How to make Icons in Inkscape

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Cutting and Editing Shapes

Cutting Shapes
First Create a new shape that you want to use to cut a section out of a shape in a level below it. Once you have done this move it in the position that you want to make the cut. Next use SHIFT + Select Tool to select both the object you wish to cut and the shape you are using to make the cut. Finally click Path then Difference, as you can see below.
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Then Repeat this step until you have the shape you want. It is best to make just one cut at a time using the Difference Tool. If you start trying to use multiple shapes at once to make cuts you start getting odd results. Have a play around with the other options in the Path Menu between Union and Cut Path to see their effects. Though you will most commonly use Union and Difference.

Editing Shapes
Now we have our new shape we can start making some manual adjustments to it. In this basic example I am going to take this little worm like thing and make its tail longer. To do this you Select the Edit Path by Nodes tool or Press F2 to activate this tool.
Then click on the object you want to edit, in image 1 below you can see the results. There are 8 grey diamond shapes along the Stroke Path. These are the notes.
In image 2 I have added an extra Node, which I have pointed to with an arrow in the diagram. Then draged the node about until I have the desired effect. in this case creating a tail. The 2nd arrow (the one closer to the worms head, is pointing to a line coming off a node. These appear when there is a curve between two nodes. I clicked the circle at the bottom of the line and straightened the back up a little bit. You can see the effects below.
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If you look closely there is a blue line running through the image. This is just the gradient we created earlier, you can adjust the angle of this gradient at any point.

After moving the gradient and the moving the nodes about a little this is the result.


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