Fantasy Heraldry pt 3 - Tracing gifs tutorial

Hi All,

  As you can see I am starting to suffer from ooh shinitis. So to keep on track here is how you convert those pesky gif files into lovely SVG and PNG formats using Inkscape.

First, if you haven't already done so, download the latest version of Inkscape from here. I'm using 0.48 and it looks like I'm a little behind. As always this should be FREE. Never pay anyone for Inkscape.

Step 1: Open your copy of Inscape.

Open Inkscape

Step 2: Open your desired gif image it will pop up asking you to link or embed, choose embed.

You now opened gif image.

Step 3: Make sure the image is selected by mouse clicking on it. You will see the little black arrows.

Arrows show that it has been selected

Step 4: Go to the Path dialog and select Trace Bitmap.

 This window will pop up. I hit update in the picture, but all it did was give me the white rectangle in the preview. I just left all the values at their defaults and hit okay.

It will be hard to tell, the black lines may look thicker.

Step 5: Drag the tracing off of the gif. It should be on top so you can select it with the mouse and then drag it where you like. It is possible that you could just hit delete at this point, since your original bitmap should still be selected. I didn't do that just to give myself visual proof of the two different layers.

Trace on the left, original on the right.

 Step 5a: I now have to go back and select the gif image again.

Step 6: Delete the gif. We don't need it any more.

Step 7: Move our tracing back into the image area.

Final step is to "Save As". It will default to SVG you can select PNG or whatever you'd like. You now have a clean scalable image to use in your heraldry projects.

As always, let me know if you have any questions or if you need me to do a video to help you understand the process more readily.

Cheers.

I've also just noticed that I've passed 15,000 views and this is my 151st post. Since I wasn't paying attention I'll have to figure out something to do for 20,000 views and my 200th post. 

Fantasy Heraldry - one man's approach

When playing a fantasy campaign I like to make little heraldic icons for each nation/player. Sometimes I just go with something stock other times I try to create something new. The beauty of fantasy heraldry is that you aren't bound by convention. What follows is a walk through (or ramble) of my process and some resources I have found along the way.

I will also say that when I say heraldry I am conflating it with banners for wargaming purposes. So you want to make a banner/ heraldic symbol? What better way than to reference actual symbols. My first stop is usually Wikimedia Commons, search term Heraldry. Heraldry.ws is another good resource. For banners I like Warflag, Fanaticus, Grimsby Wargamers Society,and of course Dansk Figursspilsforening. I could go on but here are the basics.

So I now have culled through a bunch of stuff and have plenty of ideas of real or speculative designs. Next I need to think about the back ground of my Lord or nation and start throwing around the various bits that make up a heraldic device. One thing I found in researching this article is something I don't recall encountering before. There are a few sites that describe the individual meaning of the various parts of a coat of arms. The aptly named Heraldry Symbols and The Meaning Behind the Symbols - Fleur-de-lis Designs. So now I can also think about what I want to say about the individual that this CoA represents.

My method usually involves a rough sketch with colored pencils. (Please forgive my drawing, I'm a terrible artist.)

These were for my Linlandia map project.

So the since this was originally based off of a Mighty Empires campaign I was heavily influenced by Warhammer. So the Empire proxy uses the black eagle on a yellow field. The Bretonia proxy uses a yellow fleur-de-lis on a blue field. Orcs have lots of skulls, Chaos some kind of Chaos symbol. For the dwarves you need some kind of blacksmith reference and a rune, for the elves something suitably elven.

My method was to take some heraldic gifs I found out on the interwebs and use inkskape to trace them and convert them to vector images. I think I mostly made pngs because my svg file associations were weird. So by way of example, I came up with this for one of the Chaos coastal cities. I assembled the parts in GIMP, although I could have continued with Inkscape.

I kept it clear for the project

So as you can see it is chaosy with a ship to show it's status as a port. Maybe they are pirates? I don't know.

The final product made to look hand painted.

So as you can see I basically re-created the elements from my sketches using clip art. I think in this case I already had the clip art and just finagled it around.

Does this differ much from your workflow? Anyhow in the next installment I will show how I am working out  using these methods for the Talomir Tales campaign.