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© 2007 by Rick Altman. All Rights Reserved.
That is an abbreviation of one of my favorite Albert Einstein quotes: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.” As I prepare seminars and workshops for CorelWorld 2007 (June 24-27), that becomes my mantra. At least once a year, I brush up on CorelDraw fundamentals by using the simplest shapes of all to make something that is greater than the sum of its parts. One of my traditional exercises involves creating a keychain full of keys. I consider myself a typical CorelDraw user: easily intimidated by work that appears beyond my graphic capabilities and then struck by the notion that maybe I could do it after all. This is one such example.
We begin with two rectangles and a circle and over the course of the next few minutes we will only create one object that involves even the most basic use of the Freehand tool.
The first step involves simply positioning the three objects in relation to one another. This is hardly rocket science, but it certainly helps to know the arrangement shortcuts, notably C for centering objects along a vertical axis.
Rectangles can have their corners rounded quite easily and once done, they can be turned into one shape with Weld. Then the small circle is combined to create a hole in the shape, made apparent by any fill pattern. It is important to weld first and combine second, otherwise the circle would disappear entirely during the welding process. It is also significant that now these three shapes are one object.
Now comes the most complex shape of the entire drawing, which isn't saying much at all: a series of clicks with the freehand tool to create the teeth of the keys. I will confess to not having studied the teeth of keys carefully, but I know that each tooth is a bit different. This so-called complex shape took all of three minutes to create.
While it might be tempting to simply overlay the teeth atop the key, that would be cheating. It's important for most of the upcoming steps, and just good form, that the key continue to be a single shape. This is a job for Trim, whereby the teeth become the cookie cutter and the key becomes the cookie dough. Nudge the teeth into the exact position desired, then Shift+select the key and issue the Trim command. Afterward, I deleted the teeth altogether and did a bit of simple node-editing on a few of the teeth to make them less jagged.
What color is a key? That depends upon the lighting, the direction of the light, and the angle of the key. In other words, just about any gold-silver-copper tint with lots of gradual variations would look plausible. Am I trying for absolute realism or an artist's rendering of a key? The latter, so I went a bit over the top with various tints of gold and yellow.
Giving depth to the key takes a bit of thought and there is more than one way to accomplish it. Using Extrude is complicated and usually looks hokey. Drop Shadow would be okay if you wanted to add the drama of having a light source nearby and the key raised from a surface. But for basic depth perception, there is another tool that is better suited: Contour. Essentially, you want to make one copy of the key, completely contained in the interior. Copying and sizing won't do it; you need the intelligence of the Contour command. Choose one stop of no more than a fraction of a pica and click Inside. Contour assigns arbitrary color tones that are usually wrong, and because we no longer care about the Contour effect (we really just wanted a second copy), you can now break apart the contoured group and just work with the two shapes. Move the top one over, apply to it the bottom one's fill pattern, and then change its angle by at least 45 degrees. Then select them both and center them with C and E.
Now for the grooves, those two little valleys that all keys have. There is a right way and a wrong way to create them. In either case, they are just thin rectangles, so create one, apply a variation of the key's fill to it, and then duplicate it. Change the fill angle of the duplicate ever so slightly, then group them, and nudge them into approximate position running down the key.
The first wrong way to integrate the grooves of the key is to try to size them exactly and overlay them. The second wrong way is to use Intersect to create an object exactly in the space that the grooves now occupy inside the key. In both cases, you would have to hope against hope that you would never have reason to tweak the shape of the key or the grooves. Like I said...wrong way to do it. Besides, once again, one object is better than multiple objects.
The better way is to use PowerClip, the magical stuff-inside command that always lets you undo and redo the procedure and treats the compound object as one. Select both grooves, issue the PowerClip command and then click on the key in front. Watch the grooves magically melt into the key.
Now select all the parts that make up the finished key and group them. Click again on the group to get its rotation handles and move the center of rotation to the center of the small hole. Now rotate the key a small amount, but before you release the left button, right-click once to leave behind the original and create a copy. Make one or two more copies, tweaking the rotation angles to taste.
The final operation for this project — running a keychain through all of the keys — requires a cognitive leap on your part, because in two-dimensional software, an object cannot actually pass through another object. Yet that appears to be what's happening here.
Many of you recognize the blend-along-a-path appearance of the beads, but how about that going-through-the-hole business? We'll leave that part to your own imagination; if you thnk you know how it's done, we will make it worth your while to write in (using the Contact link at the top of the page) and explain it to us...
See techniques simple and complex on display at the CorelWorld User Conference in June. Start your summer off in heavenly San Diego, June 24-27. For complete details, visit the conference website.
Copyright 2007, All rights reserved. Have an opinion? Share it with the Corel community at the Graphics Unleashed Discussion Forum. There is already quite a bit of discussion about this story. Join in.
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