Drawing Technique

What you will need For this tutorial you will need Xara Xtreme (or a drawing program which can export EPS files) and TypeTool or Fontographer (or another font creation program which can import EPS files). A 15 day trial version of Xtreme can be downloaded from Xara. FontLab offers a demo version of TypeTool with no time limit however it does add the FL logo to some characters on export. Currently there is no trial version of Fontographer for Windows however FontLab Studio will also do the job. Using Xara Xtreme In this tutorial we will be using Xara Xtreme to draw our characters. We will then export our drawing to EPS format which can then be imported into most font creation programs. For the purposes of this tutorial we will only cover some basics of drawing in Xtreme. With a little drawing ability this technique can save time compared to Scanning and Tracing. You also have the ability to draw in some font creation software such as Fontographer however using Xara Xtreme gives you the advantage of saving your work at various stages so you can go back and edit or reuse them later. First we draw For this exercise we created 25 drawings, one character each for lower case letters a through y. Our original XAR files (before and after) and exported EPS files can be downloaded at the bottom of this page if you want to try to make the same font. The completed TTF file is also available. Below is our first character. Open Xara Xtreme. A new untitled document appears. We have drawn three shapes as shown above - a solid black square, a solid white circle and a solid black star. At this point it is good practice to save this file so that you can go back to the original later if you need to. We will now combine these shapes to make our first character. Move the white circle to the center of the black square. Select both shapes and from the menu click Arrange then Alignment. In the Object Alignment dialog box select Align centrally for the Horizontal positionsand Vertical positions. Click Apply. To cut the circle shape out of the square from the menu click Arrange then Combine Shapes then Subtract Shapes. We now have a square with a hole in it as shown above. Next move the black star to the center of the white circle. Select both shapes and from the menu click Arrange then Alignment. In the Object Alignment dialog box select Align centrally for the Horizontal positionsand Vertical positions. Click Apply. To add the star shape from the menu click Arrange then Combine Shapes then Add Shapes. If we could spin our finished shape in three dimensions if would appear like the image to the right. You can see the circle shape was removed from the square then we added the star shape to float within that space. To export this shape as an EPS file from the menu click File then Export. In the Export file dialog box select Adobe Illustrator (*.ai;*.eps) as theSave as type. Choose a directory location and give your file a name including the .eps extension then click Export. Import the EPS files into TypeTool Open TypeTool and open a new font - from the menu click File then New. From the menu click File then Font Info and here you can record Names and Copyright information. Then from the menu click File then Save As to give your new font a name then click Save. First we need to set one option before we import our EPS files. From the menu click Tools then Options (or press F10). Under General Optionsclick EPS and bitmap background and select Fit between Ascender and Baseline. This will automatically resize your imported shape to the maximum height. Double click on the lower a space to open that character window. From the menu click File then Import then EPS. In the Open EPS Filedialog box locate your EPS file then click Open. Our first EPS file has been imported as shown above. You will need to drag the right border line to the right so that the entire shape is in the correct position as shown above. The default setting is for an outline view displaying the points. If, from the menu, you click View then Show Layers then Fill Outline it will show you the character in full as in the image below. Import the EPS files into Fontographer Open Fontographer and open a new font - from the menu click File thenNew Font. From the menu click Element then Font Info then General. Give your new font a name then click OK. Finally click File then Save to save your file. Double click on the lower a space to open that character window. From the menu click File then Import then EPS. In the Import EPS dialog box locate your EPS file then click OK. Our first EPS file has been imported as shown above. The default setting is for an outline view displaying the points. If, from the menu, you click View then Preview it will show you the character in full as in the image below. You can adjust the spacing around the character by dragging the green border lines or select all the character points and use the cursor keys to move it. Note: If you prefer to create your shapes directly into a font creation programFontLab Studio and TypeTool offer a VectorPaint Tools feature which is an unique set of tools that allow you to paint vector contours but look and feel like bitmap tools. You can choose brushes, pens and even enter text. Generate the TTF Once you have added all your EPS files Save the file then you are ready to create a TTF file. TypeTool To generate a truetype (TTF) font from the menu click File then Generate Font. In the Generate Font dialog box tpye in a File name then select yourSave as type (TrueType/OpenType .ttf for this example) and locate a directory for the output files then click Save. Fontographer To generate a truetype (TTF) font from the menu click File then Generate Font Files. In the Generate Font Files dialog box select your preferred computer type (PC), font format (truetype), Set a directory for the output files then click Generate. Install your new font and it is ready to use in any program that supports truetype fonts.