My first pattern, comments & critique welcome

[Uhanalainen]

Hey there,

in preparation of (probably) getting my first decent scroll saw tomorrow, I figured I'd ease financial hit on the missus if my first project is of something she values, so of course, I tried my hand at making a pattern of her dog. This is the first time I've used Inkscape, and this took me WAY longer than I care to admit but I think it looks decent. At least you can recognize what it is and I think, if you're familiar with the breed (miniature pinscher) you can make that out, too, at least if you squint hard enough  she had a collar in the original picture which I felt was unnecessary to have in the pattern so I kind of blended that in so you cant see much of it.

I'm not sure whether I should try to make some kind of arc for her back or not, it's basically almost all white until the tail starts due to how the light fell on her when the photo was taken. Also, only the paw of her front right foot is showing which looks a bit weird maybe? I don't know... I feel like if I try to add information I don't have it'll just make it look worse. I also think I overdid the smoothness on her back thigh highlight versus how I approached the mid chest and neck, but it's too far back to undo and I really don't want to start over...

Anyways, just wanted to post and ask whether you think I'll run into issues sawing this out.

 

Thanks for looking!

[Fab4]

Hi Juha:
The white areas on this attachment are called floaters.
Make sure that these areas are actually attached and you'll be fine cutting this out
It could be that they are attached but with a really fine bridge
Hope this helps you
Fab4

[Uhanalainen]

5 hours ago, Fab4 said:

Hi Juha:
The white areas on this attachment are called floaters.
Make sure that these areas are actually attached and you'll be fine cutting this out
It could be that they are attached but with a really fine bridge
Hope this helps you
Fab4

Thanks, that’s definitely helpful! May I ask, how do you do that check? I’m pretty sure there are bridges for all of those, so a paint bucket job would have filled them all in I reckon?

[Fab4]

I use Photoshop, any program that has a Paint Bucket should work.
Click on the Paint Bucket then click on the pattern
Choose a different color other than black or white then fill then fill the pattern
Floaters if any will appear as you see in the one I sent.

[FrankEV]

On 11/10/2023 at 6:11 AM, Uhanalainen said:

 

...Anyways, just wanted to post and ask whether you think I'll run into issues sawing this out.

 

 

I think you did a fine job on the pattern.  I looked very closely at the image and I did not see the drop outs. Don't beleive you wold have a problem cutting it.  However, I do thiink it needs a little bit more work.

My thoughts about the pattern concerns the large discontinuous outline of the body, especially along the face, back and front legs.  Assumig it is going to be a two tone image, I feel the light cut panel color blending into those areas will not really make the overall image of the dog stand out enough (will not read well).  I would add some non-continuous defining narrow cut lines in these areas.  Also, I would have like to see some detail around the eye.   

If you had posted a copy of the photo, I presume you used to make this pattern, you might have gotten some more usefull comments from me and otjhers.

PS.  You may have som difficuty cutting out the areas, like just above the belly, that have only one narrow bridge attaching a large area.  Likely to break durring cutting or handeling. a second bridge is always a good idea when possible.

Edited November 15, 2023 by FrankEV

[Uhanalainen]

1 hour ago, FrankEV said:

I think you did a fine job on the pattern.  I looked very closely at the image and I did not see the drop outs. Don't beleive you wold have a problem cutting it.  However, I do thiink it needs a little bit more work.

My thoughts about the pattern concerns the large discontinuous outline of the body, especially along the face, back and front legs.  Assumig it is going to be a two tone image, I feel the light cut panel color blending into those areas will not really make the overall image of the dog stand out enough (will not read well).  I would add some non-continuous defining narrow cut lines in these areas.  Also, I would have like to see some detail around the eye.   

If you had posted a copy of the photo, I presume you used to make this pattern, you might have gotten some more usefull comments from me and otjhers.

PS.  You may have som difficuty cutting out the areas, like just above the belly, that have only one narrow bridge attaching a large area.  Likely to break durring cutting or handeling. a second bridge is always a good idea when possible.

Thanks for your comments! Yes, I planned on it being a two-tone image and was a bit worried about the discontinuous outline of the body. Also, the eye area was something I felt was not very satisfied with, as it's almost solid black. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I could do any better with the source material I had on hand at the time. I attached it to the post below.

I actually since also did some further refining and discovered a new feature in Inkscape, called simplify. I'm not sure whether it looks better or not, as it kind of "rounds of" some shapes and as you can see in the photo below, the eye area is still a mess.

 

But I took this as a learning opportunity and have made a couple of other patterns as well, one of another dog that used to be my friends, but sadly passed away not long ago. I thought maybe I'd give it a shot and make a portrait complete with a custom frame with his name on it as a Christmas present for them. It looks a little bit weird under his head because he's resting his head on his favorite teddy bear toy - it didn't translate too well to my pattern but oh well, I think they'll recognize it. Doing that one, I again found some new techniques, that was done mostly in Gimp.

 

My last pattern I finished today was a portrait of me and my wife. Once again, I found some interesting new techniques, this time using Photoshop. I imported the photo, then duplicated the layer, then made another transparent layer above. Then, I took the duplicated layer, and used a Sketch filter called Stamp. I did this a couple of times using different configurations to get the detail I wanted, one darker than the other, then I placed the darker above the lighter one, and reduced the opacity so I could see where it had added more black. Then I drew black and white on the top transparent layer until I had the whole thing "colored". After that, I exported it as a png, imported into Inkscape, used Trace bitmap so I could resize it without losing any details, and changed the color to gray, outline to 0,5mm black and printed it out, it looks awesome if I do say so myself. I'll probably post it in my personal gallery when I'm done cutting it.

 

Anyway, what do I gather from all of this? I find I'm really liking the pattern making part of the hobby. It's a learning experience, since I haven't used Inkscape before this and only dabbled with Gimp and Photoshop very little. But I'm really growing to like it!

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Uhanalainen
uploaded original photo of the other dog as well

[FrankEV]

I do not like the simplified version.  A little tweeking and using some "Artistic License" the original pattern could work well.   Some of the black areas, especially around the nose and Eye needs some additional work to make them more visible and detailed.