... And Drawing them

Moika! Hi!

This week's update is a real upgrade from my studies last week, and I'm glad to report that my concepts translated really well! 

Before we start I would like to thank my colleagues for advising me to use colour in my design to help it separate itself into segments. And to take on what I could chew, which I'm glad I did.

Anyways, the process for this piece was really complex, so strap in cuz I'm here to tell ya how I made this.

So!

To start, I made a 6 sided star (Originally it was supposed to be 5, but it wouldn't connect with the braids as nicely so I scrapped that). Then I made a rectangle from the base of one star's triangle to the base of an equal star, making an even connection. Then I drew in a braid, making sure to have connectable points. Then, instead of doing that shape a bunch of times I deleted my star, and made a polar array around the center of my center point. (Which was the center of my workspace, purposefully done using grid snap because I knew the center would be hard to find. In hindsight I could've used the star and that would've fixed some minor alignment parts I encountered late into the project but I digress.)

Next, I made a complete shape using the connected base of the braid, then I offset that and created a very pleasing border shape.

After this I wanted to create an intricate pattern in the middle that would become the focus of the pattern. Originally it was built inside the border shape, but I separated it (I made a copy don't stress) for your viewing.

When it came time to hatch this shape, the border offset caused an issue, so I had to move it away from the ornate design in order to colour it. Which took a long time to figure out. The two shark back looking shapes filled just fine, so they are hated in this next photo, but here is everything put together:

Before colouring, I had to set up my layers, 7 in total for my plan. 

Braid 5 ended up being a backing layer in the border. Layer 01 is important for later, but didn't need a name, if it had one though, it would be 'linework' (But the linework isn't there yet). Here is the design once the colouring was finished (dont mind the weird hatch clipping in the bottom right, it was a visual issue not an artwork issue)

Now, I assume my alignment for duplication would be easy, I grouped my braids (Yes, grouping works across layers) so I could deselect the connections to not copy them. I was ready to start. But my connection was off by a small, significant margin. To decrease this margin, I made a plan, snap to mid.

The arc of that braid base had a snap-able mid-point, so I simply drew a line on both areas I needed to select. Then I used the move tool and connected the points. though the offset wasn't completely eliminated, the margin was much smaller and consistent so it didn't cause further issues. I suspect this error was in aligning the center line of my star, causing the braid not to be 100% centered. But now I know for next time.

Before I finalized the design in photo, I had to hide the linework. Enter Layer 01. I right click the default layer which now only contains my linework and is untoggle-able (as far as I know) and clicked select objects. Then I changed the containment for the linework from Default to Layer 01 and toggled it off.

Then it was ready to screenshot! so here's one in wireframe, and one in raytraced view for you:

Overall I'm very happy with the overall complexity and the palette of this. I look forward to putting this skills to use in future work!

Näkemiin! ♥ Goodbye!

-Kitt