The Flame artistic motif was completly built using Gimp 2.2 in CentOS 5.5. In this section we describe the steps we followed through its construction. This information may be useful for anyone interested in reproducing the Flame artistic motif, or in creating new artistic motifs for The CentOS Project corporate visual identity (see trunk Identity).

Step 1: Set image size
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Create an empty image and fill the Background layer with black (000000) color. Image dimensions depends on the final destination you plan to use the image for. For the sake of our construction example we used an image of 640x480 pixels and 300 pixels per inch (ppi).

Step 2: Add patterns
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Create a new layer named Paper, place it over Background layer and fill it with Paper (100x100) pattern.

Add a mask to Paper layer using radial gradient and blur it. You may need to repeat this step more than once in order to achieve a confortable black radial degradation on the right side of your design. In our image dimension, the central point of radial degradation is at 430x296 approximately. Once you've done with black radial degradation, reduce the Paper layer opacity to 20%.

Duplicate Paper layer and rename it Stripes ---duplicating the layer helps us to be sure the layer masks will be equal in both Paper and Stripes layers---.  Remove paper pattern from Stripes layer. Fill Stripes layer with Stripes (48x48) pattern and reduce the Stripes layer opacity to 15%:

Step 3: Add flame motif
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Create a new layer named Flame. Set the foreground to white color (ffffff). Use the Gimp's flame filter (Filters > Render > Nature > Flame...) to build the flame motif on Flame layer.

The flame filter can produce stunning, randomly generated fractal patterns. This feature of Gimp give us a great oportunity to grant the production of new artistic motifs very quickly because of its ``randomly generated'' nature. Once the artistic motif be created, it is propagated through all visual manifestations of CentOS Project corporate visual identity using the centos-art.sh script (see trunk Scripts Bash) inside the CentOS Artwork Repository.

To set the time intervals between each new visual style production, we could reuse the CentOS distribution major release schema.  I.e., we could produce a new visual style, every two years, based on a new ``randomly generated'' flame pattern, and publish the whole corporate visual identity (i.e., distribution stuff, promotion stuff, websites stuff, etc.) with the new major release of CentOS distribution all together at once.

Producing a new visual style is not one day's task. Once we have the artistic motif defined, we need to propagate it through all visual manifestations of The CentOS Project corporate visual identity. When we say that we could produce one new visual style every two years we really mean: to work two years long in order to propagate a new visual style to all visual manifestations of The CentOS Project corporate visual identity.

Obviously, in order to propagate one visual style to all different visual manifestations of The CentOS Project corporate visual identity, we need first to know which the visual manifestations are.  To define which visual manifestations are inside The CentOS Project corporate visual identity, is one of the goals the CentOS Artwork Repository and this documentation manual are both aimed to satisfy.

Once we define which the visual manifestation are, it is possible to define how to produce them, and this way, organize the automation process. Such automation process is one of the goals of centos-art.sh script.

With the combination of both CentOS Artwork Repository and centos-art.sh scripts we define work lines where translators, programmers, and graphic designers work together to distribute and reduce the amount of time employed to produce The CentOS Project monolithic corporate identity.

From a monolithic corporate visual identity point of view, notice that we are producing a new visual style for the same theme (i.e., Flame). It would be another flame design but still a flame design. This idea is very important to be aware of, because we are somehow ``refreshing'' the theme, not changing it at all.

This way, as we are ``refreshing'' the theme, we still keep oursleves inside the monolithic conception we are trying to be attached to (i.e., one unique name, and one unique visual style for all visual manifestations).

Producing artistic motifs is a creative process that may consume long time, specially for people without experienced knowlegde on graphic design land. Using ``randomly generated'' conception to produce artistic motifs could be, practically, a way for anyone to follow in order to produce maintainable artistic motifs in few steps.

Due to the ``randomly generated'' nature of Flame filter, you may find that the same pattern is not always used each time you use the Flame filter interface.

Using the same pattern design for each visual manifestation is essential in order to maintain the visual connection among all visual manifestations inside the same theme.  Occasionally, we may introduce pattern variations in opacity, size, or even position but never change the pattern design itself, nor the color information used by images considered part of the same theme.

     Important When we design background images, which are considered part of the same theme, it is essential to use the same design pattern always. This is what makes theme images to be visually connected among themeselves, and so, the reason we use to define the word ``theme'' as: a set of images visually connected among themeselves.

In order to recreate the same flame pattern every time we may need to, the Flame filter interface provides the Save and Open options. The Save option brings up a file save dialog that allows you to save the current Flame settings for the plug-in, so that you can recreate them later.  The Open option brings up a file selector that allows you to open a previously saved Flame settings file.

The Flame settings we used in our example are saved in the file:

trunk/Identity/Themes/Motifs/Flame/Backgrounds/Xcf/800x600.xcf-flame.def

Ok. Now that we have created the flame motif, and also divagated a bit about it, lets continue with the construction steps.

Duplicate Flame layer and rename it `Flame Blur'. Place `Flame Blur' below Flame layer. Add gussian blur filter (Filters > Blur > Gussian Blur...).

Horizontal:10.0
Vertical:10.0

Duplicate Flame layer and rename it `Flame Softglow'. Place `Flame Softglow' above Flame layer. Add Softglow filter (Filters > Artisitc > Softglow...).

Glow radius: 10.00
Brightness: 0.75
Sharpness: 0.85

Reduce flame layers opacity using the same value. The value used to reduce flame layers opacity may vary from one image to another, specifically, on the place the image will be finally placed on.  For example, images used as desktop background have the flame layers opacity reduced to 50% in order to reduce brightness.  Otherwise, the background image used in anaconda progress slides has flame layers opacity reduced to 20% in order to reduce brightness even more so text could look clean and readable over it.

Step 4: Add foreground color
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Create a new layer named Color, place it on top of all visible layers and fill it with plain color (4c005a). Reduce Color layer opacity to 10%. You can use the Color layer to control the final color information you want to produce the image for.

When setting color information, remember that the same artistic motif needs to be reproduced in 14 and 16 colors for Grub and Syslinux visual manifestations respectively. Using many different colors in the artistic motif may reduce the possibility of your design to fix in all different situations.  Likewise, using more colors in one design, and less colors in another design will reduce the connectivity among your designs, since color information is relevant to visual identity.

It is up to you to find out justice and compromise among all possible variables you may face, when you propagate your artistic motif visual style to different visual manifestations of CentOS Project corporate visual identity.

See also
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