Computer Arts (April 2004)

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S S O ER E L & M V G IA AX O PA OR DS M T •3 30 TU OSER F •P O

P O SH TO O PH

FIGURE DESIGN IN ILLUSTRATOR

How to transform sketches into superb vector images

THE WORLD’S BEST–SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

RE

FLASH PORTFOLIOS

Turn illustrations into Websites with Flash and Dreamweaver

GREAT DESIGN IN PACKAGES THAT DON’T COST THE EARTH! HOW TO ● Design a Website ● Create stunning illustration ● Retouch your photos ● Design a stylish font

PHOTOSHOP: COMIC ART

Create fantastic graphics in Photoshop and Poser

INDESIGN FOR XPRESS USERS No CD? Please see your newsagent

Layout and design in depth: every feature explained

EXCLUSIVE! DAZ STUDIO PREVIEW

Plus 22 new products on test

Printed in the UK

Outside the UK and Éire £6 C$ 19.95

APRIL 2004

£6

04 9 771360 537024

INTRO T EXPERIMENTING WITH DIFFERENT SOFTWARE ISN’T JUST GOOD FOR RELATIONS WITH YOUR BANK MANAGER…

ILLUSTRATORS We take our illustrations seriously here at Computer Arts. And we’re always on the lookout for new talent – so if you’re interested in contributing, contact [email protected]. Below you’ll find a list of the illustrators who helped us out this issue… FUTUREFARMERS Top US agency Futurefarmers reveals how to illustrate on a budget, tells us all about its work in the six-page profile on page 34, and illustrates our Group Test on page 94. www.futurefarmers.com NICK REDDYHOFF With his own unique style, Reddyhoff has illustrated work for a range of clients under the Debut Art agency. On page 60 he shows us how to recreate his boxy, vector styles. www.debutart.com BENOIT GUERVILLE French digital artist Guerville not only has a passion for comic-book art, which is the subject of our tutorial on page 50, but is heavily involved in 3D and film-making projects. www.widecinema.com SCOTT HANSEN You’ll see quite a few examples of vector master and musician Hansen’s work this issue. He’s illustrated our Flash and Dreamweaver feature and is profiled on page 74. www.studio-output.com

he cursed month of January is long gone, but budgets remain tight everywhere, which is why we’ve decided to find those talented designers who are creating great work in budget applications. Using programs that start as low as £16.74, we go about producing Websites, designing fonts, retouching photos and creating illustrations. Experimenting with different software isn’t just good for relations with your bank manager; it can also push you into trying new effects, enhancing your portfolio in the process. Clearly, everyone wants to show that they’ve mastered the software greats – Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Maya, Painter among many others, but these packages alone total over £3000. Not such an easy choice for the home designer or small studio. So when the penalties of piracy are high, why not try cheaper software? After all, 99 per cent of artists and designers that have been interviewed in Computer Arts will testify that it’s the talent, not the tools, that are important. Starting on page 22, you’ll find out how Photoshop Elements is more than enough for retouching photos; Carrara

COVER ILLUSTRATOR RODDY LLEWELLYN Computer Arts’ own Art Editor, Roddy Llewellyn, came up with the ‘budget’ design for this issue’s striking cover, created using stencils, handdrawn type and a scanned photo he took of a building site. He also produced the illustrations on pages 22 and 40 in InDesign CS, to show what can be achieved with the app. With Computer Arts moving across to InDesign CS over the next few months, this gave him an opportunity to experiment with Adobe’s DTP giant. His verdict on our switch from XPress to InDesign? “The future of desktop publishing is looking very bright indeed.” [email protected]

Basics can be used for professional 3D illustration (our profilee Futurefarmers stands testament to this); TypeTool can help you design great fonts; and WebDesign get you on your way to creating interactive Web pages. We also provide the full versions or demos of many of these packages on our coverdisc. There’s still plenty of content for those rich in software. We look at how XPress and InDesign differ and show migrating designers the key differences, plus we look at using Photoshop and Poser to create graphic novel artwork, turn photos into vector images in Illustrator, and show you how to turn your illustrations into a Website in Flash and Dreamweaver. Turn over for the full listing. You’ll find inspiration, news, reviews and fantastic imagery throughout this issue. And those who like the idea of spending a year on a $26,000 interactive design course – for free – should turn straight to page 20. Don’t forget to let us know what you think by emailing [email protected] VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR, THE WORLD’S BEST-SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

EDITORIAL THE CA TEAM VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] RODDY LLEWELLYN ART EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RACHEL ELLIOTT OPERATIONS EDITOR [email protected] JON ALONGI CD EDITOR [email protected] JEN WAGNER ONLINE EDITOR [email protected]

CONTACT Computer Arts, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW PHONE 01225 442 244 EMAIL [email protected] SUBSCRIPTIONS 0870 444 8455 OVERSEAS SUBS +44 870 444 8455

Computer Arts_April 2004

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CONTENTS APRIL ISSUE 95

FULL LIST OF CONTENTS

NEWS

FEATURES

REVIEWS

REGULARS

10 Camera wars 12 Brand new kit from Sony! 16 Imagina 2004 18 Guest font showcase

22 Design on a budget 34 Futurefarmers in profile 74 Scott Hansen in profile

77 Full listing 78 Studio Artist 3 82 Daz Studio 87 Olympus E-1 94 Compositing apps on test

08 Your letters and opinion 48 Subscribe to Computer Arts and CA Projects to save £71 and get a free gift! 66 Win a Corel graphics bundle! 100 Back issues 108 Exposure 114 Retrospective

SHORTCUTS

TUTORIALS

32 Photoshop 58 3ds max 67 FreeHand

40 From XPress to InDesign 50 Comic art in Photoshop 60 Figure design in Illustrator 68 Flash portfolios

ON THE COVER WEB

FONT

3D

WEB

WIN £1100-WORTH OF COREL GRAPHICS SOFTWARE! PAGE 66

RETOUCH

22 DESIGN ON A BUDGET

Great design isn’t all about expensive software. Create a font, retouch a photo, render out a 3D illustration and more – all in budget software – with our fantastic cover feature

40 FROM XPRESS TO INDESIGN

Struggling to make the switch from XPress to InDesign? Our in-depth guide makes the process a whole lot easier…

50 COMIC ART IN

PHOTOSHOP & POSER

Expert tutorial and 50 professional tips: everything you need to know about creating your own digital comic book

22

60 FIGURE DESIGN IN ILLUSTRATOR

Digital artist Nick Reddyhoff’s trademark style is all about montage. Use this tutorial to create a pro-quality image and try out a new style

40

60

50

Turn to page 50 for our expert tutorial and tips on comic-book art.

Illustration by Phil Brown Turn to page 108 Have your work featured here – email [email protected]

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

34

32 34 FUTUREFARMERS Amy Franceschini, founder of this renowned San Francisco-based design firm, speaks out

68 FLASH PORTFOLIOS

68

Create a simple Website based on an illustration: Using Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks you can produce a beautifully interactive site

32 SHORTCUTS

Quick tutorials on the best in graphics software. This month: Photoshop, 3ds max and FreeHand

82

SUBSCRIBE

TODAY AND GET A FREE GIFT!

THE ONLY DE GN MAG YOU’LL EVER SI NEED!

NEVER MISS AN OT ISSUE – TURN TO HER PAGE

82 EXCLUSIVE: DAZ STUDIO We preview the latest 3D character tool from Daz – is it really a serious alternative to Poser?

FULL LIST OF CD CONTENTS

48

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FULL PROGRAM PC + MAC

TYPETOOL 1.3 FULL APP WORTH $99 Design your own fonts from scratch…

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his month, we’ve teamed up with leading software developer FontLab to bring you two of its fantastic products, TypeTool and ScanFont, dedicated font-creation tools that will help you create fantastic typefaces quickly and easily. In addition, you’ll discover some exclusive fonts from Cape Arcona, plus the excellent Flash Optimizer Lite, the much acclaimed download-streamlining app. Read on for more details and let us know what you think of the CD by emailing [email protected]

his month, we’re delighted to be able to offer two full FontLab apps for creating and manipulating fonts. The first of these, TypeTool 1.3, is a kind of cut-down version of the incredibly popular FontLab. The program enables you to create a new font or modify an existing one with easy-to-use yet powerful editing tools. Great features include outline editors with more than ten tools and a 200-level undo/redo function. You can import and export fonts in TrueType and PostScript Type 1 formats, too, while a metric and kerning editing

module provides customisable auto-spacing and auto-kerning features. In addition, you can import and export font metric files in PFM and AFM formats, as well as import metrics from Mac font suitcases. Add to this an extremely easy-to-navigate interface with drag-and-drop functionality and pop-up menus and you have a truly awesome font-creation application at your disposal. Better still, you’re getting it for free! See below for details on how to obtain your serial number – and check your CD inlay for system requirements.

HOW TO OBTAIN YOUR SERIAL NUMBER TypeTool 1.3 will run in demo mode until you enter your serial number. To obtain this, simply register your details at:

www.fontlab.com/promo/futurepub.html

CD95 CONTENTS FULL PRODUCT Create your own fonts using FontLab’s fantastic tool. To find out more, follow our tutorial, starting on page 30

SCANFONT 3.2 (MAC) FULL PRODUCT Scan in anything and turn it into a Type 1 or TrueType font. Get started on page 30

FLASH OPTIMIZER LITE (PC) FULL PRODUCT Shave bytes off your SWF movies with Eltima Software’s awesome tool. Find out more on page 7

FREE FONTS! (PC + MAC) EXCLUSIVE! We bring you four fonts from top foundry Cape Arcona (www.cape-arcona.com), and 74 free fonts from Tom 7 at www.tom7.org

A4DESK (PC) FULL PRODUCT Create great sites with these five free templates from A4Desk. See page 7

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TYPETOOL 1.3 (PC + MAC)

FULL PROGRAM MAC

SCANFONT 3.2 FULL APP WORTH $99 Turn any image into your own font!

