I thought I'd create a new thread for this, so it doesn't get lost in with The Greys.

I'm writing a series of Inkscape tutorial articles fro Full Circle Magazine. This is a Ubuntu Linux magazine, but the Inkscape tutorials are mostly relevant to Windows and MacOS users as well. It can be downloaded free of charge.

Last month had an introductory article to SVG as a file format, but this month the tutorials start properly. Part 1 covers the circle/ellipse tool and a few other basics - enough that even a total beginner can draw something.

Download issue 61 here.

Time for a little update on the translations fro "The Greys":

* We're near the end of our third year, with over 80 comics posted
* 22 of them are available in Italian (thank you :D  )
* Another 22 are available in French
* There are 16 in Indonesian
* There is only 1 in Spanish
* We've just received our first comic in Russian :D

I have more French and Indonesian translations in my queue to post - the figures above are just those that are online right now. I don't really expect to get many more Russian translations, as the guy who did it is only interested in the "Stargate" series, and doesn't want to translate any others. But it's still another language to add to our growing collection.

As always, if anyone is interested in translating any of our comics then please get in touch.

For me vector graphics is better for creating my webcomics than raster for three reasons:

1) I can't draw very well (in the traditional sense, with a pencil and paper), so it gives me the flexibility to change individual elements again and again until I get the appearance I want. Without vector graphics, I wouldn't be able to draw my webcomic at all.

2) I wanted a different style for our comic. It's about aliens, so I wanted something different from the normal hand-drawn and scanned style of most comics. Vector graphics gives us a distinctive style. It's also one of the reasons why we use Arial as our font (rather than a handwritten comic font), and our speech bubbles are a different shape to most comics - it's all about giving it a slightly different, alien feel compared with normal comics.

3) Most importantly I think of vector graphics as being the artistic equivalent of writing open source code. Someone else can download our files and modify them, learn from them - even translate them ;)  SVG lets someone work directly with every rectangle and circle just as you might work with the lines of code in a program.


But by using filters it is possible to create effects that aren't as clean and simple as traditional vector graphics - see the explosion in this comic, the sky in this one or the planet in this comic, for example. So Inkscape gives us the best of both worlds - the three points above still apply, but it lets us include some of the "noise" that raster graphics do so well.

I'm loving the new theme for the board, and the inclusion of the Google Translate toolbar has meant that I've been able to read more of the content outside of the International section. The translations are far from perfect, but usually good enough to give a general idea of what is being discussed.

Unfortunately I don't speak (or write) Italian. I have a "Teach Yourself Italian" book next to me right now, but rarely have the time to study it :(

So if I want to reply to a post in one of the other sections of the site, what is the recommended approach?

1) Don't do it - just write in the International section
2) Reply in my native language (English)
3) Reply in English but also provide a Google translation into Italian
4) Just provide a Google translation

I'm guessing that (3) is probably best, but I don't want to fill the forum with English if other readers will find it too distracting.

True to his word, spaventapasseri has sent us another Italian translation  :D




You can download the Inkscape SVG file by clicking here.

You can find our original English version by clicking here.


In other translation news, we've received a good collection of French and Indonesian translations, which we've been posting two or three times a week. Between them and our Italian collection, we wanted to draw more attention to the great work our translators are doing so...

* We've added some more obvious links in our sidebar
* We plan to post an article about the translations in the next day or two
* The text that accompanies our "Monsters, Inked" comic in the local newspaper will focus on our Greys translations

As always, if anyone is interested in helping with the Italian translations - or with any other language - please email us at greys@peppertop.com

The Greys are more internationals right now  sunglasses

Even more international than you might think - I've recently received a load of Indonesian translations that I'm working my way through to get in a good state to post online  :D

Hi Jaws,

You're not the only one around here who doesn't speak Italian ;)

But the administrators and moderators here are amongst the friendliest you'll find anywhere, so I'm sure you'll have no problems  :D