The background looks a little empty for our wallpaper, for that we will use a futuristic looking ruined city since Warhammer represents a post apocalyptic future. Save the above image to your computer and import it inside the Inkscape canvas through File>Import.

I used the above settings to trace out the bitmap. After this select the orignal picture by Alt+Clicking it (since it is below the layer of our traced image, and press "delete".

Delete the original picture while keeping the traced bitmap.

Select the traced bitmap and press ctrl+shift+f and apply the following settings. Note that the master opacity has been decreased to 41.9%. We do not need the stroke settings to be enabled for our ruined city background

Scale the ruined city to fit the size of the canvas by using the corner handles. Also press the "page down" key twice to move the ruined city layer below the traced artwork and blood splatter. The top of the character's head seems to be missing a stroke. In order to fix that, Zoom into the document by pressing the "+" (plus) key on your keyboard to get a better view of the head portion. Now carefully draw the top of the head with a stroke.

After making the stroke, you may notice that its not visible. Do not worry, its because of our stroke settings for the blood. To change that, just press ctrl+shift+f keys and then apply the above settings. Also if the master opacity has been set lower, bring it back up to 100 percent. Also note that I did not use Fill for this stroke, so disable fill by clicking the "X" button in the fill tab and then switch to the stroke paint tab and select the flat colour button next to the "X" and apply the above settings. We are probably going to want this newly added stroke to be a part of our character, so hold the shift key and select both the stroke and the character by clicking on them and group them together by pressing CTRL+G keys.

I was not happy with the way the blood colour was looking, so you can select it again by clicking on it, press ctrl+shift+f and apply the above fill colour settings.

You can now press the F8 key to select the text tool and type "Warhammer 40K". Change the colour of the text to white by selecting it and bringing up the change stroke and fill dialogue box (ctrl+shift+f). I used the NextGame font which you can download from dafont.com.

Apply the above fill settngs to the text. Note that the master opacity was decresed and a Blur value of 1.0 was applied to the text. Now select the text by pressing the F1 key. Clicking on the text a second time will reveal the rotating handles. Hold CTRL while grabbing one of the corner Rotater handles to rotate the object 15 degrees. Rotate it till the text is positioned vertically downwards.

Don't get confused if the "W" in the above picture looks like an "E". It's just "Warhammer written vertically downwards now. 

With the text selected, press CTRL+D to duplicate the text layer and apply the following fill settings (CTRL+SHIFT+F) to it. Basically the blur has been increased to 3.0 and the Master Opacity is now set at 68.6. Finally, here is the finished wallpaper.

Save your document as an SVG file for any future modifications. (Actually you should save often during the course of this tutorial because a system crash may make you pull out your hair in case you lose all your work without saving it) You can now also export the image into any size you want, in case of a wallpaper it can be from an 800x600, all the way to a 1600x1200 or above resolution. In order to do that go to File>Export Bitmap.

Use the above export settings. You can convert the png file to a jpg in through the gimp or photoshop. I hope you enjoyed my first tutorial as much as I enjoyed writing it for you! Please comment!

Comments (15) >>

Pete said:

Wow that was to the point! Great for a first tutorial.

January 12, 2008

Desolator said:

amazing man. good job.

January 12, 2008

Junaid said:

Hey nice work mate.... you make me proud

January 18, 2008

hamid said:

great job man !!! *impressed !!!!

January 18, 2008

Deds said:

nice work

January 27, 2008

x866 said:

nicely done!!!

February 28, 2008

lamer said:

Luxury tutorial!!! Keep going

March 20, 2008

bill foye said:

this was the 1st tutorial I looked at after getting inkscape, lots of good techniques easily explained, cheers

March 28, 2008

Aedan said:

yea but is it a game u buy or is it a upgradeable kinda thing????

March 31, 2008

Aedan said:

no is it a thing u download

March 31, 2008

Aedan said:

YEA THAT IS PRETTY COOL MAN U HAV TEACHED ME ALLOT

June 09, 2008

jfk666 said:

Thanks man! It helped me a lot!

August 15, 2008

strider said:

thanx m8,great tutorial really helpful

September 01, 2008

Eli said:

hey guys ima a great fan of warhammer and i wanted a backgorund for my comp , upon looking for one i found this,and it looks amazing is this a software? if so were do i find? does it cost money? please email me at sunshade2@yahoo.com thanks

October 12, 2008

Eli said:

Guys its me again and i found the software and i have 3 questions. 1 In the first part of the tutorial what do you meen set to desktop i cannot find the button or feature. 2 The font you downloaded? UHh it doesnt work when i downloaded it for some reason it didnt come into the box for selectio so i couldnt use. 3 WTF my comp wont let e use as a background for some reason when i open it , it opens an internet page that shows me my picture and does not let me make it into a background. If anyone has answers to these problems please emailme at sunshades2@yahoo.com thanks

October 13, 2008

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