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ver see a logo, old typeface in a book or image/dingbat that you wish you could use as a font? Don’t have the time to scan it in and trace it by hand? Well, our second free typography tool from our friends at FontLab is the answer! ScanFont 3.2 enables you to create a professional looking technically correct digital font in minutes. ScanFont 3.2 combines traditional font-editing functionality with precise auto-tracing tools. The latter have been specially developed to work with characters so you can transform anything you can print on paper or see on your computer

screen into high-quality TrueType or PostScript fonts. Features include a high-quality fully customisable auto-tracing algorithm (especially designed to handle characters), integrated bitmap editor with more than 20 tools, automatic detection of characters and strings in a source image, support for most scanners through TWAIN interface, the ability to export individual characters in EPS format, and an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. See below for details on obtaining your serial number – and check your CD inlay for system requirements.

DESIGN ON A BUDGET

HOW TO OBTAIN YOUR SERIAL NUMBER

Check out our cover feature, beginning on page 22, and fire up demos of Carrara Studio, Flix Pro, WildFX, WebDesign and more

ScanFont 3.2 will run in demo mode until you enter your serial number. To get this, register your details at the following Website:

www.fontlab.com/promo/futurepub.html

COMBUSTION 3 (PC + MAC) 30-DAY DEMO Take Discreet’s ultra-powerful compositor for a test-drive. More on page 94

TUTORIAL FILES For the cover tutorial (starting on page 22), see the Budget folder. For the Web design tutorial (page 68), see the Web folder. For the InDesign tutorial (page 40) and 3ds max Shortcut (page 58), see the InDesign and 3ds max Shortcut folders

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TYPOGRAPHY SPECIAL! On sale 4 March, issue 56 of Computer Arts Projects is dedicated to the art of creating great fonts, icons and logos. Top typography talent from around the globe give in-depth insights into the secrets of great font design. Packed with tutorials, features and more, it’s the essential guide to the art of type.

On the CD

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FULL PROGRAM PC

FLASH OPTIMIZER LITE FULL VERSION Crunch your SWF files down to convenient size with this top-rated application

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veryone accepts that Flash can help you create stunning vector-based animations and rich Web applications, but sometimes, especially if you’re designing for a non-broadband enabled audience, it needs a little help to get that content out there. This is where Flash Optimizer Lite – free on your cover CD – comes in. It’s a fantastic utility that enables you to shrink your SWF files without damaging them. All it takes is one click and your SWFs will be so streamlined they’ll zip through the narrowest of pipes in no time. Check out the company’s other tool, Flash Optimizer Standard, for greater control over the exact compression of your movie. For more details, visit www.eltima.com.

HOW TO OBTAIN YOUR SERIAL NUMBER Registration name: Future Publishing Registration code: C08B-9982-BDEC-4FC15816-28F8-C70C-4BA Optimising your Flash content is often a simple case of point and click. You’ll be surprised just how impressive the results can be.

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FREE TEMPLATES PC

A4DESK TEMPLATES WEB RESOURCES Too busy to build and design your own Website? Then check out A4Desk!

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4Desk is a professional, Flash template-based, all-in-one software suite for developing Flash menu headers, Flash Websites and multimedia presentations. Its easy-to-use, wizard-based interface will enable you to create Flash-based sites in a matter of minutes, adding music, animations, images and HTML. If you’re new to Website design or inexperienced in coding, A4Desk will enable you to create your own site with ease – check out these five free templates to see what we mean. Now there’s no excuse not to give your site the professional sheen you’ve wanted for so long. Simply register at the Web address below and you’ll be given a licence key and template ID:

www.a4desk.com/futurenet-special/

Use the A4Desk templates on your coverdisc to create professional looking Flash sites more easily.

Computer Arts_April 2003

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LETTERS INSPIRED Just wanted to say thanks for a great magazine. Although I have been slow to start learning the mysteries of Photoshop and After Effects, I’ve found much to inspire me, especially links such as the DesignChapel Website (www.designchapel.com). Sean Hogan Thanks for the feedback. Our main aim each issue is to provide diverse practical advice for a wide range of graphics packages. Look out for next month’s massive cover feature on quick and effective techniques for all your favourite graphics applications – including Photoshop and After Effects.

WHAT PRINTER? First of all, let me congratulate you on an excellent magazine, I’ve been an avid reader for about six months now. I’m a graphic designer and have just started working for a civil engineering company, setting up its design department. One of the tasks ahead of me is to ensure that our proposals are sent out looking the best they can. For this purpose, we’ve already bought two LaCie Blue IV 22-inch monitors

HAVE YOU GOT A POINT TO MAKE ABOUT THE MAGAZINE, A CREATIVE PRODUCT, A SHOW OR THE INDUSTRY AT LARGE? EMAIL YOUR THOUGHTS TO THE TEAM AT [email protected], OR JOIN US ONLINE AT FORUM.COMPUTERARTS.CO.UK

for their colour calibration control and are now looking to buy a high-quality colour laser printer to output the proposals. We’re currently printed on a Minolta CF2001P, but we can change the lease and upgrade to a better Minolta or buy a printer from a completely different manufacturer. We’ll be processing between five and 10,000 pages a week, and each one will be in full colour, although the coverage will vary enormously. The budget for this printer is currently set at between five and $10,000. What would be our best option in terms of quality, colour management and lower cost bulk printing? Kjell van Zoen www.dcdesign.com That’s an awful lot of colour copies you’re printing. With volumes like these, the cost per print becomes critical. If you have time, it would be a good idea to approach your local HP, Lexmark and Xerox dealers to see what they can offer in competition to the Minolta CF2001P. Get them to break down the cost per print for you. Remember to take into account paper, toner, fuser and transfer drum costs. Different printers use

varying technologies, so the costs will be calculated differently, but you need to know the cost per page if printing between five and 10,000 copies per month. With this sort of usage, the sellers of lasers will be more than happy to do a study for you. They may even give you a printer, because they could make good money from your custom. All the major colour laser manufacturers produce good and reliable machines, so ask for some print samples of a typical print job and compare.

PROFILED Big thanks for publishing the profile of me and my work in issue 90. Off the back of it, my workload has just exploded. That work looks old already, but still brings in the commissions! John McFaul www.mcfaul.biz

CINEMA 4D CONTINUED I’ve just received the March issue of Computer Arts and read the letter from Mr Lewis regarding Cinema 4D. I upgraded from the disc on your cover and I’m just beginning to look at this amazing program,

★ LETTER OF THE MONTH SHORTCUT SENSATION! I’m sure you’ve heard a million times before how great Computer Arts is. I wanted to say that I think your Shortcut cards are a really great idea. Whoever came up with the concept deserves a raise or at least a free pint. I’ve collected every one so far; they’re so handy to have and I keep them by my PC at all times. Will we see any more in the future? Two more questions. First, would you consider featuring a program called NeoBook? I’d love to see it get a mention, in the form of tips or a walkthrough. I’ve used it for many things, including presentations of my artwork, retro gaming and screensaver for my PC. Second, I’m looking to set up a new portfolio site, but I also want to include some free stock imagery for download – images that I’ve taken with my digital camera. How do I add a file that people can click on to download, without having to put the fullsize picture on my Website? My pages would take forever to open if visitors only had a 56K modem. Chris Mcinerney We’re glad you enjoyed the Shortcut cards, Chris – and thanks for all the praise. This issue marks the

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end of our run now, unfortunately, but we’ll plan another onslaught for later in the year. Until then, our sister magazine 3D World, who also liked the idea, is on sale now with a massive eight Keyboard Shortcut cards to celebrate their 50th issue. Software covered includes 3ds max, Maya, LightWave, Cinema 4D, BodyPaint, MOTIONBUILDER, Vue d’Esprit and Softimage|XSI. To answer your other questions, NeoBook has indeed escaped our attention, but your letter does fit in well with our budget theme this issue (check out our cover feature, starting on page 22). Published by NeoSoft (www.neosoftware.com), it costs $199.95 and appears to be quite an all-rounder. We’d be interested to see some Websites by people who are working with this mysterious application – we’ve never seen a piece of software which is on version 4.1.3a before… Most intriguing! The simple answer to your Website portfolio question is to Zip or Stuff your high-res images and keep them in one folder. Show a thumbnail of the image and underneath give the user a Mac or PC choice, informing them of the size of the download. If they click one of the links, they should have the

3D World is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a special double-CD issue plus eight Shortcut cards for leading 3D programs.

option to download the image to their desktop immediately, where they can un-Zip or un-Stuff the file themselves.

