Okay, so today I’m gonna chat about something kinda random I messed around with: “garfield clipart”. Yeah, the lazy cat.
It all started ’cause I was bored, plain and simple. I was scrolling through some old forums and saw someone asking about finding good Garfield images for a project. Figured, why not dig around myself?
First thing I did was hit up Google Images, naturally. Just typed in “garfield clipart” and bam! A whole lotta images popped up. The problem? A ton of ’em were super low-res, looked like they’d been through a photocopier a hundred times, or had watermarks slapped all over ’em.
So, I started adding more keywords. “Garfield clipart transparent background” was my next move. That helped a little, cut down on the images with white boxes around ’em. Still, the quality was hit or miss.
Next up, I tried a couple of those free clipart sites. You know the ones. They usually have a bunch of random stuff, and you have to wade through a ton of ads to find anything good. I did manage to find a few decent Garfield pics, but nothing that really wowed me.
Then I remembered Inkscape, that vector graphics editor I used to play around with. I thought, “Hey, maybe I can just trace a Garfield image and make my own clipart!”
So, I found a pretty clean Garfield picture online – just a simple one of him sitting down. I imported it into Inkscape and started tracing with the Bezier tool. It took longer than I thought, gotta say. Getting those curves just right was a bit of a pain. And I had to keep zooming in and out to make sure everything looked smooth.
Once I had the basic outline, I started filling in the colors. Garfield’s orange is pretty distinct, so I used a color picker tool to grab the exact shade from the original image. Same with his black stripes and white belly.
After a few hours of tweaking and adjusting, I finally had something I was happy with. I exported it as a PNG with a transparent background. Not bad for a quick little project!
Lessons learned? Finding good clipart online can be a pain. Sometimes it’s easier to just make your own, especially if you have a tool like Inkscape lying around. Plus, it’s kinda fun to put your own spin on a classic character.
Would I do it again? Probably not for Garfield specifically. There are probably better options out there if I looked harder. But the exercise of tracing and creating my own vector image was definitely worthwhile.
- Used Google Images to start the search.
- Tried different keywords to refine results.
- Checked out a few free clipart websites.
- Traced a Garfield image in Inkscape.
- Exported the finished product as a PNG.
