Graphic Design

Here I will store a small assortment of tips and tricks I’ve found for creating amateur graphics. As always, all resources are free, and contact me if you have something I should consider adding.

Albino Black Sheep’s mspaint tutorial

Paint is not a strong program, but there’s just no comparing what I did before I found this tipsheet [a horrible Dead Frontier stick figure comic] to what I’ve done after [a shoggoth fetus wriggling on a stick].

http://www.gimp.org/

Bring out the gimp. I’ve heard it’s not quite Photoshop for free, but it’s much more than I’ll ever need.

eHowTech’s GIMP animation tutorial

My favorite GIMP a-.gif instruction video, because it’s tailored toward animating frames you already have as separate files. Some hints he doesn’t say; Open as Layers -> select all your files. Animations play from the bottom layer to the top [order your separate files alphabetically, first frame with A and so on, before you open them]. Double-clicking the layer name and adding (15ms) and/or (replace) will display the frame for 15 milliseconds [like my eye’s blink frames, if your viewing program, unlike Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, supports fast frames] and display the frame individually [instead of superimposing it on the previous frame], respectively. There are other ways to do these things for bulk animation, but I don’t have ’em on here yet.

Note to WordPressers:  some WordPress themes do not display animated gifs if they’ve been resized by WordPress’s formatting. Use the Advanced tab on the image, as well as the “original size” option, to display your file at its original size.

http://www.chaoscope.org/

Do you like fractals?

Play with Chaoscope. Animate in GIMP. Create awesome spell effects. Collaborate with a coder. Release a Flash game. Profit????

[“Are Chaoscope pictures copyright free?”]

[“Yes. You can sell your Chaoscope pictures as long as your are the author of these pictures.”] ♥