NEXT MONTH IN COMPUTER ARTS 96 KEY TECHNIQUES FOR FIVE TOP DESIGN APPS 10 tutorials for beginners and experts alike! Industry experts share their best and fastest techniques for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver and After Effects

having never tried 3D before. Daunting but very exciting! The following might be of help to Mr Lewis and anyone else getting use to the application. Visit www.maxon.net, go to the Resources tab along the top. In the new window, scroll down to Third Party Tutorials, click on this, then scroll down to Tutorials for C4D beginners by Joel Mills. Once there, the exercises are in PDF form and there’s a folder of examples to download for the tutorials. These are really good and straightforward lessons, and a great way of introducing a complex subject. The Maxon site is full of other good stuff, too – tutorials, examples of C4D work, and much more. Pete Willmin ■

IN PROFILE HELIOS DESIGN LABORATORIES

The classy Canadians on their design work, including some of the trendiest fashion catalogues

ADVANCED PHOTOSHOP

Experiment with shades, passes and other exciting effects on your 3D models with this in-depth Photoshop tutorial. We’ll supply the model and all the hands-on expertise to help you create more amazing work

ON THE CD

Eight commercial fonts from leading foundries worth £360, courtesy of Fontworks (www.type.co.uk)

WRITE IN AND WIN!! Every month, the winner of our Letter of the Month will be sent a full copy of the KPT Collection, courtesy of Corel. This extensive bundle of plug-ins was the all-out winner of our Photoshop plug-ins Group Test in issue 94 and will introduce hundreds of brand new effects to your work, for Web, print and 3D. To find out more about KPT, visit www.corel.com

GROUP TEST: A4 INKJET PRINTERS A4 photo-quality inkjet printers from Epson, Canon and Hewlett-Packard, among others, battle for supremacy REVIEWED SOON Director MX 2004 QuarkXPress 6.1 Sonic MyDVD PageCurl 2.0

PuzzlePro 2.0 Cinematte 3D Tiger! Xtreme Path

After Effects plug-ins PREVIEW! Brand new design software from Adobe unveiled

Canon EOS 1D Mark II FujiFilm S3 Pro Nikon D70 Epson R800

ON SALE 15 APRIL All contents correct at time of going to press

Computer Arts_April 2004

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NEWS

Visit our massive Website for weekly news updates and much more. To contact our news team, email

[email protected]

www.computerarts.co.uk

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

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CAMERA WARS HARDWARE The market for digital SLR cameras is hotting up – prices are falling and quality is rising

HARDWARE Exciting LCDs

unveiled by Sony

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SOFTWARE NASA sends

LightWave to Mars

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ollowing the surprise launch by Canon of the budget EOS 300D camera, market leader Nikon has responded with the launch of a budget SLR of its own: the Nikon D70. Based on Nikon’s successful D100 camera, the 6-megapixel D70 breaks the £1000 price barrier and is being marketed with the Zoom Nikkor AF-S 18-70mm lens. This offers a 35mm equivalent focal length of 27-105mm. Unlike other budget-priced SLRs, the D70 maintains many of the features found on Nikon’s D100: a burst mode of 3fps, which you can sustain for 144 shots, the ability to extend the shutter speed to 1/8000th of a second and a flash synch speed of 1/500th of a second. This places the D70 firmly in the professional market. Other features on the D70 worth noting include a new sensor with a sensitivity ranging from ISO 200 to 1600. Simultaneous recording of JPEG

and RAW images make it ideal for press use, where a JPEG may be needed in a hurry, but higher-resolution RAW files required for archiving. The Nikon D70 will retail for £999 with lens or £799 without.

PROFESSIONAL KIT Meanwhile, Canon has unveiled its latest SLR: the EOS 1D Mark II. Using Canon’s own CMOS sensor and DIGIC processor, the 8.2-megapixel camera can shoot at up to 8.5fps. Clearly designed to offer a more affordable alternative to the flagship EOS 1Ds, this new SLR will appeal to professional photographers looking for a second camera body at a competitive price. With a processing capacity of 69 megapixels per second, the EOS 1D Mark II is particularly suited to sports and action work, where fast shutter response is paramount. Start-up time is just half a second, too. Another useful

feature is the ability to record backup images on dual memory cards. The Mark II has slots for CompactFlash and SD media, and images can be recorded on both should one fail. It should cost £3499 without the lens. Finally, FujiFilm has announced the long-awaited successor to the F2 Pro… the FinePix S3 Pro. Based around a Nikon lens mount, the S3 features FujiFilm’s own design of 6-megapixel CCD where each sensor has two parts: one to capture highlights and the other for shadows for enhanced image quality. Storage is via CompactFlash and xD picture cards. Four AA batteries supply the power. Price and release date have yet to be announced. Expect full reviews in future issues of Computer Arts. Meanwhile, turn to page 87 to find out what we make of Olympus’ latest digital SLR. INFO www.canon.co.uk, www.nikon.co.uk, www.fujifilm.co.uk

OPINION Does good design depend on expensive apps? A successor to FujiFilm’s F2 Pro, the FinePix S3 Pro sports a 6-megapixel CCD.

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EVENT Go behind the scenes

at Imagina 2004

NEWS WRITERS

Mark Ramshaw, Vicki Atkinson, Mireille Frenette, Mark Sparrow

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Canon’s 8.2-megapixel EOS-1D Mark II: an affordable SLR alternative to the EOS-1Ds.

Nikon’s answer to Canon’s budget EOS 300D, the D70 looks and feels like a pro-level SLR.

News

SOFTWARE The latest releases, updates and software news

GET YOURSELF NOTICED! AWARDS Adobe is now accepting submissions for 2004’s Design Achievement Awards

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ubmission dates have been announced for the 2004 Adobe Design Achievement Awards. The prestigious event, which honours talented students studying all major digital arts, carries first prize awards of $5000. The top three winners in each category also receive a choice of ten Adobe products, plus a trip to the awards ceremony in San Francisco. The Awards will follow a similar format to last year’s highly successful run, which saw more than 1000 students from the UK, USA and Canada submit entries in the Time-based Media, Print, Illustration, Photography and Multiple Media categories. Two

categories are also available for group efforts: Print Collaboration and Digital Collaboration. Entries will be accepted from 1 April to 17 May, with judging by a panel of leading industry figures set to take place in early June. Entry forms will be available to download from the Adobe Website. Adobe is also doing its bit to catch digital artists from a younger age, with the launch of a Digital Kids Club. The initiative aims to provide parents, teachers and children (from nappies to school uniform, we presume) with digital photography and photo manipulation resources. For details on all of the above, visit Adobe's Website.

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e’ve launched our call for entries to the Computer Arts Graduate Showcase 2004. Each year, we invite final-year students at colleges and universities across the UK to send in work, to be featured in an exclusive supplement, free with the July Issue of CA. Entry is simple. Featured work is grouped by college rather than individual students, and we’d love to hear about any new courses. Ask your tutor, or any organised student, to collate the best material produced by the current final-year designers, animators and artists on your course, then send your submissions to us as carefully-labelled highresolution images, video, animations or Websites on CD-ROM before the deadline. Animation and video material will also be featured on the Computer Arts coverdisc, but please provide stills for print. All entries will be considered for inclusion by the Computer Arts team and contributions by the ten best institutions will be featured in detail. Please email [email protected] for further details of file formats and how to submit your work. Flag ‘Graduate 2004’ as your email subject. The deadline for entries is Friday 16 April 2004.

RE:VISION UPGRADES Both the Avid and Digital Fusion versions of RE:Vision Effects, Inc’s Twixtor and ReelSmart Motion Blur tools have been upgraded to take advantage of multiprocessor systems. The new Mac editions of the Avid plug-ins also benefit from Altivec and G5 optimisations. ReelSmart Motion Blur is priced at $134.95. The Avid version of Twixtor retails now retails at $329.95, while Twixtor Pro 3.0 for Digital Fusion is $495. www.revisionfx.com

INFO www.adobe.co.uk/education

GRADUATE SHOWCASE 2004 COMPETITION Get your artwork into Computer Arts today!

ALIAS COMPETITION Alias has announced its first ever contest based around the free Personal Learning Edition of Maya. Run in conjunction with HP and the Gnomon 3D school and teaching Website, the contest is open to students, hobbyists and professionals. Entries will be accepted until 28 April, with a first prize of an HP workstation and DVD training pack. www.alias.com/ community/contest

MACROMEDIA’S ROBOHELPERS Macromedia has released new versions of its RoboHelp and RoboInfo tools. RobotHelp X5 now supports XML, PDF import/export, content management, team authoring and JavaHelp 2.0 and retails for £559. RoboInfo 5.0 features new naturallanguage searching and detail usage feedback report generation. It’s priced at $799. www.macromedia.com NEWTEK GIVEAWAY NewTek has teamed up with Realviz to put together a limited-time offer for the Mac version of LightWave 7.5. From now until 21 March, buyers will receive the entire Realviz Interactive Studio suite free. This comprises Stitcher 3.5, 3D ImageModeler 3.5, and SceneWe@ver – with a collective street value of $1500. www.newtek.com/partners/realviz CALLING YOUR BLUFF Outerspace Software has launched Blufftitler, a low-cost 3D title creation tool for video, photos, Web and live performance. It can produce real-time animations, via support for hardware acceleration through the DirectX9 API. A trial download is available now; the full product costs 30 euros. www.blufftitler.us

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HARDWARE Stay abreast of the latest art-enhancing technology

SONY MONITORS SITUATION HARDWARE Electronics giant Sony gets bigger, sharper and brighter with two exhilarating LCD offerings: the SDM-S204 and the SDM-HS73P

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NEW CANON CAMCORDERS Canon has just unveiled three stylish, 1.33-megapixel camcorders. The MVX250i, MVX200i and MVX200 are some 40 per cent smaller than the MVX1000 series and shoot in 16:9. The MVX250i offers an 18x zoom; the other two a 14x zoom. The trio are due out in April. No price as yet. www.canon.co.uk FUJI STEPS UP TO 4X The FinePix F710 Zoom is the latest addition to Fuji’s digital camera range, complete with 6.2-megapixel Super CCD, 4x optical zoom, 2.1-inch widescreen LCD display and pop-up flash. The new Fujinon zoom lens offers a 32.5mm-130mm, yet the camera remains as compact as the award-winning F700. It’s due out in April, price to be confirmed. www.fujifilm.co.uk ATI’S SPECIAL K MOBILE SOLUTION ATI has introduced the first ever low-K graphics solution for notebook PCs. The Mobility Radeon 9700 combines Direct X9.0 support with reduced capacitance for superior performance and longer battery life. Notebooks featuring the card are now shipping from major vendors, including Medion, Packard-Bell and Acer. www.ati.com PNY ADDS FAST FLASH MEDIA PNY Technologies has launched a number of high-speed storage cards. Set to launch in March, the SD Secure Digital Cards offer write speeds up to 5MB per second, with 128MB and 256MB versions available. Already available are high-speed cards for the CompactFlash format, which provide write speeds of 6MB per second. www.pny-europe.com DELL ADOPTS LATEST INTEL CHIPS Dell has begun adding the latest Intel processor to its range of Dimension desktops, Dell Precision workstations and Dimension 8300 models. These latest 3.2GHz CPUs feature hyperthreading technology, 1MB Level 2 cache, and an 800MHz front side bus. Dell is to introduce Intel 3.4GHz chip options imminently. www.dell.co.uk

