Created by T. Joseph Carter
While the a2cloud project is hard to define, a2server is pretty easy: It's AppleTalk for older computers via an old version of netatalk. Sure, we throw Samba in there, and we use ciopfs (case-insensitive on purpose filesystem) to make it ProDOS 8 friendly while retaining expected GSOS and Mac behavior, but it effectively comes down to being about the AppleTalk.
I rather like the flat cell-shaded look of the graphics on the Raspberry Pi website, and it's no secret I've been a fan of flat cell-shaded graphics since I was probably about three. 😃 I thought I would model the a2server icon on the AppleShare icon Apple used in the IIgs and early Macs, but that wasn't going to work without an icon.
I had other things to work on at the time, so I reached out to Raspple II Central on Facebook and asked if someone could vectorize the AppleShare icon as SVG. Didn't expect I could use the result legitimately, but maybe I could get some quick inspiration?
That's when Michal Lutinsky and Charles Ottman stepped up. Charles took the original icon and, as far as I can tell, used the trace bitmap feature of Inkscape on it. This was a little too rounded, but it had the kind of cartoony charm I wanted. Michal actually took a screenshot of a larger mono drawing of the hand/tray/icons and removed the background.
I didn't want to try and reproduce anything like the larger hand because I didn't think it could look good, but that simple change Michal had made kinda did, and Charles had caught the flavor I wanted. I knew what to do then.
The tray and icons on it were mostly easy. The folder, app diamond, and document page icons were just lines after all. I actually made the app diamond not quite a true diamond by flatening the tips. You won't see that unless you render it at high resolution, but the lack of sharp points was a touch inspired by Charles' rounded version.
The app icon's hand... I could have carefully calculated curves, but I didn't. 😉 Yes, at long last, I actually have drawn a graphic without even primarily the use of a text editor. All my friends from the quake modding days would be shocked, I'm sure. The XML is still done by hand, mostly because Inkscape's SVG output is still a steaming heap, but if I'm starting to understand how to use editing tools and it speeds the process, why not?
Yeah, I'd actually learned some stuff between this and The Raspple, so what I
did was draw a polygon with Inkscape, copied the d attribute into my
hand-edited SVG file, and fixed the coordinates which were not where I wanted
them. Then I opened that back up and used the node tools to curve the lines
into the shape you see. Cleaned up the d in Inkscape's built-in XML editor
(for instant visual feedback) and copied it into my by-hand SVG file.
That left the large hand holding the tray. Fortunately, in the process of doing the app icon, I'd learned how to do it! Polygon it out to create vertices and endpoints for curves, adjust them with precision in XML, and use the node tool. Held up my own right hand and looked at it side-on for drawing the polygons. I'm left-handed (like all the great geniuses of history) so it was easy to hold my hand as I modeled it on the canvas. I looked like a dork I'm sure, and my pinky is too short.
Believe it or not, the hardest part of modeling the hand shapes was recreating an effect Charles probably obtained by pure accident. I would've left (and did leave on the app diamond) the hand fill as a hard corner at the cuff. I realized though at the cale I was dealing with on screen, having a curve there gave it a shadow. I could leave the corner square, but I didn't want to, and by not doing so the outline fill creates a shadow effect. Very happy with that.
The hand details were drawn as thin polygons, cleaned up, autocurved, slightly edited, then cleaned up again. By this time a familiar process, if not exactly a simple and automatic one.
As I write this, I've just finished giving it some color and I'm pleased with it. You might notice two different skin tones used for the hands. The big hand--the one modeled on my own? That's got a normal skin tone. The hand holding the pen in the app icon is clearly an albino, however. 😎