In line with the water theme let's go ashore and look at a sunset on the beach to introduce some more helpful tools and techniques.
It's time to add some palm trees for the tropical feel.
One of the 'wonderful' things about working with vectors ist the scalability. Objects can be scaled up and down without loss, allowing for easy editing and adjusting of the illustration.
In this case the scale of the palm trees will define the viewer's perception of distance. Smaller palm trees will put the island further in to the distance while large trees will 'bring' it up close.
Btw. the clouds are the same shape as the island just squashed and coloured in a colour matching the sky gradient. Try reusing shapes even just slightly modified, recoloured, squashed, rotated or flipped to speed things up, add variation and make your scene more interesting.
Note:A lot of the objects I am covering in my tutorials (like the palm trees above) working from predefined shapes (circle, square, star, etc.) is only one option. The freehand or straight line tool will create identical shapes but require a little more artistic skill. For our detailed palm we need two 'more advanced' features of inkscape: Interpolation and Path Effects.
Varying the fronds, adding to the interpolation and checking some reference images can improve the look of the palms even further.
Recycling objects If you have similar screens to design for your game it makes sense to spend some time on the initial elements and then 'recycle' objects. This way you safe time and create a more consistent look and feel.
I hope even these slightly more advanced features don't pose too much of a problem. Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
