Resources on implementing a design into android

Question

I'm new into graphic design, I'm an android developer and since my first day I felt that graphic design would become a problem.

I already worked with styles.xml, color.xml, etc. to change application style, and made various simple drawables out of shapes like rects to make simple variation to the standard looking widgets.

The last thing I tried to do is to make a vector shape, a trapezoid, to insert it as background drawable to a textview, but I found it darn impossible to make that shape.

Can you link me some tutorials for beginners (that are not something like how-to-change-text-color-in-xml level) or guides? Even books if you know some.

Answer 1

Use a vector image editor to create the required shape, and save as SVG. Inkscape is free, so try that.

1. Draw a rectangle using the Rectangle tool F4

2. Click Path > Object to path Shift+Ctrl+C

3. Use the Select by Nodes tool F2 to move the corner nodes as required. After clicking on a node, holding down Shift+Ctrl as you drag will constrain the move horizontally/vertically.

4. Set the object fill and stroke colour as required in the Fill and Stroke panel Shift+Ctrl+F

5. Click File > Save as - and choose "Plain SVG" as the file type.

Then you could convert it to Android Drawable XML using Android Studio's Vector Asset functionality.