Creating images with smooth color transitions
Smooth color transitions is a recurring subject of requests that Artoonix developers encounter. We will show here how one can use already existing Artoonix drawing 1.9 tools to create smooth color gradients and create some stunning images in a very simple way. Naturally, Artoonix also lets you animate those to create even more beautiful animations .
We will use the “water lily” example (artoonix .icp project file for your own experimenting can be downloaded, simply follow the link at the bottom of this page). The final result looks like this:
As one can see it is rich in the use of halftones and smooth color transitions. And all this is fairly easy to make by using basic tools: the round and square section brushes, the transformation and deformation tools, as well as Selection area tools.
Creating a background || Creating a flower || Finishing Touches || Downloads || Animation
Creating a background
To start off, let us create the background as shown in the following steps (please, also refer to the picture below):
1. Set the current tool Brush / Free hand painting, and the largest size of the brush – 50 ( it will be easier to operate in the future). Now, in the options panel below, set the “Shape” of the brush to “Rectangular” (“W”) and “Hardness” to Soft (“S”). Choose Blue color in the palette and draw in a new object a short vertical “stroke”, so that it looks similar to (1) in figure below
2. Use Simple Transform (“T”) to stretch it to get something like (2). As you can see, we have a rectangle with a smooth transitions of blue around its center.
3. We will only use the bottom half of the rectangle to get a shift from blue to transparent (not white!). To do this, select the upper half (use “Rectangular Selection area” tool) and remove it (right-click, choose Selection area tools-> Clear area).
4. Stretch the gradient blue object to the desired size.
>> Repeat the steps above to a create a similar transparent-to-green object.
5. We can now blend two created objects, using, once again, the Simple Transform tool. The gradient effect is here!
6. Shadow: Create an object with gradient of black, and turn it like shown in (6).
Now, Merge objects.
7. Copy the part that you think looks like your background ( using the Selection area tools-> Copy area), delete all objects and then do the “ Paste from clipboard” into a new object. With a little bit of luck you will get something that looks like (7). This is the background of our image.
Creating a flower
Now let’s see how you can create a flower, water lily. Here’s a detailed description of the process:
1. Create an ellipse using a combination of tools Brush / Ellipse and lilac fills with Brush / Fill.
2. Create a new object (Alt + N). Just like when you were creating the background, select the Brush / Free hand painting, but now set the Shape to Rounded (“Q”). Take the maximum size as well – 50. Now select the pink, and click the mouse to get a dot like (2).
3 . Stretch the dot to the desired size using the simple transform tool. Now you can see that the pink grades smoothly from the center to the edges.
4. Combined (1) and (3) is the petal with nice gradient color transition. Merge them into one object.
5. Duplicate the petal object (4) and then use the deformation tool to make something like (5).
Make several petals and combine them into a pretty flower:
Finishing Touches
The next step could be to combine in one frame all the objects – created as described above, and those that were made in a similar fashion: a pair of leaves of the water lily, as well as light spots and shadows.
To conclude, it is very easy to create simple yet very effective color transition effects in Artoonix.
Downloads
Feel free to explore artoonix project with objects described in this tutorial, download it here (zip file, 518kb), unzip and place .icp file in your Artoonix Projects folder.
Animation
And do not forget – not only you can create beautiful picture in artoonix, you can bring them to life too!