12 Computer Arts_April 2004

Sony’s 20.1-inch SDM-S204 boasts a resolution of 1600x1200 and a pleasingly wide viewing angle of 170 degrees.

ony is targeting high-end graphics, CAD and science markets with its latest impressive LCD monitor, the SDM-S204. At 20.1 inches and with a 1600x1200 UXGA resolution display, it’s designed as a space-saving replacement for conventional 21-inch CRT-based solutions. The screen has a response time of 25ms, 170-degree viewing planes, and both digital and analogue inputs. It also boasts a typical contrast ratio of 500:1 and can render 16.7 million colours accurately. It should hit the shops this month, although price has yet to be confirmed. Also due out in March is the SDM-HS73P. This 17-inch LCD monitor is the first to incorporate ‘ultra-bright technology’, a glare and reflection reduction layer system for improved colour, brightness and contrast vibrancy. It carries a brightness rating of 400 cd/m_, almost double that of its predecessor. Sony also ensures the SDM-HS73P will be able to cope with fastmoving video and game images, thanks to the monitor’s 16ms response time. The LCD has a native resolution of 1280x1024, with clear viewing through 160 degrees (both horizontally and vertically). It will cost around £449. INFO www.sony-cp.com

LACIE FIREWIRES UP HARDWARE Peripherals manufacturer LaCie introduces a trailblazing DVD±RW

rewriter, plus two big hard drives, with USB 2.0 and FireWire connectivity

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aCie continues to expand its burgeoning peripheral catalogue with the launch of three additional product lines. The LaCie d2 Dual 8x DVD±RW drive is the fastest external dual-format drive yet to hit the market, boasting write speeds of 8x and rewrites

at 4x. FireWire and USB 2.0 connectivity come as standard, with a comprehensive software suite provided for the easy burning and authoring of CDs and DVDs. Prices for the unit start at £173. The LaCie Big Disk ‘Extreme’ FireWire 800 drive also marks a first – by offering data transfer rates of 88MB per second, backed up by 500GB of storage. The unit has an 8MB buffer, 7200rpm drive and includes two FireWire 800 ports, one FireWire 400, plus easy RAID 0 configuration. It retails for £457. Also new is a range of d2 Triple Interface hard drives. Boasting three connection options – FireWire 800, 400 and USB 2.0 – all feature 7200rpm spin speeds. There are six models in all, with prices starting at £134 for the entry-level 160GB device, rising to £359 for the full 500GB version. INFO www.lacie.com

The LaCie d2 Dual 8x DVD±RW drive writes DVDs between 4x and 8x, depending on the media.

The hottest sites and services on the Web…

© Image courtesy of Vital Media Solutions

WEBSITES Toni&Guy’s promo was shot on DV, then given a filmic sheen with Magic Bullet Time.

DESIGN TAXI www.designtaxi.com Aside from being a portal, news hub and forum, Digital Taxi also provides listings of and portfolio space for guns for hire. This superb service, along with Design Taxi’s predictable but oh-so-clean yellow and grey design work, makes this site an essential resource to bookmark. FLASH KIT www.flashkit.com It’s not always easy on the eye, but the lack of finesse is forgivable given the rich seam of information sitting below the perfunctory surface at Flash Kit. This tutorial haven is as useful for pros looking to learn new wrinkles as newbies taking their first steps with Macromedia’s Web development tool. ANIMALS ON THE UNDERGROUND www.animalsontheunderground.com Forget trying to join the dots in the night sky – here it’s the London Tube map that provides the lines and curves for a variety of animal illustrations. The results are uncannily artistic – the Victorians were clearly feeling creative when they dug out those sewers. Of course, the real challenge is to spot a new animal… T26 www.t26.com Relaunched with a suitably wordy bent, the home site of T26 serves as much as a textbook example of how to deal with e-commerce as it does show off the studio’s font and EPS typeface wares. Particularly smooth is a tool that enables designers to preview a text string in any font before they buy the entire alphabet.

MAGIC BULLET TIME SOFTWARE Digital video can now enjoy an authentic filmic gloss, courtesy of Red Giant Software’s After Effects plug-ins

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hrink Rap is the latest DV movie project to benefit from a makeover in Red Giant Software’s Magic Bullet Suite. Having received an H ‘ onourable Mention’ at the Dance With Films Festival, the psychiatry comedy will now screen at the 2004 Sarasota Film Festival. Directed by Doug Cox, the film was processed using Magic Bullet by postproduction house Solventdreams. T “hey handed me a finished product that fools just about everybody into thinking it was shot on film,”enthuses Cox. The software has also been put through its paces over at Vital Media

Solutions, where a promo for the Toni&Guy hairdressing chain was filmed digitally then given a filmic appearance, all within a budget of just £11,000. The Magic Bullet Suite comprises five After Effects plug-ins, which convert digital video to a 24fps format, reducing many of the artefacts present in the original footage. Available in standard definition (supporting NTSC and PAL) and high definition versions for £734 and £1469, respectively, the software is available exclusively in Europe through The CarPark. INFO www.thecarpark.net www.redgiantsoftware.com

THE CLOSE-UPS www.theclose-ups.com Fresh from a sell-out gig at Animex, The Close-Ups have gone global. Not bad for a band that doesn’t exist. A post-Gorillaz virtual cartoon outfit, The Close-Ups are a front for Carl Green, plus animators at the University Of Teesside and a team of session musicians. Check ’em out here. LEVI’S EUROPE www.eu.levi.com/vmx Ever mindful of the power of cool marketing, Levi’s has given its European site a total overhaul. Something of a work in progress, the basic news-and-gadget formula will evolve over the coming months. It’s already worth visiting, purely to play with the weird but wonderful video-mixer messaging system.

WANT YOUR NEW SITE FEATURED? Send the link to [email protected] with the subject header ‘Websites’.

14 Computer Arts_April 2004

Red Giant’s plug-ins provide all manner of presets to help you create an authentic film-like look.

News

LIGHTWAVE ON MARS SOFTWARE NASA brings its latest space mission to life using Newtek’s LightWave

OPINION THE PRICE OF GOOD DESIGN

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o space mission, particularly one to Mars, is complete these days without an accompanying digital animation. While Beagle 2 only survives courtesy of a 3ds max sequence, NASA’s more successful device is being accompanied by simulations created in NewTek’s LightWave. Daniel Maas of Mass Digital, under the guidance of Cornell University’s Professor Steve Squyres, used NewTek’s app to help NASA visualise the journey, landing and subsequent activity of its two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Now Zareh Gorjian, over at the California Institute’s Jet

SUBJECT Do you have to shell out on expensive

Propulsion Laboratory, is using the software to create HDTV images and animations which help NASA visualise the current status of the vehicles. Gorjian has also made 3D anaglyphs of the landscape by combining Maas’ 3D Rover model with fresh data transmitted by Spirit. INFO www.newtek.com

MOVING ON UP TO 5 SOFTWARE Vue support for Poser 5 Just as Curious Labs’ Poser software has transformed the character modelling game, so E-on Software’s Vue d’Esprit has become the environment generation tool of choice. Now comes Mover 5, the latest version of E-on’s tool for combining content from both programs – enabling you to animate complex characters in lush digital environments more effectively than ever before. As the name suggests, this edition is compatible with Poser 5 files, giving both Vue d’Esprit 4 and Vue 4 Professional full support

for dynamic cloth and hair modelling, plus anisotropic reflection calculations (to simulate hair gloss). At the moment, Mover 5 is only available as a public beta to existing Mover 4 users. Mover 4 is available for download for £61 or on CD for £68. INFO www.e-onsoftware.com

LEARNING CURVE

tools to produce successful artwork? Of course not, argues BD4D’s Ryan Shelton, but it does help… If you’re starting out in the industry and serious about producing good work, one of your first steps will be to find out what tools are available. Thankfully, while industry-standard software can be expensive, there is hope for the uninitiated. Cheaper and even free software is available – if you know where to look… For starters, experiment with the software that comes bundled with or preinstalled on your PC or Mac – this’ll prove an effective stop-gap until you can afford more professional applications. Mac designers, for instance, can exploit Apple’s free iPhoto to enhance, retouch, crop and export their photographic images. When it comes to creating Flash media content in the SWF format, nothing can really beat Macromedia’s Flash application, but there are cheaper alternatives, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. Let’s say you want to produce a Website but can’t afford a copy of Dreamweaver or GoLive. The simple solution is TextEdit and a book on HTML that won’t cost you more than a tenner. Sure, handwriting your code may take longer than, say, tabulating with a WYSIWYG editor, but until you can afford the more expensive software, the free copy of TextEdit that comes with your computer should suffice. Learning HTML can only be a good thing, too. Of course, using free software may not always be possible, particularly with more technically demanding projects; in these cases, you’ll need to invest serious dosh if you want to produce serious work – and that means buying professional applications. Look at the expenditure as an investment in your future rather than a huge drain on your bank account. Just as you would put funds into an ISA or other savings scheme and not see the returns on your investment right away, you should see investing in software as something that will pay off in the long run. Until you can afford this investment, focus on developing strong ideas. Ultimately, this is the only way to produce work that you can be proud of, and no expensive software can compensate for weak ideas or unoriginal style. Creative success is about more than tools. INFO Ryan Shelton is a member of design outfit BD4D, www.bd4d.com. You can contact him directly on [email protected]

WHETHER YOU’RE INTERESTED IN ILLUSTRATION, 3D, WEB DESIGN OR VIDEO, YOU’LL FIND A COURSE HERE TO SUIT PARITY TRAINING Leeds Parity has some 30 offices in the UK, Europe and the USA. The creative courses featured here are scheduled for the Leeds office. Alternative dates are also available for Holburn. Quark XPress 6 for Windows 5 May, £595 Adobe Photoshop 7 Advanced Features 26 May, £595 www.parity.net

