Open Source Fun With Inkscape and SVG
Okay, this is just going to be a quickie picture-tutorial, because I've got a very long text-based one coming out "any day now." Meanwhile, I just want to share the joy that is working with Inkscape.
For those that don't know, Inkscape is a free and open source vector image editor, much like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. Vector editors differ from photo editors in that your drawings always remain a bunch of parts that get rendered, rather than being saved as pixels. For example, if you draw a circle, the file will contain information about the position and radius of the circle, as well as its color and outline rather than thousands of little dots representing the image.
SVG is the free, open standard for describing vector graphics and Inkscape is the best tool there is for creating and editing them. The fact that Inkscape is open source means that you're free to download it and share it with friends. If you have 45 minutes, download it and play along with this article.First, get the program here. I don't normally recommend getting nightly builds intended for the developers, but the 0.41 build for windows is borked and the latest nightly appears to fix whatever problems it had. Just unzip it in a directory and run the inkscape.exe file.
Once you're up and running, download furboa3.svg. It's the final frame from my bit of fan art at my friend Colleen's web comic, Fluff In Brooklyn. (Take a look! It's stuffed-animals-meets-three's-company hilarity).
Now that you've got Inkscape and a bit of art to work with, lets look at what we've got. (Or at least pretend if you're not playing along...)
