Okay, so today, I wanted to mess around with creating an SVG of Ja Morant. You know, the Memphis Grizzlies’ star point guard? I’ve been seeing these SVG files pop up all over the place and figured, why not give it a shot?
First things first, I needed to find a good image of Ja. Something dynamic, maybe him mid-dunk or doing one of his crazy layups. I browsed through a bunch of pictures online, just your typical image search. I finally settled on a picture of him doing that one handed slam. That one seems to be everywhere!
Next, I had to figure out how to actually turn this image into an SVG. I’m no graphic designer, so I needed something simple. I stumbled upon a few online tools that claim to convert images to SVG, but I like having the tools locally on my computer. I knew I had a program somewhere that could help me with this.
After I found a suitable image, I needed to convert it to an SVG. I fired up Inkscape. It’s been a while, so I was a bit rusty. I imported the image into Inkscape. Then I had to trace the bitmap.
Tracing the Image
- Import: I dragged and dropped the image into a new Inkscape document.
- Trace Bitmap: This is where the magic happens. I found this option in the “Path” menu. There are many options here to play around with.
- Experimentation: It took some fiddling with the settings to get it right. I played around with the brightness cutoff, edge detection, and color quantization. You kind of have to just mess around with it until it looks decent.
- Cleanup: Even after tracing, there were often little stray paths or nodes that needed to be cleaned up. I zoomed in real close and used the node editor tool to delete or adjust any wonky parts.
After tracing, it was a matter of refining the image. I adjusted some of the colors, simplified some paths to make the file size smaller, and just generally tried to make it look as clean as possible. This part took the longest, but I wanted to be sure before I called it finished.
Finally, I had a pretty decent-looking Ja Morant SVG. I saved it. I can now use it for whatever, like making a custom t-shirt or maybe a sticker. I might even try to 3D print it later on!
It was a fun little project, and it’s cool to see how you can take a regular image and turn it into something completely different. If you’re into basketball or just want to try your hand at some basic graphic design, give this a shot! It’s a fun and creative way to kill some time.