IDEAL TRAINING SOLUTIONS Banbury The Oxfordshire-based centre runs a number of Adobe and Microsoftapproved courses, with a maximum of six students per session. Unlimited post-course support is also included. Adobe Illustrator Basic 26 April, £225 Adobe InDesign Basic/Intermediate 24-25 May, £450 www.its-ideal.co.uk

CLEAR THINKING Southampton With courses for software by Autodesk, Macromedia, Maxon, Discreet and Adobe, Clear Thinking caters to both 2D and 3D, novice and expert. Maxon Cinema 4D 26-27 April, £625 Macromedia Fireworks MX/MX 2004 4-5 May, £625 www.goclearthinking .co.uk

SILICON BEACH TRAINING Brighton The south coast training centre runs courses on most design and Web packages, alongside a broad range of programming and other non-creative training. Photoshop Advanced 19-20 April, £395 Dreamweaver 11-12 May, £395 www.siliconbeach training.co.uk

SYMBIOSIS Leamington Spa Authorised by Macromedia, Adobe and Media 100, Symbiosis offers a good range of in-house courses at its Midlands base. Photoshop CS 31 March-1 April, £595 QuarkXpress 5.0 8 April, £595 www.symbiosis.com

CORPS BUSINESS London The West London facility covers a rich selection of 2D and 3D applications, teaching in classes of no more than five, and providing after-course support by telephone or email. Flash MX Rich Media Design 7-8 April, £450 Dreamweaver MX 2004 Website Development 4-6 May, £650 www.corps.co.uk

Computer Arts_April 2004

15

COMING SOON A CALENDAR OF ESSENTIAL RELEASES, EVENTS (AND WISHFUL THINKING) FOR ALL DIGITAL CREATIVES

APRIL Semi-Permanent Second annual design event in Sydney and Auckland from DesignisKinky (www.semipermanent.com) Computer Arts Projects 57 Logo, font and icon design. On sale 1 April Cinema 4D R9 In beta testing G5 PowerBooks Next-generation laptops now in early stages of production? Here’s hoping… Computer Arts 96 On sale 15 April. CA gets an InDesign makeover – will you notice the difference?

MAY Painter 9 More brushes, canvases and bundled extras please! My Favourite Conference IdN Magazine’s leading design event. Singapore 13-15 May (www.idnworld.com) Computer Arts 97 On sale 13 May Troy Blockbusting historical epic starring Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom hits cinemas 21 May Computer Arts Projects 59 In newsagents from 27 May

JUNE D&AD New Blood Fresh design talent goes on show (www.dandad.org) Computer Arts 98 With free Graduate Showcase supplement – on sale 10 June Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban Goes on general release. CG galore from ILM, MPC and Framestore CFC Computer Arts Projects 60 On sale 24 June Adobe Creative Suite 2 In beta? Should be by now Apple Worldwide Developers Conference San Francisco, June 28. For anyone who lives and breathes Macs (www.apple.com/wwdc)

Exquisite character design, animation and rendering, mixed with splendid storytelling and film-making, earns German student Johannes Weiland a welldeserved Grand Prix Award.

IMAGINA 2004 FESTIVAL Student films and independent productions steal the show at Imagina 2004

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ebruary saw 3D animators, software developers and students meeting from all over Europe, to discuss and listen to some of the world’s best 3D experts during the Imagina Festival in Monaco. ESC VFX Technology Supervisor George Borshukov’s presentation of the technology behind the incredible 3D clones from Matrix 2 and 3 drew a large part of the event’s 3000 visitors. Internationally renowned image-based 3D experts Professors Paul Debevec (www.debevec.org) and Luc Van Gool (www.vision.ee.ethz.ch) dazzled the audience with their current research, which heralds a new era of fullyanimated 3D scenes built from only a few stills or videoclips. Once again this year, students were praised by many of the speakers for the quality of their work. And for the second year running, the Imagina Grand Prix was awarded to a student, Johannes Weiland, for his wonderful short animation Annie and Boo (www.annieandboo.com), which also collected two more awards for Best Student Film and Best Art Direction. Among the 600 films registered for the Imagina awards, Fish and L’Homme sans Tête were also singled out. Fish, directed by Daniel Kleinman

JULY OFFF Top design event in Barcelona, showcasing the best in video and new media (www.offf.ws) PDI Dreamworks’ Shrek 2 hits UK cinemas 2 July (www.shrek2.com) Computer Arts 99 On sale 8 July SoftImage|XSI 4 Should be hitting the CA reviews pages very soon Computer Arts Projects 61 On sale 22 July

16 Computer Arts_April 2004

Left: Professor Paul Debevec pioneered image-based modelling and HDRI. After successfully applying his theories to static objects and lighting, he is now pioneering ways to combine image-based 3D with mathematical algorithms to develop new kinds of image synthesis. Right: You can read more about the incredible work George Borshukov supervised on Matrix 2 and 3 at www.virtualcinematography.org.

(www.framestore-cfc.com/ commercials/jwalker_fish), depicts schools of human fish racing towards the shore to take mankind’s first step on dry land. L’Homme sans Tête, by Juan Solanas (www.alamaison.fr), is a French short that has already gathered several prizes worldwide, in which a headless man goes shopping for the right face for a romantic rendezvous. Together, these great films show how 3D has become one of today’s most creative fields – and provide an exciting glimpse of what’s to come. INFO www.imagina.mc

L’Homme sans Tête, by Juan Solanas (www.alamaison.fr), is an impressive French short that has already gathered several prizes worldwide.

GUEST FONT SHOWCASE 25-year-old design graduate Rukkit Kuanhawate reveals the thinking behind his latest exciting font, the aptly named LSF PIPE Rukkit Kuanhawate takes an eclectic interest in graphic design, illustration and, of course, typography. He gained his BA in Art Education from Chulalongkorn University and in 2002 won second prize in the Sound Design Competition, presided over

18 Computer Arts_April 2004

by The Designers Republic guru Ian Anderson. Spurred on by his success, Kuanhawate soon organised his own graphic magazine, Example, available from www.youworkforthem.com. O “ nly last year,”he says, I“organised b.o.r.e.d [band of

radical experiment design] with my friends, which focuses on the work and aspirations of a new generation of designers from Thailand.” So where did the inspiration for LSF PIPE come from? I“’ve always been interested in typography,” explains Kuanhawate. s“o I started to design my own font. It’s called LSF PIPE, because each typeface is built up of discrete elements, joints and so on, that create the impression of a pipe.” INFO www.boreddesign.com. To order LSF PIPE ($30), email [email protected]

22 Computer Arts_April 2004

Design on a budget

CONTENTS

PAGE 24

RETOUCH A PHOTO Using Adobe’s wallet-friendly image-editing app, Photoshop Elements, you can now easily correct lighting and blemishes within digital images. Imageediting expert Simon Danaher shows you how it’s done

PAGE 26

PRODUCE A WEBSITE

Create great design in packages that don’t cost the earth! We explore the programs and the techniques you need to know, and follow five designers as they complete professional projects using low-cost tools Great design isn’t about great software. Sure, there’s no doubting that recent developments in graphics tools have aided the digital creative, but design is about the application of ideas, not what version of Photoshop you’re running. It’s simply a myth that all top designers use the most expensive software. Of course, we’re not going to fool you into thinking that you can be the next Pixar, armed only with a copy of Carrara and Paint Shop Pro – but there are many things you can do with cheaper (and sometimes free) software that will still surprise you. It’s often about staying legal, too. For those of you who are

students or simply don’t have the bottomless wallet for the top-end creative software, there’s absolutely no need to resort to pirated and often buggy software in order to get the job done. Over the next eight pages, we’ve asked some of the industry’s bestknown designers to pick up a cheap piece of software or shareware and go about expressing their creative ideas in the normal way. The result? Fantastic video-based Websites, stunning 3D illustrations, perfectly retouched photos and a complete typeface, designed from scratch in your free font-creation software on the CD from FontLab.

Create a Website loaded with SWF and video content, using both cheap and almost free software! Ryan Shelton from design outfit BD4D guides you through the process

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CREATE AN ILLUSTRATION Leading design agency Future Farmers shows us how it creates its unique characters armed with only a copy of Carrara 3D Basics!

PAGE 30

DESIGN A FONT Want to create a typeface without splashing out on Fontographer or FontLab? Well, now you can, thanks to your free software on this month’s CD-ROM and advice from Jason Arber

Computer Arts_April 2004

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RETOUCH A PHOTO Photoshop Elements offers excellent functionality – and it’s over £500 cheaper than its acclaimed big brother, Photoshop CS. Here’s how to make the most of Adobe’s budget app SOFTWARE USED Æ PROGRAM Photoshop Elements COMPANY Adobe PRICE £76.38 WEBSITE www.adobe.co.uk PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC/Mac

Photoshop Elements really is a powerful tool for those who need to do regular photo-editing work, but don’t have the budget for a full-blown copy of Photoshop. Although Elements doesn’t enable you to work with CMYK images, it does offer numerous features for retouching that you’ll find very useful. In this tutorial, we’ll look at how powerful Elements can be when working with photographs. These can either be scanned or imported from a digital camera, and once you have the photo in Elements you can perform minor tonal adjustments or do impressive retouching work as if you

were using the full professional version of Photoshop. Exactly what and how much retouching needs to be done to an image depends on where and how it will be used. The subject in the example photo we’ll be using is perfectly fine, but if you want to ‘improve’ things by removing marks, lines and blemishes, then Elements can help you do that. Of course you can also do the reverse, making a person look older by adding wrinkles and blemishes. Exactly what you do to an image is entirely up to you, but whatever you decide, Elements will be able to assist.

