The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion

[Gare]

I'd say, "have MORE fun!!", stygg.

I think you're well on your way to Minimalist Story-Telling!

It's a fun, small idea, period.

Not sure, but the sky went to bitmap, didn't it? The reason why might be that you didn't name it, or you did a not-allowed transformation.

Oh, there are things call headline fonts and text fonts. That's Comic Sans you used? I'd suggest Impact or some heavier typeface, but that's always the call of the artist. There's a whole category of typefaces that are for display, and often they're called, for example "Benguiat Display", or whatever. Display fonts are heavied up a little so their thinnest stems don't make TV display buzz when the transmission tries to reconcile .7 pixels or whatever, you know?

If there's any other moves you want to perform on this file, I'd say go for it, and let's us take a look when you're done.

My Best,

Gary

[Soquili]

I forgot to inflat the ball. It does not bounce very well.

[Gare]

I love it!

You get a gold star, and so does stygg, for Original Thinking.

By the way, and please excuse my cheesiness here, the Xara Xtreme Official Guide, now officially out of print, has a chapter on animation.

I'm not trying to sell the book here, quite the opposite and my publisher would have me killed for posting this: the tutorial files for the animation chapter are Chapter 10 files from Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide.

Ethically, I won't support this—no questions if you haven't bought the book.

But I think you can parse some of the stuff on your own.

Go for it,

Gary

[stygg2003]

Hi Gary,
the sky you mentioned was me trying to be a smart ar#*! I made a couple of clouds in Xara on a linear background,stretched them out a bit, exported as a Jpeg then gave it that effect in Photo Zoner Studio. Not very good but I could'nt pinch all your props. thought I should contribute something Thanks for reminding me about Fonts, tend to forget about them and they can make s difference.

Stygg

[Gare]

I'm not sure you chose the path of least resistance, stygg.

The most visually convincing way to use clouds in a background...is to use a photo of clouds.

Now, I did something the hard way, too, with my previous animation post. I didn't really need to use Vector Magic, when I have a compression utility for JPEG images that overall saved this Flash animation at 1/3rd the size of an all-vector tracing.

Fact: depending on the number of shapes in a Flash file, and the number of control points each shape has, a JPEG can do the job better if all you're doing is moving it frame by frame.



I created the sky (I know, I know, only God can create...) using Vue, but if you hurry, you can download Bryce 7 for free over at DAZ and render the sky of your dreams. They're pulling the offer on the 29th I believe.

Anyhow, it's no secret that Xara's own Bitmap Tracer comes in second to Vector Magic, and that's what I used to create the original Untied Airlines clouds. You get two free traces when you register, and I recommend the PDF file format, which goes into Xara flawlessly.

My Best.

—Gary