kind of information I needed to see/hear for me to move forward.