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Today we're going to create a very simple swiss army knife, as seen in the preview image I made below.


Now we're not gonna go as deep as I did in that result, cause we're just doing something simple today.

So first off before we start this project make sure you have the Layer Effects Script from the GIMP Plugin Registry installed.

Now to begin out project we need to make a new project. (The dimensions don't matter, but I just used the default one)

Select your Rectangle Select Tool "R" and make sure you have rounded corners checked in your toolbox, and bring the slider all the way to 100.


Make a new layer, name it "base" and make a selection you feel would be good for a swiss army knife, and then change your foreground color (FG) to #f95c4c, and your background color (BG) to #450101. Now grab your gradient tool (aka Blend Tool) "L" and make a gradient going down as seen below...


Now make a new layer, and make your FG color white (#FFFFFF), and your BG color black (#000000) then grab your Paths Tool "B" and make a selection you think would be good for the knife...


Now fill that selection in with a gradient going down, however make sure the bottom is kind of grayish. After you've done that, name that "New Layer" you're on "knife", and make another new layer, and name this one "indent". Then make a selection where you would stick your nail inside the knife in order to bring it out, like a real one has.


Fill that selection in with black, and set the opacity of the indent layer to 70%.

You could repeat the process for the knife on the bottom of the "swiss army knife" but what would be faster is merge the indent layer into your knife layer, then duplicate it, and grabbing your Flip Tool "SHIFT+F" flip it horizontally and then vertically. You then wanna grab your Move Tool "M" and begin moving that "knife copy" layer, and if you hold CTRL while moving it you can get it right on the original "knife" layers vertical axis so you can have it directly centered with the swiss army knife it'self, and once you're done merge that layer down, and yours should look something like this...


Cause the light source of our swiss army knife is on the top we need to select the bottom knife, and go to Colors/Brightness/Contrast and bring the brightness down, as seen below...


Now select your "base" layer and go to Script-Fu/Layer Styles/Bevel and Emboss, and make sure to change "outer bevel" to "inner bevel" and leave the settings as default, then hit ok.


Your swiss army knife should look like this so far.


Notice you have two layer masks, merge thoughs together and go to Filters/Blur/Gaussian Blur, and give it a 30px blur.


Press CTRL+F to repeat that filter, and then right click your "base" layer and click "Alpha To Selection" now select your "base-shadow" layer and go to Select/Invert "CTRL+I" and then hit delete.


We now just made a very easy, and simple swiss army knife, you can then begin tweaking this however you want by adding screws, logos, etc: etc:

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Nice one but very length. It was difficult to follow it but I made something at least.

Nice tutorial dude! I made one with the help of this tut!

I would say GIMP IS a swiss army knife( It has 100's of tools)

mmm not Bad, you could do with looking at a Swiss Army Knife and then going from there..... 4/10 for effort..

Chris

If it's about rating then I too would give 4/10. The reason's that the one with the background image on the top looks more like a Subway Sandwich than a Swiss Knife.

Thanks, and yeah I'd say Gimp is a swiss army knife too oh, and I can't forget Blender either

Well, cause I don't know how to use inkscape yet I decided to use Gimp, and I had an image in my head, and that was the result of the swiss army knife, all I have here are big switch blades, shuriken (aka throwing starts), stafes, nunchucks, etc: but not a decent pocket knife, their all small, and not very handy unless you're carving wood.