-= The Artists Bible =- Some interesting Dpaint techniques-ARC/ECLIPSE(WHO?)FSCC Greetings mortals.Verily,Gazzer didst didst say unto me,go forth and write an aricle about something,or yea,Amnesia shall be no more."And Arc saw Dpaint and saw that it was good.And didst write an article about it,and there was much rejoicing and happiness,and Lamers didst bring forth great works of art.  Then I woke up.After intense study of dpaint,I have got reasonably unlame at art.Check out some of my stuff in Technicolor Dreams i.e.,the one picture I had any time to do,the A1500.The others were just put on for space fillers,and can be seen in my forthcoming demo,Aliemmings. Now,Hands up all those who saw Lemmingator 2 by me.Ah.I see.Well,for both of you who saw it,I produced it about two months after I bought my Amiga.Yes,you too can produce your own productions with only a little bit of effort and a pirated copy of Dpaint IV.I had been drawing for about a year previously on the Spectrum.Stop laughing.The spectrum is a great computer for doing art.I bet.Having not yet got used to all these screen resolutions,I unwittingly did everything in 32-colour lores.Yes,I managed to get nearly 20 seconds of animation on a disk.Which helps me to kick off nicely with: Screen Formats. Lores:If you're doing animation,this is really the only mode you can use,unless you want to use about 8 colours.It looks slightly blocky,but you can always use anti aliasing.Also,if you're going to try to use HAM ,unless your eyes are set to a multisync,you'll have to get used to it.I always use lores. Medres:Creed's favourite resolution (and mine - Polaris),I am told.Useful if you want to do video titling or logos and want better quality than lores,but dont want a horrible flicker.Can only use up to 16 colours,and is quite heavy on the memory.Not really practical for animation.If you want to design workbench icons it is useful.I personally never use it. Interlace:How anyone could use this and not go blind is beyond me.If you're a masochist,this is the ideal resolution.Its only advantage over medres is that it can use 32 colours or even HAM,if you have 120k of chipram to spare.Used by ray tracing and DTP packages,so be prepared when getting Imagine or Propage. HiRes:Hmm,this isn't as bad as interlace,although it has a pretty bad flicker. Used by DTP,etc.If you're doing printouts of lores pictures,and they're less than 32 colours,then put them into hires for finer print quality. modes:Not having an A500 plus,I can't really comment on this,but no software uses them yet,so I'll get away with it for the moment. Colour modes: 2 :If you have culture shock from the spectrum,use this.TEXT 4 :As above 8 :Useful when doing fonts,etc,so as not to take up too many colours out of the main picture. 16:If you're doing cartoon animation,it's best to use this.You can get a reasonable amount of graphics on a disk.Also,if you're going to do any kind of sprites,this is the only realistic option. 32:Whoever does the demo art for Dpaint doesn't seem to have mastered the screen format requester yet.For some reason,all the art in Dpaint is done like this,even if only about 8 colours are used.Good for slideshows and other static art,but not really for animation,unless its either ray traced or very short. 64:If you're doing a picture with lots of ranges, this is brilliant,but it takes up nearly half as much memory as HAM. HAM:In my opinion,electronic arts and newtek over hyped this screen mode, especially when Dpaint IV came out.Not having a copy of Digi-paint,I can't really comment on this,but Dpaint's HAM mode is total,and utter SHITE.If you even try to turn off the menu bar it takes about four hours to get the pointer back.You don't even get a pointer that moves,and half the time you think the fucking thing has crashed.Custom brushes have more fringing than all of Nirvana put together,and you can forget about animation,unless you have about 5 megs of memory,and an accellerator.Unless you're doing art for a party of something, forget it. Well,now that I've taken out my sexual frustration on HAM (WHO'S SHE?),we can move on to more useful material. Flipping and resizing Animbrushes:As we all know,(probably)you can only flip an animbrush on an x or y axis.However,by using perspective mode,and changing the Z angle,and using the move requester with all settings on zero,you can use it to stamp down copies of all frames in an animation.Perspective mode and the move requester are linked in that if you put the pespective settings onto,say, 76 degrees,stamp the brush down,and then enter the move requester,the animation will start at whatever settings the perspective was at. Resizing animbrushes:First,put these on a plain background.Next,change the background colour to anything other than the colour you were on in the first place.Select replc as the brush mode and then press the right mouse button once to cut a hole in the background.Then go back to the original background colour and pick up the hole as a brush,and shrink it or stretch it or whatever.Then stamp it down,and copy it to all frames.Then select brush mode on the fill requester,and use animfill by pressing L-alt while on fill mode.When you're over the resized hole,press the left mouse and watch your blocky amimbrush take shape. Making an R-Type esque spinning ball:Everyone knows the kind of one I mean, don't they?The half globe spinning around the energy ball? Thank God.Right. First draw a filled circle the size you want your globe to be.Then draw a fill- ed square box,roughly the same size as the circle.Then pick it up as a brush and select aNow go to the fill requester and select WRAP.Circle is copied to all frames,and set the brush mode to replc,and make sure you're on the moving squares animbrush.Animfill on the globe.This should give the effect of two squares spinning horizontally around a globe.If not,go and kill yourself.Now pick up this wonderful globe as an animbrush and enter perspective mode. Set the Z axis on +90°,and stamp the brush down.Then enter the move requester and press clear.Then press move.  Now,if you are using a copy of Dpaint IV (-SPIT-),you should be okay.However, if you're using Dpaint III or under in which case,why are you reading this? You're fucked. Enter the palette.Define a spread of dark red to bright yellow,and one of dark grey to light grey.Then enter the range requester and put both of these into seperate ranges. Dpaint IV:Select Hi fill and make sure the lighter side of the gradient is at the start of the range.If not go to the range requester and press reverse. Select the grey range.Now draw a filled circle the size of your globe,and place the radial line on the top left area of the circle.Now do the same for the red range,but in a very slightly smaller circle.Then pick up the grey brush. Dpaint III:Sorry,but you'll have to draw your own shiny balls (AHEM).Try to get Dpaint IV. Now go to Stencil>Make.Click on the lighter of the two colours in your spinning globe.Press invert,and then make.Go to the replc brush mode and animpaint in the same place over the globe.Now select the other globe colour for the stencil and do the same for the red ball.You should now have a nice R-type bit. Well,that's all for this issue.If Amnesia is still being released next month (FUCKIN' A IT WILL!),I'll probably write some more.If you have any problems with this tutorial,either look up the Dpaint manual (haha) or contact me at: Robert Cummins,20 Abbeyfield,Killester,Dublin 5,Ireland. Or call me (voice) on (Dublin) 317226. ARC/ECLIPSE|TRYING TO KEEP AMNESIA ALIVE --> Well thanx for the cool article Arc,hope to hear more from ya in the next --> issue,and anyone else seeking fame,fortune and something to keep them --> occupied!Remember,send your articles into us by contacting any of the me --> Peter,my address is of course in my Editorial! --> Please note that this article was mega-fucked up when I recieved it from --> Gazzer,and was put back together as best I could,sorry if I fucked up --> anything Arc. --> Cya! -Peter- -= E N D =-