Pixel Screentones

[Grafixman]

Come and download the zipped file below. The zip file contains a number of small .gif files. Open PI and import the textures as paper textures for PI's brushes. Set the preview icon to 48x48? or larger to get a more accurate preview of the patterns. Free to use any way you want, personal or commercial. Making them was the fun part for me, but honestly, I still can't come up with a creative way of using them.
The idea was born when I was playing around with the free demo of Graphics Gale. Very nice app, but I'm afraid I'm still much more comfortable with PI. Anyway, GG has several similar brushes. Then it occured to me that perhaps making a tileable pattern and importing them as paper textures in PI would do the trick. And they did. So now my PI has similar brushes, plus some more I came up with after playing around with the various combinations of black and white pixels and tiling them into a 48x48 box.
What's nice in PI is that if you activate the draw as object on the brushes, the patterns have transparency, meaning you could move them around and overlay them above other patterns, creating interesting moire effects.. Just remember to reselect the none on the paper textures if you want to draw normally later on. You can also play with the blend modes and fade effects. Lots of potential there. PI seems to remember the paper settings after exiting and reopening, too. Had me confused for a while.

[sallybode]

Wow, what a collection, looks great.

[Kiwi]

Lot of work that you've gone to here GM ... Thank's
Now we gotta see wat you come up with for using them

I'm not sure how you mean "PI Brushes"?
Not "Stamps"??

My partner loves GpaphicGale and PI for doing her pixel work but my preference now would be Pixel Studio as it has more features.

Been a bit too busy to do any creating in any program but hope to get back into it before long
No doubt GM and Dereck are busily creating as I speak

Can't wait

[sallybode]

Kiwi, I think what Gman meant is that you can load them in Paper textures and then you are able to paint with the texture in PI.

Being as the textures have many halftone patterns, it would be good for cartooning and simulating the Sunday Comics.

The patterns are importable probably to any graphics program that can use textures either as fill or to paint with, such as PaintShopPro.

PhotoPaint can't paint with textures directly but can clone from another source from a flood fill. But can also be painted from the fill texture with the clone brush. I didn't know that until I tried it either.

This drawing is done entirely with Gman's textures and some at different resolutions to get different dot sizes. It naturally leans towards .gif optimization and a pretty small file size.

[Kiwi]

Looks great Sally
Obviously there are many possibilities using the patterns/textures.
Most of my drawing is done with Paths and actually using the paint brushes is a bit foreign to me as I started learning with Path Edit in 3d, 3d trim or 2d only occasionally using blur, soft edges and so forth.
When I required a certain texture I would make one of my own as a preset or a stamp.
Yep! There's a lot to learn ... Oh dearr!

[Grafixman]

Wow, great artwork, Sally. Now I know I'm really having an artist's block. I've been fooling around with them for about a week now and I still have nothing to show... .
Yes, Kiwi. Load them as paper textures for your brushes. Then they magically appear as you draw. I also lean towards the vector tools and most of my works starts with paths. But I was trying to diversify my style a bit, so I've been experimenting with PI's pencils and brushes. My poor Graphire's stylus nib is getting worn down fast.

[sallybode]

Since the texture makes good gif's, you can make extraordinarily small size cartoons in download times.

[molucca]

Tried these in Xara to invoke object transparency. Worked fine.

Worked as an image stroke in Expression, but fringes and paper textures didn't accept the file type. If I changed to JPG, they would work.

Rich

[sallybode]

There is one advantage that .gif has over .jpeg is in scalability on a 2-bit image, it is not resolution dependant and scales upward nicely.

Changing to .jpeg would allow you to use the textures in the rest of PI, not just the paper textures for brushes.

[molucca]

I was trying the GIF tiles in the June Expression CTP, and they were working.

Rich