Making military ribbons

[Moon Puppy]

GIMP Version: 2.6.11
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: XP - SP3
GIMP Experience: Basic Level

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Wow, nice stuff going on with the forum.

Sorry for the long time no see, hope all are well.

Long story short, the guy who has been doing our graphics stuff is seriously ill (I don't want to bother him with our little issues) and we have some items that need to be made for our website. We use these little battle ribbons, like this.


I can do a good bit of this stuff but I can't figure out the texture. Anyone have a clue how I can do this?

Thanks

Hiya O!!! :mpup

[lylejk]

three bar sin gradient, small tiles, added texture and then added bevel using chisel Script-fu. Still naked of course (i.e., not color or metallic decoration).

[lylejk]

As a side note, decided to create a seamless texture too based on this ribbon.

[Oregonian]

Hiya O!!! :mpup

Hey Moon! Good to see you!

Looks like Lyle has you well in hand. Can you give us a link to the website so we can see how they are used?

[Rod]

Hey welcome back!

[Moon Puppy]

Sure O,
You may recall that I'm into scale models, one of the things most of the scale model websites do to encourage activity is have Group Builds or Campaigns as we call them. Everyone build a model based on whatever subject or criteria, recent one was "Charlie Don't Surf" Campaign where the subject matter was anything in the Vietnam war.

These ribbons are given to users who successfully complete the build in the time alloted.
http://www.modelersalliance.com/forum
here's our forum.

Thanks for his Lyle. so I can use this base and change the colors to make new ones? I'll be attempting my first one this weekend, let you know how it comes out.

thanks!

[Oregonian]

I was unable to browse and find a place where I could see a ribbon award.

Is there a basic size template that is used?

I zoomed in on the red ribbon to see the shading/texture better. The brush cursor is 1x1px, so the darker ridges are 1 pixel and the spaces between are 2 pixels. I see that there is shading that travels horizontally across the ribbon.

I find it interesting that a png image was semi-flattened. It's not necessary but doesn't hurt anything unless the ribbon is against a background that is not white.

[Rod]

I would load the texture over the awards and use overlay mode.

[Moon Puppy]

I was unable to browse and find a place where I could see a ribbon award.

Should see them in any of the users signatures on the forums. Here's a thread that has a lot of folks talking.
http://www.modelersalliance.com/forum/w ... f-86-sabre
you'll see my ribbons on my post.

Is there a basic size template that is used?

Yes, generally 150x50 or so

I zoomed in on the red ribbon to see the shading/texture better. The brush cursor is 1x1px, so the darker ridges are 1 pixel and the spaces between are 2 pixels. I see that there is shading that travels horizontally across the ribbon.

I find it interesting that a png image was semi-flattened. It's not necessary but doesn't hurt anything unless the ribbon is against a background that is not white.

[ Image ]

[ Image ]

that silence you hear is my blank stare....

I do remove any background from them and save as a png with a transparent background. Is there something I've missed in that process?

The other stuff about the brush and all...whhooomm....right over my head.

[GnuTux]

Long time no see, Moon.

Lyle has you covered on the ribbon layer. Looks like you'll need to add color/gradient, some shadow and maybe some bevel. Then you'll need to render the medal in the ribbon. You can probably find some usable fonts (dings) or public domain clipart that might help.

Your model site is looking good.

[Moon Puppy]

Man Scott, I sure have missed our conversations lately, especially with all the stupidity going on in Washington!

Thanks about the site, I have some serious issues on the back end but it's not effecting the front end. I know what's required to fix it but I sure don't want to do it!

I'm hearing what you guys are saying and I just need to put it into practice and see if I can pull off the job that John was doing, he was our graphics guy, he's undergoing Chemo right now, very sudden diagnoses of cancer. So I'm sure you understand why I don't want to ask him HTH did you make these cool ribbons!?

I'll give it a shot this weekend and let you know what I get.

[GnuTux]

You've came to the right place, Moon. I'm sure you'll be a gimp addict in no time.

If you get a chance, you can look though the tutorial section (there's a stuck tutorial index too) and run through a few of those. They can help quickly bend the GIMP learning curve.

[Moon Puppy]

Here's my first attempt. Did not try the texture tool you created yet because i'm using a known ribbon as my base.
I added two layers of text one gold, one black and I offset the black layer a little to make the text show up. then I merged all three layers into one.

DHPC.png (36 KiB) Viewed 2128 times

I'm a big boy so honest opinions are surely welcome.

[Oregonian]

Moon, that looks great. It looks like real ribbon. It has that kind of wavy look of real grosgrain ribbon and includes the woven edge on that kind of ribbon. I think it's excellent. Good job!

[lylejk]

Gave it fun try. Created the golden metal part from a fish brush and Tom's G'MIC metal look preset.

[Oregonian]

I found this piece of faille which is finely ribbed like grosgrain ribbon. I desaturated it using the luminosity setting. Then I scaled it to 200x200 and it seemed to have the size ribs needed for the small ribbons. I used it as a texture under the ribbon with the color layer set to Burn mode.

http://www.viesso.com/ultra-faille-organic-cotton-fresh.html




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[molly]

I think that looks really authentic O and Lyle, nice find.

[Moon Puppy]

Really nice work, OK, I'm going to get some Java in me and figure out how to do this myself. The ribbon I used is an actual ribbon, I didn't really create anything like yous guys did. Just layers some text is all I did. I'll let you know what I come up with. Thanks!

[lylejk]

I used burn too O.

[Rod]

I nabbed your pattern O.