COMPUTER GRAPHICS Some Hints on How to Improve Your Graphics ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here are some hints for those of you who would like to improve your technique when making your own illustrations, for example paintings and title screens on the Amiga. I would like to stress the point that this article will not turn you into an instant artist as the subject is technique, not art. The computer as a medium for creating graphics has some built-in problems. However, let it be known that other mediums such as oil-paint, watercolour, ink, and crayon just to mention a few have just as many shortcomings and limitations. Some of the shortcomings of computer painting are: i) the limited number of colours ii) creating gradual shading or flow of colour iii) putting in extremely small details iv) the step effect created by lines that are on an angle v) expression of material e.g. hair vi) the screen (canvas) size Some of these problems along with some others will be dealt with in the course of this article. The painting programmes that I use most are DPaint II, and Aegis Images. CREATING A WORKING DISK If you don't want to go to the trouble of creating a formatted blank disk with a directory for the images, you have to make enough disk space on the disk with the painting programme to save your creations. Do not modify your original disk; make a copy of it. Then, from the copy delete those parts of the programme that you won't be using. Enough space can be created on Aegis Images by deleting all the paintings. From DPaint II delete the resolutions not used and the different types of brushes. It is possible to delete more than I have indicated, but for the time being this is sufficient. CHOOSING YOUR OBJECT Care should be taken in choosing your object to be painted. The two biggest pitfalls are small details and the need for too many colours. Start off by choosing a painting that has no more than one or two objects. It will help you to cope with the limited number of colours at your disposal. For this exercise I would choose a flower as most flowers are of a single colour, and basically you will need only two colours, one for the flower itself and one for the stem and leaves. The other 14, or 30 colours left, depending on the resolution you are using (more of that later) can be devoted to shading, highlights, and shadows. TRANSFER OF OBJECT TO THE SCREEN I suggest that you copy an existing illustration to start off with because there are enough technical problems without creating artistic ones as well. Having chosen your object to copy how do you get the outline and details onto the screen? If you are painting from a photograph, postcard, magazine, or book you are faced with the problem of transferring the image to the screen preferably without damage to the original. Both DPaint and Images have a grid-tool that will help you to create a screen that looks like graph paper. Using this grid-tool create a grid where both the vertical and horizontal lines are approximately 10 mm apart on the screen. To get the grid for Aegis Images: i) Activate "Special-Effects Menu" ii) for low-res change the horizontal and vertical numbers each to 30,but for med-res change the horizontal number to 30 and the vertical number to 15. iii) Activate "Show" to look at the set grid pattern. iv) Deactivate the "Show" grid pattern by clicking the left mouse button anywhere on the screen. v) Activate both the "HGrid" and the "VGrid" (they will both be highlighted in red) and then "OK" the "Effects Menu". vi) The next "Effects Menu" will appear and "Grid" will show red. Also "OK" this menu. vii) Choose the straight line-tool and draw up your grid. (The programme will only allow you to draw the horizontal and vertical lines that were previously shown when that particular grid was displayed in the "Show" mode.) To get the grid for DPaint II: i) Activate the grid-tool with the right mouse button and change the requester numbers to the same as those given above for Aegis Images ii). ii) Activate the dotted-tool. You should get dots spaced 10 mm apart by moving over the screen keeping the left mouse button down. Connect those dots with the straight line-tool. Go back to the screen and count the number of whole squares from top to bottom. Do not count the incomplete block at the top and the bottom. Next, go back to the picture and measure the height only. Divide the height by the number of vertical squares that you have counted on the screen. For Example: picture height 260mm, number of squares on the screen 13. Divide 260mm by 13 screen squares = 20mm. Divide your picture now by drawing vertical lines 20mm apart. If you do not wish to damage your picture stretch a sheet of tracing paper over the top of it and do all line work on the tracing paper. Number the row of blocks along the top starting by placing a 1 (one) in the block on the left. Number the row of vertical blocks on the left hand side starting by placing a 1 (one) in the block at the top. The number 1 (one) will be common to both the vertical and horizontal rows of blocks. Go back to the screen and with the freehand-tool write in the numbers corresponding to those on your picture. Make sure that the numbered grid is in the centre of the screen. (When finding the middle line of the screen don't forget the part under the palette.) Rows of blocks on the right and left of the centered grid can be deleted. If your picture happens to have more horizontal blocks than the screen has you will have to decide which part of the picture horizontally is most important to you. This, however, does not happen very often. Now draw the outline and details by looking at the picture and drawing lines in the corresponding blocks. The numbers at the top and bottom of the screen and the picture will help you to identify corresponding blocks.The mouse is not the ideal tool for drawing, but the outline does not have to be perfect. If you have chosen a face or head make sure the important details such as eyes and nose are in the right place. When you have finished with the outline and details remove all the grid lines by using the background colour. My use of colours, in most cases is black for the background and cream-white or brown for the line work and grid lines. Background colours other than black are likely to interfere with colours in the picture and white line work is hard on the eye. CHOOSING YOUR PIXEL SIZE Low resolution (lo-res), medium resolution (med-res), interlace, and high-resolution (hi-res). Lo-res Screen size - 320 x 200 pixels 32 colours No interference of adjacent colours Not much memory required Picture will take about 10 to 20k of disk space Med-res Screen size - 640 x 200 pixels 16 colours Some interference of adjacent colours Memory requirement within the range of the 512k, but saving your work at hourly intervals is recommended Picture will take about 30 to 60k of disk space Interlace Sreen size - 320 x 400 pixels 32 colours All other details are similar to med-res except for an