Athena,

I've revised the tutorial to (hopefully) make it easier for you to follow.. especially drawing the fan. There's a new illustration that tells you exactly what to do. I think it will help more than reading my Pen Tool tutorial as that one shows you how to trace a curve and doesn't deal with a closed Shape.

To explain a bit about Painter:

In Painter, the following tools are used to create vector-based bezier curves and anything drawn with them is referred to as a Shape: Pen tool, Quick Curve tool, Rectangular Shape tool, Oval Shape tool.

Text is also Shapes (each letter appears in the Layers (or Floaters) list as a Painter Shape. This allows you to alter the shape of letters (Text) or other Painter Shapes by using the Shape editing tools: Shape Selection tool, Add Point tool, Remove Point tool, Convert Point tool, Scissors tool. When an Effect is applied to a Shape, you are first asked if you want to Commit to an Image Layer. Committing the Shape to an Image Layer converts it to pixels only (no more bezier curves) and it can be treated as any other part of the image. Of course, it can no longer be edited with the Shape editing tools so it's good to do some planning before committing it to an Image Layer.

Let me know if the revised tutorial is easier for you to follow, and if you have any questions.

Have fun! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Jinny Brown
http://www.pixelalley.com
_______________________

[This message was edited by Jinny Brown on May 17, 2001 at 01:05.]