How to create a Pop Art Explosion

Key

This article uses these graphical conventions

Window ⟩⟩ Tab/Panel in Window
Button … Menu → Choice … Keyboard

Introduction

This tutorial will show you how to create a pop art explosion.

Specific techniques used in this tutorial

• Creating shapes.
• Creating a polygon.
• Transforming shapes with rotation.
• Creating a pattern.
• Filling with a pattern.
• Converting text to outlines.

This tutorial can be followed by anyone with a basic knowledge of Scribus but should probably not be attempted by people who have never used Scribus before.

Set-up

First you'll need to download and install the "Startling Font" if you don't already have it from here. (You can use any font but this one looks right.)

• Open Scribus and create a new document (A4/Letter Portrait will be fine).

This little project needs quite a bit of space so it's probably best to create each "layer" on a different page.

• Choose menu Page → Insert…
• Change the number of pages to 2 and OK the dialog.

The Background "Flower"

Figure 1

• Go to the document's first page.
• Choose menu Insert → Default Shapes → Right-angle triangle (it's the third one down the list).
• Click somewhere near the centre of the page.
• Enter a Width of 14 and a Height of 150.
• OK the dialog.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colours set the Line colour to "None".
• Set the Fill colour to "Red" with a Shade of 60%.

You've now got your first starting triangle - see figure 1.

Figure 2

• With the triangle selected, choose menu Item → Duplicate
• Select the duplicate and in Properties ⟩⟩ X,Y,Z press the "Flip Horizontal" icon (the double-headed horizontal arrow).
• Change the Width to 24pt.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colors set the Fill colour to "Yellow".
• Drag the new yellow triangle to the right a bit (so you can more easily select the other one).
• With the yellow triangle still selected, shift-select the red one.
• Choose menu Windows → Align and Distribute
• In the Align and Distribute palette, set "Relative To" to Last Selected.
• Press the "Align right sides of items to left side of anchor" icon (top left).
• Press the "Align Tops" icon (second from left on the bottom).

You should now have two triangles the same as figure 2.

• Select the red triangle.
• Choose menu Item → Transform…
• Press the Add button (bottom left) and choose "Rotation" from the drop-down menu.
• Set the Angle to 13.9 degrees (you'll have to type it).
• In the "Origin" box select the top-left circle.
• Set the number of copies to 25.
• OK the dialog.

Halfway done, now for the other bit.

Figure 3

• Select the yellow triangle (you may need to drag-select it to make sure you don't select anything else).
• Choose menu Item → Transform…
• Press the "Add" button (bottom left) and choose "Rotation" from the drop-down menu.
• Set the Angle to 13.9 degrees as before.
• In the "Origin" box, this time, select the top-right circle.
• Set the number of copies to 25.
• OK the dialog.

You should now have a nice "flower" like that in figure 3.

You might notice that the bottom "petal" doesn't look perfect but that's not too much of a worry. If you're really bothered about it you can go back and mess around with triangle widths and rotation values to get it looking how you want but that may take quite a bit of time.

Don't worry about the edges being ragged, you'll fix that at the end.

• Drag-select everything you've drawn on this page.
• Choose menu Item → Group

The Explosion

Now you'll need to draw the "explosion" that goes between the background and the text.

Figure 4

• Scroll down to the second page.
• Choose menu Insert → Insert Polygon → Properties…
• Change the number of corners to 7.
• Click the "Apply Factor" check-box to activate it.
• Set the "Factor" to -45% (minus 45).
• Set the "Curvature" to 20%.
• Click near the middle of the page.
• Enter a Width of 260pt and a Height of 160pt.
• OK the dialog. (Drag the shape, if necessary, to the centre of the page.)
• With the shape selected, in Properties ⟩⟩ X,Y,Z set the Rotation to 330 degrees.

You should now have your starting shape as in figure 4.

• In Properties ⟩⟩ Line set the Line Width to 3pt.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colours set the Fill colour to "White".
• Choose menu Item → Multiple Duplicate
• OK the dialog without making any changes.

Now for the dotted fill. Hold onto your hat!

Figure 5

• Choose menu Insert → Default Shapes → Circle
• Click anywhere you have some space.
• Enter a Width of 16pt and a Height of 16pt also.
• OK the dialog.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colours set the Fill colour to "Blue".
• Set the Shade to 60%.
• Set the Line colour to "None".
• With the small circle selected, choose menu Item → Transform…
• Press the Add button and choose "Translation" from the drop-down menu.
• Set both the Horizontal and Vertical values to 8pt.
• Set the number of Copies to 1.
• OK the dialog.
• De-select everything and re-select just the copied circle (on the right).
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colours set the Fill colour to "None".
• Drag-select both circles.
• Choose menu Item → Group
• Choose menu Item → Send to Patterns
• Enter a name of "Dots" and OK the dialog.
• Select the spiky shape you created earlier (it's actually the duplicate on the top of the two).
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colours press the Fill icon and choose "Pattern" from the drop-down menu below it.
• Select the "Dots" pattern.
• In the "Scaling" area below the patterns, set both the Y-Scale and Y-Scale value to 25%.

Phew! You should now have your dot-filled shape as in figure 5.

• Drag-select both the spiky shapes.
• Choose menu Item → Group

Bug Watch

Because of a bug in the current version of Scribus, if you save a document with a grouped pattern, when you re-open the document the group will have been given a black outline which didn't previously exist. For this reason it is recommended that you keep the "Dots" group in your document, just off the page perhaps, so you can re-create the pattern before exporting.

The Text

Now you'll create the text.

Figure 6

• Scroll down to the third page.
• Create a text frame that is around 400pt across by 160pt high.
• Double-click the frame and enter "BANG" (without the quotes) as the text.
• Select the page background to de-select the frame.
• Re-select the frame.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Text, set the font to be "Startling Font".
• Set the font size to be 100pt.
• In Colour & Effects set the text colour to be "Red".
• Choose menu Item → Convert To → Outlines
• Re-select the text.
• Choose menu Item → Ungroup
• Choose menu Item → Combine Polygons
• Re-select the text.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colour set the Line colour to "Black".
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Line set the line Width to 3pt.
• Choose menu Item → Multiple Duplicate
• OK the dialog without making any changes.
• Select the text (actually the top copy).
• Press the down cursor key twice.
• Press the right cursor key twice.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colour set the Fill colour to "Black". (This is in case you want to move the shadow farther along.)
• Choose menu Item → Level → Lower

You should now have some text with a shadow, like figure 6.

You could have got similar effects with the Text Outline/Shadow functions (Properties ⟩⟩ Text ⟩⟩ Colour & Effects) but you would find aligning the text with everything else later a bit more difficult.

• Drag-select the text.
• Choose menu Item → Group

Bringing Things Together

• Select the text.
• Scroll up and shift-select the spiky shape.
• Scroll up again and shift-select the "flower".
• In the Align & Distribute palette (open it again if you closed it earlier) make sure the "Relative To" is set to "Last Selected".
• Press the "Centre on vertical axis" icon.
• Press the "Centre on horizontal axis" icon.

Finishing Up

Just one more thing to do to tidy things up.

• Choose menu Insert → Insert Shape → Default Shapes → Circle
• Click anywhere on your page.
• Enter a Width and Height of 300pt.
• OK the dialog.
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Colours set the Line colour to "White".
• In Properties ⟩⟩ Line set the line width to 6pt.
• With the white circle still selected, shift-select the "flower".
• In the Align & Distribute palette make sure the "Relative To" is set to "Last Selected".
• Press the "Centre on vertical axis" icon.
• Press the "Centre on horizontal axis" icon.

And there you have it. Your very own piece of pop art.