Can someone teach me how to draw this logo

[dunnmfg]

I have tried to do several of the different traces in Corel 5 but I dont like what Im getting. I have lots of lines, on top of lines on top of those lines! It looks descent but so many un needed lines. I want the letters to be welded to the panther. Also wanted the eyes and wiskers to drop out but wanted the teeth to stay attached. Is there a much easier way to convert this logo so its pretty much cut ready so I can make this thing for my son's teacher? Could you please give me steps to do this as I am new to the plasma and the drawing aspect of this machine. Im looking for a class on Corel in the Dallas area if anyone knows a good one for me attend. Thank you

[Gamelord]

Here's the steps I took in Corel X5

Copied the image from here, pasted into Corel Draw.

1) Select image
2) Go to Bitmaps -> Outline Trace -> Line Art
3) Make sure the following options are selected:
Detail to next to last line towards the +
Smoothing @ 25
Corner smoothness @ 0
Delete original image not selected (optional)
Remove background selected
Automatically choose color (default)
Remove color from entire image not selected
Merge adjacent objects of the same color selected
Remove object overlap selected
Group objects by color selected (important)

Once all settings are set, choose 'OK' to do the trace.

4) Move trace away from original object to work on it
5) Select traced object, go to Arrange -> ungroup (NOT ungroup all)
This will ungroup the main image into individual color groups.
6) Click off the trace, then select the purple background swatch area and delete.
7) Click on the purple in the "U" and delete (removes all the purple)
8) Click the gold in the "U" and delete (removes all the gold)
9) Click on the light gray outline around the bobcat and weld it to the black outline of the "U".
10) Click on the purple in the mouth of the bobcat and weld that to the black outline of the "U"

Now you can manually fix any nodes that cause unacceptable lines, in my drawing I had two nodes that were open causing the weld to draw a funky line through the mouth area, I manually deleted the nodes inside of the outline on the bottom and it fixed the issue. To further fix the drawing, I would probably clean up the teeth and straighten some of the lines around the outline of the UNI.

I hope this gives you some insight into creating more drawings. Please play with some of the settings and techniques until you find something that works for you and your particular drawing.

[dunnmfg]

THANK YOU Gamelord, That is an awsome list of directions!

[Dawgonhawg]

Good stuff Gamelord!!

[Gamelord]

You are welcome. This was an easy one to do because most of the colors are solid colors. If your image has a lot of gradients or is not very sharp, this would be much harder to do. Most of the time if the image is full of gradients and is very pixelated then the only option is to sit down and hand trace it.

Hope it helps you with other drawings as well.

[Gamelord]

Another thing that you could do if you wanted the UNI to have a fatter outline is to take the Gold color and instead of deleting it, select it and then go Arrange -> ungroup and it will break all the gold apart into pieces. Then you can select the gold inside the "U" and weld it to the black, then select the gold in the "N" and do the same - same with the "I". Be sure to get the little pieces on the bottom of the N. Then just select the gold in the cougar and delete.

[beefy]

Gamelord,

although that wasn't for me, I'd also like to say thankyou. I've saved that one in my tracing knowledge folder.

Dunmfg, for single sheet artwork (as opposed to 2 or possibly more sheets layered) the cut file has to be one peice. With the drawing you have, what would be cut out space and what will be the metal ?

If the white is space and the black is metal then your letters will be OK, but the eye and whiskers will drop out. Visa versa if the white is metal and the black is space, well I'll let you figure it out.

You could perhaps cut the black out as a backing plate and paint that one colour, then cut the white bits out and attach them on top of the black backing plate as a different colour. I've seen a few examples on this site done that way and it looks better than just a single sheet IMO. Perhaps a way of attaching the top peices would be to drill holes in the backing plate and tack weld in these holes so there's no sign of welding at the front.

I've came across some supposedly cut ready artwork for sale, yet if cut as a single sheet lots of peices would just drop out giving big open holes where some detail is supposed to be. Look into examples of painting stencils and scrollsaw art and you'll start getting an idea of when a drawing is truly cut ready for plasma.

Keith.

[Gamelord]

Thank you for the kind words, I am glad that it has helped.

As for cutting, I think if it was me, i would just draw a large oval around the entire thing and cut out the black area. To make it really nice, I would make it two layer

[beefy]

Here's a Coreldraw file of Gamelords oval idea. I did a manual trace of Gamelords black & white jpeg image, coloured it red and stuck it on a black oval.

Exported as dxf and brought into Sheetcam and seemed to work good. You can play more with the nodes and curves if you want to adjust it somewhat.

Keith.

[dunnmfg]

Thanks for he explaination Keith and Gamelord your help is very nice of you.