annoying flickering effect of those parts of the painting that have sharp contrasting colours Hi-res Screen size - 640 x 400 pixels 16 colours if you have one megabyte of memory Total interference of colours Has the same annoying flickering as interlace Picture will take up to 120k of disk space If you are about to start your first picture I would recommend using lo-res. After a few lo-res pictures you can progress to med-res. The use of interlace and hi-res (one megabyte required) have advantages, but the forced use of an anti-flicker screen or a special monitor to combat the flickering effect is a high price to pay. The anti-flicker screen only subdues the flickering, and alters the colours. The high sustain monitor is expensive and at this moment difficult to get. The interference of adjacent colours can be very useful. Dots of white and red next to each other will result in pink. Two white dots with one red dot on the side will give white with a pink edge. Five shades of grey with one red (6 basic colours) will result in 15 colours - 1 red + 5 shades of grey + 5 combinations of red with grey + 4 further combinations of grey. I will leave it to you to figure out the total number of combinations possible with 16 colours. After a few lo-res paintings to get used to the painting tools and disk handling, the obvious choice will be med-res which has twice the number of pixels and, as shown in the exercise above, more colours than the 32 of lo-res. Up to this moment I have not mentioned such programmes as Digi- Paint or Photon. These programmes are excellent and certainly have their use. Digi Paint allows the use of 4096 colours, but is extremely slow. Both Digi Paint and Photon have the disadvantage of inserting an additional colour if the contrast between the chosen colour and the background colour is too great. The computer added colour is difficult to control and creates effects that might be undesirable. However, for those of you who want to modify digitized pictures they are a must and highly recommended. CHOOSING YOUR PALETTE The choice of the palette is probably the most important step. A bad choice of colours will result in a continuous struggle for more colours. Because there is no interference from adjacent colours with lo-res care should be taken to ensure that besides the basic colour chosen for your object you have 2 or 3 shades that are lighter and darker than it. This will make it easier to create shadows and highlights. The computer programmes have a feature called "range". After you specify the darkest colour and say 5 colours away, the lightest colour, the programme will select the in-between colours. To modify the DPaint palette press "P". To modify the Images palette go to the colour menu and select "colour". By clicking with the left mouse button on the colour to be changed you can alter the colour with the RGB-controls. All 16 or 32 colours can be changed, but care should be taken with some of the colours as they are basic to background, lettering and borders. In med-res the choice of palette colours is more difficult. Because only 16 colours are available it is very important that every colour can be used to create several other colours. For example, white with dark green could cut out the need for light green. Some experimentation on a free part of the screen will help you to decide. Because I do not know what you are going to paint I can only give a typical palette. It should contain black and white and at least 4 following shades of grey and brown. Since grey and brown are not very strong and are easily overshadowed by the prime colours (red, blue and yellow) their effect will result in darker and lighter shades of the prime colours so essential for good shadow work and highlight details. It is for this reason that the med-res palette is much more difficult to establish than the lo-res palette. Don't be afraid to go back to the palette menu if after some time you find the need for some colours to be modified. CREATING YOUR MASTERPIECE At this stage we have an outline of the picture, and a palette. If you wish to use the spray-paint tool this is the time to use it. Spray painting can be very effective for some backgrounds. Choose a "spread" that is not too big, and limit the numb er of dots. Give the background the basic colour you want it to be and spray the desired pattern. If you do not use "masking" of your major object the limited spread and small number of dots will prevent too many unwanted dots getting into your object. Also, staying away from the object and imitating the spray pattern close to it using a single pixel brush will help. If using more than one spray colour use the darker spray at the bottom and the lighter one at the top. The dark colour will work as a foundation. However, if you use spray for sky the darker colour should go to the top. It will give the painting depth. Filling in is the next step. Before you use the fill-in tool make sure you do not have any breaks or gaps in your outline. You can check for breaks by using the magnifying-tool. If you overlooked a gap and part of the painting that you didn't want to fill-in gets filled-in, use the UNDO to remove it, close the gap and try again. After filling-in all the basic colours check for details that are out of place. Most of the shading in lo-res can be obtained by using a progression of colours. In med-res better results are obtained by using a basic colour and a progression of darker brown dots for red, yellow and green, and grey dots for white and blue. At the cost of time you can create a checkered pattern. It could for example be made up of red and brown squares. By progressively using darker browns the red will also darken by the influence of the brown. The brown dots can't be seen as the red is the mo re dominant colour. It will appear that the red gets darker, creating an illusion of a shadow. Using two shades of red will extend the range from light to dark even further. A typical annoying feature of computer graphics is that lines on an angle and curves have little steps. Most of these steps can be eliminated by putting in an intermediate colour. For example, if the object with the steps is red and the background colour is black put brown dots in the corners of the steps. The ragged outline will then be smoothed out. Most of what has been said here can be seen by scrutinizing my two paintings on this disk. Both of the paintings are med-res and they can be transferred to a painting programme to be looked at with the magnifying-tool. BACK-UP Finally, I would like to advise you to save your work each hour. By running out of memory an afternoon's work using med-res with 512K of available memory can be lost. Also, at the end of your day's work make a back-up copy. Detailed paintings can take several days to complete. To lose a painting because of memory or disk failure can be very disheartening. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ END OF PAINTHINTS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~