Original tutorial can be found here. I used the SVG supplied converted to bitmap for Gimp.
http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/crea ... dy-letters

Results


XCF is attached =)

That's outstanding! Going to have to look over that. I'll post any results I come up with. Nice tut, Rod!

I didn't design the tutorial, but it is a great way for people to get to know mapping in Gimp. =)
Thanks O!

There were several places in the tutorial that were very unclear.
One was set the gradient to repeat: What repeat? I used Triangular Wave.
Another was Text layer #5. I didn't have a text layer #5 but figured out it should have been the bumped/blurred layer.
My Warp looks MUCH more warped than the one in the tutorial.

The tutorial really should be repaired or I'm not doing it correctly.

Here are my results.

This is a pretty simple effect, didn't learn anything new here, but this will definitely become helpful to others.

I actually tried something like this for this tutorial, cause that was new to me, and I wanted to try it out.

I love the tutorial. I wasn't sure which layer some of the steps were done on, but I think I figured it out.

~and~

Those look really good folks. Yeah when it came to the repeat part i just used triangular and made a very small line to create the gradient starting at the top left of my image, and drawn about 2 inches down towards the bottom left.If you run the line for your gradient all the way across the page it makes the stripes to big.You really gotta hanky with it a bit.I agree it should be redone. Nice results though guys.

Wow Greg they are beautiful....what is the font you used?
I didn't get past #3 cuz it is a very badly written tute. It doesn't say what layer you are supposed to be working on. so after many tries, I gave up. I will wait and sometime maybe someone will rewrite it.... I love the finished look...

EDIT: I got it to go this far but I am having probs with getting those nice highlights across the top. I will try again a few more times.

Nothing fancy, just wanted to try my hand at the tutorial. I must agree, it's not as clear as it could be, and I guessed at several steps. I think I overdid the steps that warped the stripes and added highlights, I couldn't tell what I was doing on all the different layers and didn't take the time to use the eyeballs to check. I just used the numbers suggested in the tut.

I enjoy doing tutorials even if they aren't entirely clear on the steps because sometimes in trying to figure out the steps, you make happy mistakes.

Some sort of metal look going on here:


Then according to the tutorial:

Those are very nice mahvin. I have had lots of candy canes in those colors...

Me, too. They weren't spearmint or peppermint, but more like a sweet/tart over mint taste.

Mahvin, your second one looks so real. It has a wonderful satiny, shiny look.

Sweet coloring Mahvin! They look Mahvelous!

my candy canes suck, just can't get the hi-lites

Molly, tell me where you're not understanding the steps - and I'll try to clarify. The author got ahead of himself in several steps of the tutorial, and his illustrations are usually a step or two behind the actual steps. One key area that stumped me (and I later figured out, was that after you duplicate the text layer 3 times - 1) you'll add threshold settings to all 3 layers, 2) you'll use Color to Alpha on all 3 layers, with the target color as black, 3) then blur all 3 layers. 4) just slightly use colors - curves on all 3 layers.

One thing the step failed to mention (or I failed to notice) is that after you lock the transparency with the initial blur in the beginning steps, you need to unlock the transparency before you duplicate the layer 3 times, otherwise your blurs on the highlights will do nothing at all, at least til you unlock them (if they are locked).

If I had more time, I'd re-do the entire tutorial, but in the meantime, let me know where you're getting hung up exactly and I'll help.

Thanks Mahvin. =)

Tried the tutorial again making a candy cane. I made the reflection curves just a little less sharp.

Awesome, O! I love it, looks fantastic!

@mahvin, One of the parts I found really confusing is on #23 where it said make the reflections visible again. That was the three layers where we did all that stuff. Anyway when I made them visible, they were dark and almost black and I couldn't see the colored stripe layer when they were turned on. Those layers were above the striped layer. and below the striped layer was the white layer. The last page from 22 to 25 is where all the mix ups were. (I think)