INFO Simon Danaher is the author of many digital graphics books, and divides his time between illustration and writing. Contact him on [email protected]

ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE

INDUSTRY-STANDARD SOFTWARE

Five low-cost image-editing apps

Five professional alternatives

PROGRAM Paint Shop Pro COMPANY JASC software PRICE £99.95 WEBSITE www.jasc.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC INFO Paint Shop Pro by JASC software is a decent, low-cost alternative to Photoshop

PROGRAM Photoshop CS COMPANY Adobe PRICE £605.13 WEBSITE www.adobe.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Photoshop CS. Does anything really need to be said about this industry-standard

Elements on the PC. It offers CMYK editing as well as RGB and in many ways is similar to the full version of Photoshop. PROGRAM CorelDRAW Essentials COMPANY Corel PRICE £48 WEBSITE www.corel.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC INFO CorelDRAW Essentials combines vector drawing and bitmap editing at a very low price,

but unfortunately is only available for the PC. PROGRAM PhotoImpact XL COMPANY Ulead PRICE $89.95 (£48) WEBSITE www.ulead.com PHONE +1 310-896-6396 PLATFORM PC INFO Another low-cost, PC-only image editing app is Ulead PhotoImpact XL. It offers good

editing tools and it comes with useful video tutorials. PROGRAM GIMP X COMPANY GNU Project PRICE Free WEBSITE www.gimp.org PHONE Download online PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Not for the faint-hearted, GIMP X is an open source image-editing package for OS X. It’s a

pro level program, but does require some techiness to get it up running, not least of which is installing X11 Unix windowing system. There are also versions for Windows and Unix. PROGRAM Graphic Convertor COMPANY Lemkesoft PRICE £16 WEBSITE www.lemkesoft.de/en PHONE +49 5171 72200 PLATFORM Mac INFO Graphic Convertor is a shareware program which has developed over the years into a

fully-fledged image-editing application of considerable power.

24 Computer Arts_April 2004

image-editing application, used by designers across the globe? Course not. PROGRAM CorelDRAW Graphics Suite COMPANY Corel PRICE $399 (£214) WEBSITE www.corel.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO A brilliant Photoshop alternative that comes as a bundle of useful applications for

vector and bitmap editing and animation. PROGRAM Canvas COMPANY ACD Systems PRICE £349 WEBSITE www.acdsystems.com PHONE 020 8358 5857 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO This hybrid vector/bitmap editor offers a host of innovative features, although it can

be a little bit overly technical at times. PROGRAM Asiva Photo COMPANY Asiva PRICE $378 (£202) WEBSITE www.asiva.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO A professional image-editing application that works in 16-bit mode for ultimate

image accuracy and performance. PROGRAM Fireworks MX 2004 COMPANY Macromedia PRICE £249 WEBSITE www.macromedia.com PHONE 01344 458 600 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Designed for Web graphics, it offers image retouching and editing tools for Web artists.

^

PHOTO RETOUCHING ON A BUDGET Transform a photograph and master the Photoshop Elements toolset

Design on a budget

INSIGHT CLONING When using the Clone tool, turn off any affecting Adjustment Layers or make sure the Use All Layers checkbox is disabled in the Clone options. Otherwise, you’ll clone the adjusted pixels, which won’t blend with the original material. We avoided this by cloning only on the merged copy layer.

SAVING Before final deployment, especially for print, save a copy of the image so you can keep the layered version if you need to make further changes, then re-open and sharpen the copy. Images appear a lot softer on a printout than on a monitor, so you can apply quite a bit of sharpening.

7

To fix the colours, you could flatten the image and use Elements’ automatic colour correction features, but it’s better to do it manually. Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer to the top of the layer stack and increase the Saturation to 20 per cent. We’ve also adjusted the Hue a few points to the right to make the skin tones more brown and less red.

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Open the image budget_retouch.tiff from the coverdisc. This is a fairly large photographic image, so it has plenty of good detail if you zoom in close. It’s a fine image as it stands, but we can improve it using Elements’ retouching toolset.

4

To fix this, zoom in on the teeth and click the brightest highlight using the White Point Eyedropper tool in the Levels dialog. This sets the brightest tones to 100 per cent white. Note how the image brightens and the histogram looks healthier.

2

The first thing you’ll notice is that the image seems to be lacking in contrast. Elements does have some basic colour management settings, so let’s make sure it’s set up. We’ll assume the destination is for print (because of the size of the image), so go to Colour Settings in the Photoshop Elements menu and enable Full Colour Management.

5

Now to the shadows, which are too dense. Notice that there’s little detail in the hair because the contrast in the shadows is way too dark. Duplicate the background layer and move it above the Levels layer. Now apply The Enhance>Quick Fix feature and use the Brightness>Fill Flash section to brighten up the hair. We used a value of about 16.

8

Now we can retouch some of the blemishes. Make a merged copy of the image by selecting all, then typing Command+Shift+C followed by Command+P to paste it as a new layer. Using the Clone tool and a small, soft brush, we can clone out some of the blemishes such as the mark on her lip and the slight red marks below it.

FINAL STEP

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inally, we clone out the lines on the subject’s forehead. Removing them completely can look fake, so instead we clone them out on a duplicate layer. By reducing the opacity of the duplicate to about 75 per cent, we can bring back the wrinkles slightly so that it looks natural.

3

The image seems to have more contrast now, as Elements is simulating how it will appear when printed. It’s darker, but still not great. Add a Levels Adjustment layer from the popup menu at the bottom of the Layers palette. The histogram shows that there aren’t many bright pixels (gap to the right of graph).

6

Don’t worry about the skin; look at the hair. Click OK to apply the changes to the layer. Change the Layer mode to Screen and reduce the opacity of the layer to about 50 per cent. The hair now has detail.

Computer Arts_April 2004

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PRODUCE A WEBSITE For those on a tight budget, there are cheap applications available that will enable you to produce complex Flash animations very simply – without hurting your bank account SOFTWARE USED Æ PROGRAM Flix Pro COMPANY Wildform PRICE $149 (£78) WEBSITE www.wildform.com PHONE +1 310 396 2025 PLATFORM PC/Mac

Æ PROGRAM Wild FX Pro COMPANY Wildform PRICE $99 (£52) WEBSITE www.wildform.com PHONE +1 310 396 2025 PLATFORM PC/Mac

Æ PROGRAM WebDesign COMPANY Rage Software PRICE £16.74 WEBSITE www.ragesw.com PHONE +1 402 323 6692 PLATFORM Mac

This tutorial takes a look at simple-touse and cheap software that enables you to convert MOV files into the more common SWF Web format. SWF is the file format used by Macromedia Flash to deliver graphics, animation and sound over the Web, and it’s viewable by almost 95 per cent of people who have access to the Internet. Flash video works without a streaming server, plays in all browsers and streams through firewalls. For those on a tight budget, who can’t afford Macromedia Flash, there are two excellent pieces of software developed by Wildform. Flix Pro enables you to convert MOV files, including sound, to SWF format in a

few simple steps. There’s also FX Pro, which enables you to animate text via a simple-to-use interface using over 400 built-in Flash text effects. To complete the tutorial, we’ll build a simple Web page to embed these Flash movies into, and we’ll add an email link to your page. For this, we’ll use Rage Software’s HTML editor, WebDesign.

ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE

INFO Tutorial by Ryan Shelton. Originally from Zimbabwe, Ryan now lives and works in London. He is co-founder of the new media organisation, BD4D. Head to www.BD4D.com

INDUSTRY-STANDARD SOFTWARE

Five low-cost Web design apps

Five professional alternatives

PROGRAM SWiSH COMPANY SWiSHzone PRICE £11-£55 WEBSITE www.swishzone.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC INFO SWiSHzone.com has produced various flavours of its SWiSHFlash authoring package to

PROGRAM Flash MX 2004 COMPANY Macromedia PRICE £419 WEBSITE www.macromedia.co.uk PHONE 01344 458 600 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO The Flash Player is the industry standard for rich media content on the World Wide

help you create movies based on Macromedia’s SWF format. From text animations to fully interactive Flash animations, this range of tools won’t blow the budget.

Web, and Macromedia has worked hard to continually upgrade Flash with useful features. Flash MX 2004 enables designers and developers to integrate their video, text, audio and graphics into highly interactive content.

PROGRAM KoolMoves COMPANY KoolMoves PRICE $39 (£20) WEBSITE www.koolmoves.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC INFO An easy-to-use, affordable Flash authoring tool designed by a professional animator.

KoolMoves enables you to easily create animated text effects, Websites and multimedia slide presentations, based on the SWF format. A plethora of templates makes creating your content simple and easy, so no need for any programming experience.

PROGRAM Dreamweaver MX 2004 COMPANY Macromedia PRICE £339 WEBSITE www.macromedia.co.uk PHONE 01344 458 600 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Dreamweaver MX 2004 is Macromedia’s well-established WYSIWYG HTML editor,

enabling you to build professional Websites and apps. It provides a powerful combination of visual layout tools, application development features and code-editing support.

PROGRAM PageSpinner COMPANY Optima System PRICE $29.95 (£16) WEBSITE www.optima-system.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM Mac INFO Supporting HTML 3.2, HTML 4, XHTML, PHP, plus additional Netscape Navigator and

PROGRAM Fireworks MX 2004 COMPANY Macromedia PRICE £249 WEBSITE www.macromedia.co.uk PHONE 01344 458 600 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO With Fireworks MX 2004, you can design, optimise and integrate Web graphics. This

Internet Explorer extensions and a built-in JavaScript generator, PageSpinner gives you quick access to often-used formatting.

tool is designed to integrate with Macromedia’s WYSIWYG HTML product Dreamweaver MX 2004 to make your life easier.

PROGRAM Toon Boom Studio Express COMPANY Toon Boom Technologies PRICE $144 (£76) WEBSITE www.toonboomstudio.com PHONE +1 514 278 8666 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO With import support for all major sound formats, powerful drawing tools, 3D scene-

PROGRAM GoLive CS COMPANY Adobe PRICE £335 WEBSITE www.adobe.co.uk PHONE 020 8606 4000 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Much like Macromedia’s Dreamweaver MX 2004, Adobe’s GoLive is also a WYSIWYG

planning and lip-sync tools, Toon Boom Studio Express provides an innovative animation solution for producing SWF-based animations.

HTML editor. First developed as a Mac-only application, it’s now arguably the best editor on the market according to its somewhat fanatical users.

