UserStories047/klepas
What is your Name?
Simon Pascal Klein, also known as klepas on IRC and a few other places, but generally ‘Pascal’ in most places.
Can you give us a Photo?
I guess. I haven’t figured out how to upload photos to this instance of Wikimedia, so I’ll just link it: http://klepas.org/Photo_63.jpg
What do you think about Inkscape?
A total rocker and sits at core in the work-flow of any of my design work. I think I’d have to echo Donna: it’s possibly also my favourite open source app.
Apart from Inkscape being open source—a quality that most industry designers sadly won’t treasure as much as fellow FOSS community members—I particularly love the type of users and developers Inkscape attracts. I think there are some of the most talented software engineers actively participating in the project, not to mention a great number of brilliant designers. Most striking though is the number of newcomers to design—meant generally; design of any form—who have created their first works through Inkscape. Inkscape lowers the barrier of entry for anyone wanting to create and edit vectors, whether illustrations, diagrams, icons—the list goes on.
Can you give us a Hot Tip for using Inkscape?
Stick it to the grid! Although Inkscape is a vector editor chances are you’ll have to make fixed, static exports of your work, such as raster PNG files. When exporting these, and probably most notable in any precision work like iconography, you’ll want to make sure that your lines render sharply and crisply rather than blurring. By pressing Shift + 3 (#) you’ll trigger the grid, which you can redefine and edit in the preferences. Further, if you’re keen to keep your objects aligned to the grid you can enable various forms of snapping that automatically snap your objects when moving them or editing them.
Yea, sure:
http://openclipart.org/media/files/klepas/6426
How did you do it?
Also on OpenClipArt: http://openclipart.org/media/howididit/6426
Essentially the piece is a composition of relatively simple shapes with applied colours and gradients of which some make good use of the blur effect. :)
Do you give us permission to use this to promote Inkscape?
Absolutely. The work noted above is already released into the public domain; open it up and pull it apart to see how it was constructed.
Another tip: it might help to use the view outline mode because Inkscape renders all the shapes, gradients and even the blurs in real time, which can add up to be a bit much for the processor and cause interface laggging.