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Need Help American Flag vector file

Rexerex

Rexerex

New Member
I'm volunteering at a Air Museum and I'm looking for a free simple American Flag that I could import into VinylMaster. I want to create a paint mask to recreate a small flag onto a Huey Helicopter we are restoring from the Viet Nam era. It was probably hand painted in the field originally. I could create the graphics from scratch but I figure there's got to be a easier way if I can import a SVG or something.
I'm kinda new to this stuff.
 
Behrmon

Behrmon

Pr. Bear-Mon
Yup plenty of American flag vectors available for free. I’m no expert but might want to check which version would have been on that bird as I think there was a flag change during the Vietnam war but I could easily be wrong.
 
Rexerex

Rexerex

New Member
unclebun said:
Did you try typing "American flag vector clipart" into a Google search?
Click to expand...
Yes I did before I sent this request to the forum and found lots of clipart and jpg, png flags. I was thinking there would be svg's which would might import as an editable format but the ones I found listed as svg were for sale not free. I found one free svg but it displayed an error and would not work as expected.
I finally used a high resolution png and tried the tracing process built into my program. That seemed to work and after some editing I now have a "Red Stripes" mask and a "White Stars-Stripes" mask. I'll mask off the Blue rectangle and paint it first. A svg might have saved me some time but volunteer stuff is free labor. This was a learning experience but I still want to know how a svg file would work as an import file.
Anyone want to educate me?
 
B

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Try Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States

There's an SVG image of the flag there. And there's also an illustrated figure of flag specifications and dimensions about halfway down the page.
Hoist (height) of the flag: A = 1.0
Fly (width) of the flag: B = 1.9[79]
Hoist (height) of the canton ("union"): C = 0.5385 (A × 7/13, spanning seven stripes)
Fly (width) of the canton: D = 0.76 (B × 2/5, two-fifths of the flag width)
E = F = 0.0538 (C/10, One-tenth of the height of the canton)
G = H = 0.0633 (D/12, One twelfth of the width of the canton)
Diameter of star: K = 0.0616 (L × 4/5, four-fifths of the stripe width, the calculation only gives 0.0616 if L is first rounded to 0.077)
Width of stripe: L = 0.0769 (A/13, One thirteenth of the flag height)
 
Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
To trace it break it down by shapes. It's a big rectangle with another rectangle in the corner and the stripes are rectangles. Import a bmp, make your outline with the box tool, then 1 stripe with it, copy paste and flip it horizontally, repeat til the last one. Make your star box and then trim the stripes. Then star shape, step and repeat. Another way, do outside box, star box then run parallel lines. The bmp will be your guide for spacing everything, super simple.
 
B

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Notarealsignguy said:
To trace it break it down by shapes. It's a big rectangle with another rectangle in the corner and the stripes are rectangles. Import a bmp....(snipped)
Click to expand...

Why bother doing that? The vector-based SVG image on the Wikipedia page can be downloaded (as well as some of the other historical US Flag depictions on that page). If someone wants to create a 100% accurate to specifications US Flag from scratch in vector based artwork it's very easy to follow the numerical dimensions listed at Wikipedia page (and take some easy shortcuts, like creating the stripes). That's going to be better than tracing over a pixel-based image.
 
Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Bobby H said:
Why bother doing that? The vector-based SVG image on the Wikipedia page can be downloaded (as well as some of the other historical US Flag depictions on that page). If someone wants to create a 100% accurate to specifications US Flag from scratch in vector based artwork it's very easy to follow the numerical dimensions listed at Wikipedia page (and take some easy shortcuts, like creating the stripes). That's going to be better than tracing over a pixel-based image.
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Because I was telling him how to use what he has rather than tell him where to find it online. They should be able to do that on their own. It's the whole teach a man to fish thing.
 
S

shoresigns

New Member
Adding to Bobby's advice: for everyone's future reference, most country flags can be easily found in SVG vector format on Wikipedia.
 
Boudica

Boudica

Back to "educational purposes"
What if next time it isn't a flag? Maybe he'll need a fish in vector. Ok, that's is covered now thanks to GAC.

We are offering up fishing poles and bait, and your directing him to the fish market.

That said, I just re-read the OP and he was asking where the fish market is.
So, nevermind to that, but for the other listeners.... :)
 
Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?

Pixels Are Bad Mmmkay?

New Member
Boudica said:
Don't take this the wrong way, but my kid learned how to vectorize art grabbed from google in inkscapes in 6th grade. They even learned how to search for unlicensed images on google (under the "more" tab in image search).

here is a jump start: https://inkscape.org/doc/tutorials/tracing/tutorial-tracing.html

let me know if you have any questions :)
Click to expand...

Although I've really never taken the time to learn Inkscape because I do most of my vector work in CorelDraw, I am familiar with the vector trace features of Inkscape and they are fantastic.

shoresigns said:
Adding to Bobby's advice: for everyone's future reference, most country flags can be easily found in SVG vector format on Wikipedia.
Click to expand...

Wikimedia Commons is becoming a very useful resource. I'll usually check there for images first, as well as Pexels and a few other free image sites before I resort to Shutterstock.
 
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