PROGRAM FuturePaint COMPANY Staz Software PRICE Free WEBSITE www.stazsoftware.com/futurepaint PHONE +1 228 255 7085 PLATFORM Mac INFO A free bitmap editor for the Mac OS, FuturePaint will give you a range of tools that are

PROGRAM Swift 3D COMPANY Electric Rain PRICE $169 (£89) WEBSITE www.swift3d.com PHONE +1 888 613 1500 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Swift 3D is the industry-leading 3D Flash tool. It’s a standalone application that enables

similar to those in Photoshop. From graduated fills and Paint brush options to Magic Wand, Rubber Stamp and Lighten/Darken, try out the features for free.

you to quickly create 3D animations, without having to learn a complicated 3D package.

26 Computer Arts_April 2004

Design on a budget

^

WEB DESIGN ON A BUDGET Use Flix Pro, Wild FX Pro and WebDesign to create superb results

INSIGHT VECTOR VIDEO Wild Flix Pro can convert standard video files into vector animations using its built-in Trace function. Standard video is made up of bitmap images, whereas vectorised video is produced using mathematical points. The advantage of using vectorised video is that you are able to scale your video to any size, without the distortion you’d get from standard video made up of bitmap images.

TEXT EFFECTS Using one of Wild FX Pro’s built-in Custom effects, you are able to save your own customised text effects easily enough. From the Custom tab, simply alter the Effect Speed, Scale Factor, Start X and Y positions, and the Colour of built-in effects, then save them as your own.

Open Flix Pro and select your input movie. You’ll need a MOV file to convert to a SWF file. Click the input Browse button and select your source MOV file, then choose a preset to encode your MOV file into a SWF. 300K Broadband Med Video is probably the best setting to go with, as it’s a good balance between high and low quality.

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To centre your animated type, check the Align To Output box and select Centre from the H and V Align options. Next, ensure this intro movie will be the same size as your main movie: click on the Video tab and check the Use These Dimensions dropdown at 320x240. Click on the SWF tab. To make your main movie play after the intro has finished, select the On click checkbox and find your main movie. Click back on the Main tab and Export your movie.

Enter heights for each of the five rows in the table: select the first tag and, in the Tag Attributes palette, enter a height of 20. Do the same for the third to fifth tags. The second tag is the cell for the SWF movie, so its height should be the same at 240. Embed the SWF: drag the Embed icon from the Items palette and place it before the second tag and after “”. A dialog box asks you to locate your SWF. Enter its width and height and select Middle from the Align dropdown. Preview now and you’ll see the movie play in the HTML page.

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Now click on the Video tab and select an average image quality between 1 and 100 (we chose 75). Check the Use Source Dimensions box to set the output video dimensions. Stick with the default settings for now. Click on the File tab and then click Encode to convert your MOV to a SWF.

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You’re now ready to build your very own Web page. Open up WebDesign and, in the New HTML File dialog, input the title of your Web page and your name in the Author field. You can edit the colours of your text and set the background colour for your page using the Body Tag dialog.

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Now we’ll create a simple intro movie to your main movie file. Open Wild FX Pro and, in the text field, type in the copy you want to be shown in the title sequence. We’ve used ‘Two Bob Partners’ and added the words ‘click to play’ below. Now choose a typeface for your copy from the Font menu, then a size from the Size menu. Check the Export SWF box and the Browse button to choose where to save your movie, then name it (without any spaces). Test the effects by clicking on their names in the list and selecting Preview>Preview SWF from the menu.

Next, we’ll add a contact email address below the SWF. From the Items palette, drag the Plugin: Email Link icon into your code and place it before the fourth tag, after the “” comment. In the dialog box that appears, enter your email address and a subject line. Previewing the page, your whole email address, including the “mailto” command, is shown. Change this by editing the text in your code to something like “Contact Us”, setting its font and size by choosing Style>Font.

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FINAL STEP

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inally, we’ll centre the email link and table. Highlight the “Contact Us” copy in your code and select Align>Centre from the Style menu. To centre the table, highlight “TABLE” in your code and choose Centre from the Tag Attributes palette. You can now preview your page in your browser of choice. Remember, you will need to add the .html suffix to your file name for it to be viewed on the Web.

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Hit Save As from the File menu. Now we’ll make a table for your SWF movie to sit in. It’ll be good for your page to have a contact button, so our table will consist of one column and five rows. From the Items palette, drag the table icon into your code. Place it under the comment within the code that says “”. In the dialog that appears, enter a width and height of 320x320, so the table is the same width as the movie. Click on Insert.

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CREATE A 3D ILLUSTRATION Leading design agency Futurefarmers discovers that Carrara Studio 3 is an ideal low-budget tool for quickly rendering stylised models SOFTWARE USED Æ PROGRAM Carrara Studio 3/Carrara 3D Basics COMPANY Eovia PRICE £449/£99 WEBSITE www.eovia.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC/Mac

Carrara Studio 3 is a fine piece of software for quick and simple 3D modelling and animation for the Web. Its interface is intuitive and it's easy to learn. In this tutorial, we follow Futurefarmers’ Amy Franceschini as she creates a 3D illustration, introducing you to the interface and colour menus, and outlining how to render the file for further work in an image-editing program. If your budget is too tight for Carrara Studio 3, use Carrara 3D Basics – a £99 cut-down version of the app from Eovia with plenty of functionality. Futurefarmers also uses Infini-D – an application that evolved into Carrara Studio and cost the

company $45 secondhand. You can find out more about this, and Futurefarmers, on page 34. Before we get started, it’s worth noting that the limitations of Carrara and other low-end 3D software can be an advantage to those starting out. The default colours are always metallic, and there isn’t a grand suite of rendering settings – actually quite useful for beginners, as the rendering menus in high-end software can be quite daunting. You may find Carrara’s naming conventions and output file formats different to other applications you’ve used, so we'll also cover file formats and render settings particular to Carrara.

INFO Amy Franceschini is the founder of the artists/design collective Futurefarmers – profiled in full on page 34. She also teaches New Media courses at the San Francisco Art Institute and Stanford University. Email [email protected], or go to www.futurefarmers.com.

ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE

INDUSTRY-STANDARD SOFTWARE

Five low-cost 3D graphics tools

Five professional alternatives

PROGRAM 3D Toolkit 2.5 COMPANY dvGarage PRICE $99 (£53) WEBSITE www.dvgarage.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Astoundingly good value for money: a full version of Electric Image Universe (version 5), 28

PROGRAM 3ds max 6 COMPANY Discreet PRICE Around £2700 WEBSITE www.discreet.com PHONE 01252 456 669 PLATFORM PC INFO One of the old guard, 3ds max is well-established, well-loved and supported by a huge

tutorials, four hours of QuickTime training, and more, from the folks at dvGarage. EI Universe is a more than competent package for home use, and the extra stuff makes this ideal for a first-timer.

range of plug-ins, both free and commercial. It’s rather expensive for its feature-set, but does offer an enormous amount of versatility given some patience.

PROGRAM trueSpace 6.6 COMPANY Caligari PRICE $595 (£320) WEBSITE www.caligari.com PHONE +1 650 390 9600 PLATFORM PC INFO Quietly chugging along in its own way for around ten years now, trueSpace has a relatively

PROGRAM LightWave 3D 7.5 COMPANY NewTek PRICE 1874 euros (£1252) WEBSITE www.newtek-europe.com PHONE +33 557 262 262 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Max’s erstwhile rival and equally adored by its legions of followers, who provide plenty

small but ardent band of enthusiasts. It also boasts a surprisingly full feature-set, with polyhedra, NURBS, sub-division surfaces, particles and more catered for. The rather non-standard interface delights as many people as it bemuses.

of resources on the Web. With an excellent renderer and plenty of plug-ins, it’s great for TV and film work; but the quirky, non-standard interface can be offputting for newcomers.

PROGRAM 3Dplus/3Dpro COMPANY Strata PRICE $50/$695 (£27/£373) WEBSITE www.strata.com PHONE +1 435 628 5218 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Two similar packages, with 3Dplus serving as an entry-level version and 3Dpro including

more high-end features as standard. Both have a fine heritage, particularly on the Mac, and include a robust feature-set aimed mainly at design, including Web output. Fans swear by the packages’ simple interface, stability and good range of tools. PROGRAM Animation: Master 2004 COMPANY Hash PRICE $299 (£160) WEBSITE www.hash.com PHONE +1 360 750 0042 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Sometimes referred to by its almost religious admirers as the best-kept secret in 3D,

Animation: Master truly does provide bang for your buck. Features such as IK, lip-synching and patch modelling make it ideal for character animation, but there are many, many more wrapped up in its elegant interface. PROGRAM PiXELS 3D 5 COMPANY Pixels Digital PRICE $399 (£214) WEBSITE www.pixels.net PHONE +1 858 672 2634 PLATFORM Mac INFO One of the very few 3D packages available solely on the Mac, PiXELS is a real little

barnstormer. The latest version features such advanced tools as bipeds and quadrapeds, dynamic fluid simulation and volumetric lighting, making this ambitious app even better value for money.

28 Computer Arts_April 2004

PROGRAM Maya 5 COMPANY Alias PRICE From £1702 WEBSITE www.alias.com PHONE 01494 441 273 PLATFORM PC/Mac/Linux INFO A heavy-hitter in the professional animation business, Maya is available in two versions:

Complete and Unlimited (featuring high-end additions such as cloth, fur and fluid dynamics for £5756). This is certainly not the easiest package to learn, even for experienced dabblers, but it’s probably the most versatile in the long run, especially for more technically-minded folk. PROGRAM Softimage|XSI 3.5 COMPANY Softimage PRICE £4270 WEBSITE www.softimage.com PHONE 01753 655 999 PLATFORM PC/Linux INFO XSI stands in direct competition with Maya – not surprising, given its impressive list

of features and support for extremely high-end animation. Used largely for film effects and game work, Softimage|XSI is definitely not for the faint-hearted – and many of its capabilities will be lost on more casual users. PROGRAM Cinema 4D 8.5 COMPANY Maxon PRICE £499 WEBSITE www.maxon.net PHONE 01525 718 181 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Easy to use, robust and with a screamingly fast renderer, C4D strikes a good balance

between usability and a strong features list. However the price can be somewhat deceptive, as the core package doesn’t really include many of the features found as standard in other high-end apps, which must be bought separately as modules.

