|2-Slideshows |1-The increase of XXXX ones on the scene. Why is it that there seems to be a marked increase in these XXXX slideshows on the scene at the moment. Is it because there are not the games around that there should be, and so people are having to get them done in order to keep swapping quick and regualar, or is there some other not so easy to see answer? |1-WOW, she's a babe... This is a tricky one, and I will try and put my opinion over to you all. I must however, point out that it is only my opinion, and what do I know anyhow. I am not directing it to anyone in particlular, but as a general base really, OK. ^9^^40 I think that the more CD's are released with them on and the the more BBS's that supply them, the more people will get them done. This will lead to a flood of slideshows, with folk rushing them out trying to get a name for them and their groups. This will only lead to sceners thinking "Oh no not another AGA slideshow". I hope that it won't get like that, and having done a few myself I have tried to make them a little better than the average one. I have noticed that there are a few that look rather rushed, and are pretty crap on the scene at the moment. Again I will not name any productions in particular, but I think that you know who you are. |1-Just look at those breasts. I have started to produce these slideshows myself as I said earlier which was what really pompted this article. My productions are called Sweet Dreams. You may or may not have heard/seen it/them already. I have just done Sweet Dreams 3 AGA, and it is the best fo the three so far. Hopefully number 4 will be even better. My view is that if you start off making average rushed productions then it will be very hard to shake off the reputation of it when you get better. There are so many slideshows around that look half done that when one comes along (like the BodyShop series by Freak of NFA) it makes it really stand out amongst the crowd as a class act. |1-Sex On Legs... Here are a few things that I think should be done in order to make your slideshow (if you are thinking of doing one in the future): |1-One Make the background colour black, and the colour on the outside of the picture black also. This will make your picture stand out better, and seems clearer. To do this you must change the first colour (background) with an unused colour (you may need to change this colour to 0,0,0 (black)). Then remap the colours as you will probably find that there are black bits on your picture now. When you have remapped the colours it will not look any different from the original pic, but you will have the correct first colour. Then simply cut out the picture and clear the screen. WOW the screen has gone blank and you have your piccy as a brush. There will be cases when you are trying to pick up a large picture that you run out of memory. If that is the case then cut out around the picture finding that the colour underneath is black. Then you will need to use your judgement to pick up maybe half the picture and try and place it where you think it would go. Then when you have put the second (or even third) part down then you will have to duplicate the length and height parts by picking them up as a brush and seeing if they are in the right place. I use PPaint, and have been using v6.1, but I found that as I have only a standard A1200 I kept running out of memory. Now I have reverted back to PPaint v2.1 as it uses much less memory to run (as it doessn't have as many features to load into RAM). It still does the job that I set for it though. |1-Two Then set your co-ordinates as origin 0:0 as you will next need to centralise your pic. If you are working in 640 x 512 then your centre will be 320 x 256. It doesn't take a genius to work out how that is done. Then place the picture down and it is in the middle. The reason why you should use co-ordinates is if you do it by your own vision and you have our computer running off a television you will find when it runs on a monitor it won't look central anymore. This is something to do with different rates, but as I am not a technical person I could be wrong on the reason. All I know is that it does happen. |1-Three Next thing that you should think about doing is the most difficult of the lot really. That is cleaning up all the little imperfections that have come out, especially when you have changed the format from JPEG to GIF. This can be very tiresome and tedious, but the reward at the end is worth it. You don't have to do every single pixel, but just try to hide the worst of it. |1-Four There are an increasing number of pictures that have BBS logo's on them. I think that they should be wiped off the picture as it detracts from the quality of the pic. This can be hard to do sometimes, as the logo is not on a single colour background, but on a complex one. When this is the case it takes a lot of patience and time to get it eradicated. You have to magnify the area and try to pick up little 2 x 2 brushes and try to paste it on without it looking silly and obvious. Try to make it as though the background is slighly faded, and unblocky (is that a word?) |1-Five Another simple yet effective little thing that can be done to improve your pictures is if they have borders, take them off. Especially if the border is white, as in Hi-Res Interlace it flickers and looks awful (unless you can afford a Multi-Synch Monitor). |1-Six Use GIF format as ILBM takes up too much room on the disks for your pictures, and JPEG doesn't save all the data, and is too slow also. It is good on compression though and you can fit a lot more pics on you disk. Waying up the pro's and con's you should really use GIF. |1-Ending Bit. I haven't made this article out to slate anyone in general and have written it for the good of the scene, as you never know someone might actually take a little notice of it. ^26^^446 I hope that you do eventually get to see the Sweet Dreams productions, although the first one is pretty naff really, but is was my first ever attempt. I am still learning, and have a long way to go to reach the BodyShop series as I stated before, but I have hopefully reached a fairly good standard. I suppose that I can but wait to see if anyone slates my work, or praises it publically in this magazine or in a computer mag. The Sweet Dreams production, as well as anything else I produce is available from the following PD house as well as myself direct: Rich and Kev Mon PD 9 Lon-y-Wylan Llanfairpwll Ynys-Mon Gwynedd LL61 5JU If you wish to send any pictures into me please make sure that they are of high quality. If I use any then I will credit you accordingly on the title screen and the ReadMe file that accompanies the productions I do also. Please send your name and address also and I will send you the full version of the production AS WELL as your disks back (with new stuff on also). Also if you prefer you scene name will be put onto the credits, so tell me that as well as your group (if you are part of one), OK. Well I think that I have just about covered everything that I wanted to, so I will sign off. Remember friendship (as well as jiffy junk) keeps the scene alive. |1-Sweet Dreams |2-Pex le Sex/QuI