Sunday, July 25, 2010

Beginner Intro - Raster vs. Vector

The EggToon© series of tutorials has been written especially for those that are just beginning to learn vectors. All images will start with the humble egg shape.....so if you can draw an egg....you'll be able to make a cat, a mouse, a bunny and other cute and easy toon characters.

EggToons are not only cute, they are easy and quick to create. We will create them using the vector tools in Paint Shop Pro.  Oh, oh...I think I can hear somebody groaning that vectors are too complicated...*G*....but you don't need to know anything technical to create these toons!!  We'll show you how easy it can be!   I did say.... "if you can draw an egg, you can draw these"...but you won't even have to draw, they are all made with Preset Shapes!

Step-by-step instructions will be provided all along the way.    We hope they are written so that even beginners to PSP and the vector-phobic *G* can follow along!   If you run into a problem, leave a comment and we'll try to answer!

But, before we start drawing the toons, we'll  need to discuss the tools used to draw vector objects and some terminology that may be new to you! 

Raster:  There are basically 2 ways to create digital drawings....raster and vector. The type of digital drawing you're probably most familiar with is referred to as raster, which are images made by combining pixels.   Photos are raster images.

Vector:  Vector objects are created in a different manner using coordinates.  Embedded in each vector object are a set of properties which are used as instructions for drawing the object.  These instructions are interpreted by the software to create the position, shape and color of the object. Each vector object is an independent element which can be moved around without effecting the rest of the image.  That means that we can re-size, rotate, distort and edit vector objects in a number of ways without getting all 'pixilated' or losing line quality.

Next time we'll discuss the vectors tools in the Paint Shop Pro 'Tools Palette'.

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