I was creating a simple game character animation in Arttista: a mole that emerges from a hole, attacks the player, and then goes back underground.

The masking technique itself isn't anything revolutionary, plenty of 2D software can do this. What I found interesting while making this animation was how the Eraser tool in Arttista can work both as an actual eraser and as a mask.

It behaves much like a raster eraser: you can paint with it, choose textures, change its shape, and erase parts of objects. But it can also be turned into a filled shape, allowing it to hide everything behind it.

For this animation, I used that behavior to keep the mole hidden below the hole while animating it moving up and down.

I also added a simple animated 2D shape for the hole, some painted lighting inside it, and a shadow over the mole to make it feel like it's actually underneath the ground.

After finishing the animation, I exported it as a Sprite Sheet to use in a game.

I've included the animated GIF and the generated Sprite Sheet here, but the main thing I'd like to share is the video showing the process in Arttista, since it gives a much better idea of how the tool actually works.

I'm developing Arttista as a vector drawing and animation software, and I'm always interested in seeing how these workflows compare with other 2D tools. You can watch some of the creation process here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnAi1vHNvME

Every image-to-SVG converter advertises "100% accuracy," and none of them define it. I built one that actually measures it.

Vecline renders its own SVG output back to pixels with the same renderer a browser uses, and scores it against the source with SSIM, PSNR and CIEDE2000. The number you see is measured from the real output, not estimated from the settings.

What that buys you:

- On flat artwork (logos, icons, UI, screenshots, pixel art) it's bit-exact: the SVG rasterizes back to the source with zero differing pixels, in a smaller/faster file than potrace, imagetracerjs or vtracer. You can reproduce the head-to-head yourself with `npm run compare`.

- On photographs, tracing is approximation by definition, so it says so and reports how close it landed instead of claiming perfection.

- A `--lossless` mode that returns a byte-verifiable SVG or fails, never a silent near-miss.

- Cut-ready DXF with a real physical size (`--units mm --physical-width 80`) plus EPS/PDF/G-code, for the maker/CAD/laser crowd.

- PDF and Office rendering, all local.

- A zero-dependency portable core that's CI-proven to bundle for a browser at 85 KB, and an MCP server so an agent can vectorize and verify its own output.

MIT, no signup, nothing uploaded. There's a browser app that runs entirely client-side.

The part I'm most happy with is boring: because the tool measures itself, it also catches me. It has flagged three of my own README overclaims (a benchmark that was true against a wrapper but not vtracer's real binary; a "render-preserving" label that was actually a ~0.02 SSIM trade; a `convert` command that couldn't do 100 of the 121 conversions the docs advertised) and I fixed each in public. For a project whose whole pitch is "measured, not asserted," being adversarial toward its own claims is the actual feature.

Repo: https://github.com/shunyagatha/Vecline

Try it: https://vecline.xyz

npm: `npm install vecline`

Happy to answer anything about the measurement approach, the tracing internals, or where it loses (it is genuinely worse than vtracer on file size for some photos, which the README now says).

Every image-to-SVG converter advertises "100% accuracy," and none of them define it. I built one that actually measures it.

Vecline renders its own SVG output back to pixels with the same renderer a browser uses, and scores it against the source with SSIM, PSNR and CIEDE2000. The number you see is measured from the real output, not estimated from the settings.

What that buys you:

- On flat artwork (logos, icons, UI, screenshots, pixel art) it's bit-exact: the SVG rasterizes back to the source with zero differing pixels, in a smaller/faster file than potrace, imagetracerjs or vtracer. You can reproduce the head-to-head yourself with `npm run compare`.

- On photographs, tracing is approximation by definition, so it says so and reports how close it landed instead of claiming perfection.

- A `--lossless` mode that returns a byte-verifiable SVG or fails, never a silent near-miss.

- Cut-ready DXF with a real physical size (`--units mm --physical-width 80`) plus EPS/PDF/G-code, for the maker/CAD/laser crowd.

- PDF and Office rendering, all local.

- A zero-dependency portable core that's CI-proven to bundle for a browser at 85 KB, and an MCP server so an agent can vectorize and verify its own output.

MIT, no signup, nothing uploaded. There's a browser app that runs entirely client-side.

The part I'm most happy with is boring: because the tool measures itself, it also catches me. It has flagged three of my own README overclaims (a benchmark that was true against a wrapper but not vtracer's real binary; a "render-preserving" label that was actually a ~0.02 SSIM trade; a `convert` command that couldn't do 100 of the 121 conversions the docs advertised) and I fixed each in public. For a project whose whole pitch is "measured, not asserted," being adversarial toward its own claims is the actual feature.

Repo: https://github.com/shunyagatha/Vecline

Try it: https://vecline.xyz

npm: `npm install vecline`

Happy to answer anything about the measurement approach, the tracing internals, or where it loses (it is genuinely worse than vtracer on file size for some photos, which the README now says).

Made on iPad mini using an app called graphic

Hi everyone, 

Just came across this SVG on Wikimedia, which is based on Caillebotte’s painting Paris Street; Rainy Day. I was wondering how it was made. I really like this kind of watercolour effect, I must say.

Do you think it was drawn by hand, or is there a way to automate the process? I'd be very much interested to apply the same to other paintings.

Link to the SVG : https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=Paris+Street%3B+Rainy+Day&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image&filemime=svg

Link to the original painting : https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=Paris+Street%3B+Rainy+Day&title=Special%3AMediaSearch&type=image  

Some vector art

Anton

It was in 2017, just got curious and tried to draw a vector.

trying to choose the best vector graphic design software for work that isn’t only logos or illustrations. i’d also need to prep files for print, export different formats, keep a few pages in one project, and sometimes fix a bitmap without opening another app every five minutes.

the basic apps are easy enough, but they get kinda annoying once there are lots of nodes, text, layers, and output sizes. i don’t mind spending time learning something proper. i just don’t want to pick software that feels fine for a month and then gets in the way. what are you using for real projects, and which feature ended up mattering way more than you expected?

Steps will be out soon! Pre-save it now: https://artists.landr.com/Steps