Custom Script!

July 14, 2018 10:57 AM

I’d like to draw a short sequence of pictures (say, a string of tickets) and then drag, copy and repeat that sequence automatically to write/draw cursive script. Is there a cheap/free software I can use to that end available for Linux?
posted by stinkfoot to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Not sure if I’m understanding what you’re after, but would an animated Gimp brush do the trick?
posted by pocams at 11:10 AM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

I don't know how well it would work for what you want, but it seems like something you could do in GIMP, which is available for Linux and free. You'd have to design a brush that looked like the tickets, then use that brush to stroke a path that looked like the letters, which you could either create using the path editor or by converting a textbox to a path.

I just used the pre-existing green pepper brush and a quickly thrown together path to create this rough sample. Is this the sort of thing you have in mind?
posted by jacquilynne at 11:16 AM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: That might do it... I’d like my brush to unroll a strip of tickets as I write/draw, if that helps explain it better.

Edit: I think you’ve got it jacqui!
posted by stinkfoot at 11:17 AM on July 14, 2018

Best answer: In Adobe Illustrator I'd do this by making a "pattern brush" which repeats one element along a path; looks like the closest equivalent in the free/open-source vector editor Inkscape is the "pattern along path" feature.

Plusses: vector art can be printed at any resolution without ever worrying about DPI when setting up your file. Minuses: vector art editors tend to operate more like "arranging pieces of cut paper" than "using a pencil or paintbrush" and this is hard for a lot of folks to wrap their heads around.
posted by egypturnash at 1:23 PM on July 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: TikZ/PGF can definitely do this with path-decorations (although you'd need to somehow convert your cursive text to a path, probably by way of SVG conversion), but TikZ has a pretty steep learning curve. One thing which doesn't quite seem ideal in jacqui's solution is that the peppers don't change orientation with the path --- that's going to look a lot more awkward with the tickets. I think you basically need the underlying path to be vector graphics rather than painted raster to get this working right, so that at each place you want to put your motif, the path itself has a directionality.
posted by jackbishop at 3:03 PM on July 14, 2018 [1 favorite]