Amiga Computing - Commodore Is Awesome

NE of the things the Amiga artist
has to appreciate, and all too
often doesn't, is just how easy it
is for him to manipulate repeated
shapes — namely, brushes. Every single
tool in DPaint uses brushes, making it
not only incredibly easy to paint with,
but also jolly consistent.
Let me give you an example of what I
have just said. Set up a 16 colour lo-res
screen, pick one of the preset circle
brushes from the top right of the toolbox
and then draw a Small Picture with it
("Smileys" are always popular, although
some people prefer drawing normal
faces. Figure I gives an example of a
"Small Picture").
Select 'cut rectangular brush" and cut
the thing out. Now, ensuring that your
background colour is black, hold down
the right mouse button and move the
brush over the original picture, erasing it,
This is an important technique to
remember — holding down the right
mouse button paints with the brush's
silouhette, coloured the same as the
background colour. This is almost
always true, but for the moment, don't
worry about the "almost".
You will have noticed that when you
cut the brush out the paint mode
reverted to matte, and the dotted
freehand tool was activated. This
happens every time you cut a brush,
and is worth remembering - it is very
easy to ruin a picture by cutting out a
brush and Only realising you're no
longer in "shade" mode when you've
slapped a bright yellow circle over the
past six hours work. I know, I've done it
many a time.
*
1
1 Pick the line tool, and drag out a line.
It will be drawn with your picture instead
.
of dots. Although it's very clever, it's not
1
particularly useful. So press ''p'' to bring
up 1 the palette selector, set the second
colour / to white (it's normally that
horrible 0 fleshy colour) and the very last
one 1 to black.
. Spread the white to the black to
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AAr create * a series of graduated - s greys, and
then 1 click "range" and select o ar
white. You
have 1 now created a range * -of
colours,
with 1 which we may do many . interesting
things... 1
J
brush has up
1
its proverbial sleeve, and
these I shall . discuss now. You will
require a clean d brush, so draw a new
one, cutting it Out with a one pixel
border around it so that the box the
Click the right mouse button , on the "cut" tool produces touches, but doesn't
line tool. A requester pops - up, not
entirely dissimilar from one e of the two in
go over, the brush.
Figure II. What we're going J to do is
break up the line into a series r of dots so
that the brushes are spaced * out more.
If you are using DPII, select I
"Relative", enter an arbitrary number
into the "number' box use 16 for the
moment — and select "on". DPIII users
should select "N Total'' and enter 16 into
the box next to it.
Pick "OK" and the requester goes. Try
drawing a line again — you will notice
that this time not only is the update
faster, but also that the line is made up
of only 16 "points" in total. The
"Relative" or "N Total" option tells the
computer to draw only a certain number
of brushes at roughly equal distances
from each other.
0
0Now
click the right button on the gill"
tool. Either the top or bottom of Figure
III 2magically
appears on screen. Select
"from , brush" and 'pattern" to set up a fill
pattern from the current brush, then
click 0 "OK" and choose a filled shape
tool, such as a filled circle.
0Draw
your favourite—sized circle on
screen, 1 and marvel at it's patterned
texture. On a less sarcastic note, it is
worth . remembering that the fill pattern
will fit in with the original brush position.
0If
you, understandably, don't grasp
what 0 I'm trying to explain, try drawing a
filled shape that partially covers the
original • brush. You will notice that there
Now go back to the requester and
select either "Absolute" or "Every Nth
is no overlap where the two coincide.
1I
wish someone would have invented
dot" and enter "16'', according to which
version you're using. Try drawing a line
of roughly the same length. This time,
however, instead of having 16 points in
the line, the computer draws it so there
is a point every 16 pixels along.
One of the nicest things about DP, as
words " to describe all these things — I
mean, even something as petty as
pulling a funny face once a year gets
the word "gurning", so I don't see why
"the overlap you don't get between a
patterned fill and the original brush
pattern" doesn't.
I have mentioned previously, is its
consistency. And that means that what
It's hard to explain — please note that
the DP manual doesn't bother trying.
has just worked on the straight line tool Having a word for it would make it so
should work on the box tool (it does). It
also works on the polygon, curve, circle
and ellipse tools. Dan Silva deserves a
medal.
For enhanced enjoyment, pick the
much easier. Grumble, grumble.
Ha! Got it — what I mean to say is that
the position of the pattern in the fill is
relative to the original brush position
and not to the corner of the fill area. If
cycle mode — F7 if you have a keyboard
—and, with either "Absolute" or ''N total"
set to 16, draw a curve or line on the
screen. Wow! You now have a completely
you still don't understand, you'll find out
one day the hard way.
The other fill options are not really for
us at the moment. Leave them be,
tacky picture which you hope no one will
ever see (I can't work miracles — this is
they're not going anywhere. A future
article will reveal their hidden intricacies.
only the second month!).
There are still a few other tricks a
Meanwhile, back in DPville the more
perceptive will have noticed a menu