Kendra Schaefer

Caterpillars are way adorable, and 3D cartoon caterpillars are twice as way adorable. Happily, they’re fairly easy to make in Inkscape. This tutorial uses the Inkscape interpolate tool, plenty of radial gradients, and a dainty dollop of node editing. The pen tool, some of you may be happy to note, doesn’t appear once in this tutorial, so if you’re not yet familiar with the use of the bezier pen, give this tut a shot.

Step 1: Create the Body

Draw two circles – one larger, one smaller – a good distance apart from each other, one pink, one green. You can, of course, use any colors you like, but the two colors should be different.

Select both of them, then bottom align them by going to Object > Align and Distribute > Align bottoms. In the graphic to the left, the Align Bottoms button is circled in red.

Select both of your circles again (you can do this by holding down Shift while you use your selection tool to click on each object in turn), making sure to select the bigger one first, and the smaller one second.

Then, with both selected, go to Effects > Generate from Path > Interpolate, and set your settings like this:

Exponent: 0.0

Interpolation steps: 6

Interpolation method: 2

Duplicate Endpaths: check

Interpolation Style: check

Live preview: uncheck or checked, it doesn’t matter

Click “Apply”, and close your Interpolate window.

What you now have is two sets of shapes – your original two circles, plus this:

This will form the basis for your caterpillar’s body. You can delete your original two circles – you no longer need them.

Step 2: Shade the body

What you have now looks and behaves like one shape, but it’s actually just a group of circles. We’re going to add a radial gradient to each circle to give it the appearance of being 3D, but first we need to ungroup these circles so we can work with them individually. With your whole group of circles selected, go to Object > Ungroup (or click Shift + Ctrl + G).

Now, select the first circle, and add a radial gradient, with the current green color in the center and the outer color being slightly darker. After you change the gradient color, you’ll want to switch to your Edit Path by Nodes tool and move the center of the radial gradient to the top of the circle, so that light appears to be shining down from above. Here are my gradient spots and gradient direction settings:

Continue doing this for each circle in the group. Don’t move the circles, just click on them, add a radial gradient, then adjust the gradient color and position. Here’s what mine looks like when I’m done:

Step 3: Make and shade the eyes

Time to add some eyes. Make one white circle and position it over the face. Then, add a white-light grey radial gradient to that white circle. Duplicate your eye (with eye selected, Ctrl + D), and paste it next to the first one. I like to make the second eye a little less wide to give the impression of perspective.

Add some eyeballs by drawing some little grey-black dots over the whitest part of the gradient on both eyes. You don’t need to add a gradient to these dots, but like the second eyeball, I like to make the second dot a smidgen thinner.

Step 4: Feet

Draw a pink circle. Then go to Object > Object to Path to convert the shape into a path.

Switch over to your Edit Path by Nodes tool , click on the top circle node, and pull both handles outwards a smidgen to create an upside-down gumdrop shape.

Duplicate this shape – you should have two of them. Make the second one slightly smaller, change its color to green. Position the pink foot under the last section of the body. Position the second foot (green one) under the second section of the body, like this:

Select both feet by holding down Shift while using your selection tool to click on both of them in turn. With both feet selected, to go Effects > Generate from Path > Interpolate, and set your settings as below:

Exponent: 0.0

Interpolation steps: 5

Interpolation method: 2

Duplicate Endpaths: check

Interpolation Style: check

Live preview: uncheck or checked, it doesn’t matter

You should now have a nicely aligned row of feet, plus your two original feet (hidden behind the new row). Delete your two original feet, then duplicate (Ctrl + D) the row of feet so that you have two rows. You should now have this:

Select your first row (top row shown in picture) and ungroup it (with row selected, Object > Ungroup). Select each foot in the row, and with the foot selected, use the eyedropper tool to click on the corresponding body section just above the foot.

This will transfer the color of the body to the foot, creating a seamless blend of color. You should now have one row of legs that look like they’re part of the upper body:

No need to ungroup the second row of feet – just select them, position them as shown below, and lower them on your artboard so that they’re behind everything else (with row selected, End key or Object > Lower to Bottom):

And there’s your basic caterpillar shape. All that’s left is to personalize it as you like with antennae, eyebrows, and maybe, just maybe, a mouth.