Your Commodore - Commodore Is Awesome

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actual 21 drawing commands that you
i o
will ei use to design your pictures.
f trThe
final Menu is the SPE-A Menu
(special ! i effects) this screen gives you
the options of designing your own
g
brushes, patterns and even colour
cycles. h But more of this later.
tAs
you would expect all of the
normal drawing commands are available
together with a few that are
unusual, yet useful. Options are included
for drawing freehand, drawing
circles, ellipses rectangles.
triangles and even polygons. At first
you may think that some of the usual
commands such as Rays, etc, are missing.
however, you'd be wrong.
One extremely powerful command
is the RCP option. This remembers the
cursor position. When you next draw a
line or a shape then you will automatically
begin drawing at the
previous start position, no doubt you
can now see where you get rays from.
Using the use last command will cause
geometric shapes to keep their dimensions.
You can then place the shape
wherever you want it on the screen.
Useful for details such as windows in
houses, etc. Taking this a step I urther,
you can turn on the continuous command.
Once this is On you can leave a
trail of the shape behind as you move
around the screen.
And there's still more. If you turn
on the CYCLE option the colour that
is being used to draw with at the
moment will change. the actual cycle
of colours being specified by you in the
SPFX menu. Now you can leave a trail
of multicoloured shapes behind you.
Should you want the shape to be filled
in you would simply turn on the
SOLID option, As you can see the
options are many and extremely
varied. Don't forget that many of them
can be used with different commands
such as circles, polygons. etc.
One extremely useful option is the
REVIEWS
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ability to define an arca of the screen as
a sprite. Once you have done this you
can place your sprite wherever you
want on the screen, you can rotate it,
place it in front of or behind other
colours, you can even use it as a brush
to paint in areas of the screen.
Within the SPFX menu it is possible
to 'protect' any colour from being
overwritten by an other. This is great
when you come to adding detail to
your pictures. For example, say you
had a picture of a castle and wanted to
add green grass around it. Simply protect
the colours that are used in the
castle from being overwritten and
whatever you do with your green pen
or brush the castle will not be in danger
of being 'scribbled' on.
One extremely interesting feature.
and one that I have never come across
before is the ability to RECORD your
drawing actions. You could, therefore,
draw your masterpiece with record
switched on and watch yourself draw it
again at a later date. I'm sure that a
facility like this could be useful for
demonstrations. You could draw say a
picture of a car engine etc. and then
label the necessary parts, even make
changes when required. Then at a later
date you could replay this to your
audience. I can't help thinking that this
option is quite what would be needed
to do this as your audience would have
to sit and watch you actually draw the
picture and then swap between menus
as you label your shape etc.
It would have been better if you
could have stored pictures at different
stages and then replayed the cycle
rather like a set of slides. Obviously
this is possible if you keep going to the
I/O Menu and saving your picture and
at a later date load each one in turn.
but I'm sure the record option could
have done something like this.
Not every package is perfect, and
this one is no exception. One major
YOUR COMMODORE november 1986:94
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gripe is the fact that any text entry
must be done by pointing at a keyboard
that appears on screen. You
can't type on the keyboard. The reason
for this is that the mouse continually
sends information to the computer.
much of this seems like a keypress to
the computer which would quite
happily think you had typed it.
would make your text total jibberish.
The on screen keyboard does seem to
be the only way out. but it is a bit of a
pain.
The text option is extremely powerful
and allows many different sizes.
The smallest that the text can appear is
5X5 dots. If you really want you can
take this right up to a maximum of
160x200 dots, which is very big. You
can even print your text down the
screen or in italics.
I have only touched on the possibilities
that are available with this package.
In fact there ae many instructions
that I haven't even looked at. If you are
serious about your computer art then I
suggest that this is one package that
you shouldn't be without, it may be
complex and take some getting used to
but it is the most powerful.
On Your Own
I have only had a look at three of the
more recent packages, there are many
more available in the shops. If you do
want to get into computer art then
suggest that you take a close look at
the manual of any package before you
buy it to make sure that all the options
that you require are there.
Out of the three packages that I
have looked at here, Picasso's Revenge
is by far the simplest to use and as a
recent wet afternoon proved, great fun
for the kids. The OCP Art Studio is
extremely well presented, easy to use
and very powerful. If you don't
already own a graphics package then
this may be the one for you. On The
other hand if you intend producing a
lot of graphics pictures with your C64,
Artist 64 can't be beaten.
TOUCHLINE
The OCP Art Studio.
Rainhird Software, Wellington House,
Upper Sr Martins Lane, London
WC2H 9DL.
Picasso's Revenge:
Precision Software: 6 Park Terrace,
Worcester Park, Surrey KT4 717.
Artist 64:
Wigmore: 32 Savile Row, London
W1X JAG.