Design on a budget

^

RENDERING IN CARRARA Importing a model, choosing a material and rendering out your model is easy in Carrara Studio 3

INSIGHT MANY OPTIONS The Objects menu (under the main menu) in Assemble mode is a superb feature in Carrara, and especially helpful when you’re creating complex models and need to see all the different parts. It gives you immediate access to a polygon, without having to select the polygon on the main model; sometimes you accidentally end up selecting a bunch of grouped polygons instead.

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For this tutorial, Amy Franceschini imported an old Infini-D model into Carrara, but you could import a DXF, OBJ, 3DS file or other formats. By default, XZ and YZ grids are visible on screen. If you find this annoying, turn them off in the right Display Grid menu (see the arrows on the screenshot above).

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You will notice that there are several menus stacked in this window. Carrara keeps track of all the colours you use by keeping a history of your colouring. Bear in mind that these stacked colour menus only apply to the specific polygon they were created for. However, once you are in the Texture Screen area, you can adjust other polygons without having to toggle to the Assemble environment.

To render your model once all the settings are complete, go to the Windows menu at the top of the screen and select Render, or hit Command+5 (on the Mac). This will bring you into the final Rendering environment. You’re now presented with a list of files to be rendered – in this case we only have one. Select the document and hit Render.

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To get used to the tools, try every tool in the menu; this is the way Franceschini always approaches a new piece of software. The Dolly tool in the left Tool menu gives you most control of the Carrara environment. When you first import a file, try out the three options of this tool: Dolly, Pan or Bank. In the Render environment, there are three main menus: Rendering, Output and Progress/Statistics. The first two are the most important. The Rendering menu enables you to adjust the Raytracing, Anti-Aliasing and the usual output settings. The Output menu offers file format options, alpha channel output and camera angles.

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Select the polygon you want to adjust. This will automatically take you to the Texture environment which offers many editing options. If you simply hit the Edit button when in General Adjustments, a new menu will appear with a list of settings to play with. Franceschini usually adjusts Highlight, Colour and Shininess to produce toy-like surfaces in her characters. Once you hit the Colour setting, a Colour Picker menu will pop up for adjusting colour.

The only file format in Carrara that offers alpha channel output is TIFF. In order to output a file with an alpha channel, you must check both Render Alpha Channel and Use Premultiplied Alpha. (see the arrows, left). Once you have selected the TIFF format, the G-Buffers menu offers many options (not available to other file formats). To create an alpha channel around the complete model, tick Object Index and Normal Vector.

Unlike most other 3D applications, Carrara renders the file within the program, so you have to save it after the render. Other software saves the file to disc once you hit Render.

FINAL STEP

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astly, we'll import the file into Photoshop (you could also use Photoshop Elements). Within Photoshop, open your rendered Carrara TIFF. Load the alpha channel by going to Select Menu, Load Selection. This loads a selection of your entire model. At this point, you can copy your model and paste it into any environment with smooth edges.

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DESIGN A FONT Turn your designs into a fully-functioning typeface using ScanFont and TypeTool – both free on the CD SOFTWARE USED Æ PROGRAM ScanFont COMPANY Pyrus PRICE $199 for PC; $99 for Mac WEBSITE www.fontlab.com PHONE +1 509 272 3260 PLATFORM PC/Mac

Æ PROGRAM TypeTool COMPANY Pyrus PRICE $99 WEBSITE www.fontlab.com PHONE +1 509 272 3260 PLATFORM PC/Mac

There are many low-cost – even free – tools available for font design, but most of these fall under the category of font management or font previewing software – there is very little for the budding font editor or typeface designer. To make matters worse, designing a font can be a long, hard process, and learning the industry-standard applications, such as FontLab, can be daunting at first. Fortunately, though, the maker of FontLab has developed a pair of applications that can be used in tandem to create a fully-fledged typeface in under an hour. ScanFont works with your scanner when you import a design, isolate and name each glyph and import them into TypeTool; from here, the characters can be exported as a typeface. The

only thing this typographical tag team won’t do is design the font for you! You still have to use an old-fashioned paper and pen to do that. If you’d rather do your scanning and correcting in Photoshop, ScanFont will happily open TIFFs. This means that you can also include company logos, signatures, line art or anything else that catches your fancy and incorporate them into a typeface. The possibilities are endless. In the tutorial, a page scanned from an ancient type specimen book has been used to capture the feel of oldfashioned hot metal type. For more on copyright and typefaces, see www.typeright.org.

INFO Tutorial by Jason Arber, co-founder of online design portal Pixelsurgeon.com. Arber works as a designer, typographer, illustrator and writer; find out more at www.pixelsurgeon.com/sites/ arbernaut, or drop him a line on [email protected].

ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE

INDUSTRY-STANDARD SOFTWARE

Two more low-cost typographic apps

Professional font-design tools

PROGRAM Font Creator COMPANY High Logic PRICE $50 (£27) WEBSITE www.high-logic.com PHONE Buy online PLATFORM PC INFO A popular choice for the hobbyist font designer, Font

PROGRAM Fontographer COMPANY Macromedia PRICE £299 WEBSITE www.macromedia.co.uk PHONE 01344 458 600 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO Although it hasn’t been updated for almost a decade, this application remains the

Creator is designed to turn hand-drawn sketches into typefaces and to modify existing fonts to include signatures and logos. It’s for the PC and it only supports the TrueType format, but you do get a lot of professional functionality. PROGRAM SigMaker COMPANY Pyrus PRICE $29.95 (£16) WEBSITE www.fontlab.com PHONE +1 509 272 3260 PLATFORM PC INFO SigMaker is a quick and cheap way to add scanned

artwork, such as signatures or sketches, to an existing typeface. Easy to use with a simple interface, modified fonts can be created in a matter of minutes.

gold standard for popular font creation, packing an impressive amount of power into its simple interface. It doesn’t work in the latest PC and Mac operating systems, though, and new font formats such as OpenType are currently beyond its scope. PROGRAM FontLab COMPANY Pyrus PRICE $549 (£295) WEBSITE www.fontlab.com PHONE +1 509 272 3260 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO FontLab from Pyrus has stolen Fontographer’s crown as the font editor of choice,

despite an idiosyncratic interface, for two reasons: it works flawlessly on modern operating systems and every conceivable font attribute is catered for. Despite some shortcomings, this application can only get better. PROGRAM FontMaster COMPANY Dutch Type Library PRICE 1491 euros (£1006) WEBSITE www.fontmaster.nl PHONE +31 73614 9596 PLATFORM PC/Mac INFO DTL FontMaster isn’t so much a single application as a series of modules designed to

work with each other – a series of utilities for high-end font production. These do everything from trace artwork, adjust curves and produce professional typefaces of the highest quality.

30 Computer Arts_April 2004

Design on a budget

^

TYPOGRAPHY ON A BUDGET Use ScanFont and TypeTool to create your own exciting font designs

INSIGHT TREAD CAREFULLY ScanFont can often introduce too many control points to the glyph curves. Careful use of the Eraser and Pencil Tools in the Glyph Editing window (Window>Glyph) can reduce the number of points, which also reduces the complexity, file size and likelihood of printing problems.

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Once you’re satisfied that all the characters have been named, it’s time to import them into TypeTool. ScanFont handles the tracing and importing with a single command: Place into Font (Operation>Place Into Font), which will also open TypeTool if you don’t already have it open.

EXTRA CONTROL Greater control over the look of your glyphs can be achieved by adjusting the Tool preferences (Tools>Preferences), and in particular the Trace preferences. Tolerances and angle straightening can all be adjusted easily enough, so experiment to find the right settings for you.

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ScanFont enables you to scan images using TWAIN-compliant scanners (File>Acquire…), but it will also open up TIFF images (File>Open…). Ensure that your image is a black and white bitmap, as this version of ScanFont doesn’t react too kindly to greyscale or colour images.

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ScanFont has some rudimentary touch-up tools to help clean up your scan. An Eraser tool will remove unwanted noise, characters and black marks, while the Pencil and Brush tools will fill dust marks on your scanned glyphs with black.

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Because the characters have already been named, they appear in the right place in TypeTool’s main grid structure. Unnamed glyphs appear at the end of the grid, but these can be dragged to their correct locations – even groups of sequential characters.

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In instances where two or more shapes need to be joined, such as a lower case i or j, or the two parts of a colon or question mark, multiple shapes can be selected by holding down Shift and clicking on each part in turn, then invoking the Merge command (Operation>Merge) to create a single shape.

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Previewing the font Metrics even at this stage shows that just about all of the work has been done (Window>Metrics).To check kerning, type in characters or use the preset character combinations from the dropdown menu. Double-click on a character to adjust its sidebearings.

FINAL STEP

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he final step is to save your creation as a font. To do this, choose Build Suitcase… from the menu (File>Build Suitcase…). From here, you can give your font suitcase a name and save the font as a Type 1 PostScript or TrueType typeface. Click OK and your font is ready to be used.

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ScanFont has a slightly convoluted method of naming each shape by using the Names Template (Operation>Assign Names). Glyphs are named from left to right in sequence. This works fine for alphanumeric characters; other characters must be named using the slash character, such as /plus/ for +.

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If you’re happy that your scan is clean and the glyphs are sharp and clearly defined, the next stage is to isolate each character. ScanFont does this with the Separate Shapes command (Operation>Separate Shapes), which attempts to define each glyph and sit them on a baseline.

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Q&A

PHOTOSHOP

SHORTCUTS Preparing artwork for print is usually the domain of dedicated layout programs like InDesign or Illustrator, but Photoshop can offer a wealth of creative advantages over both these applications – especially for the production of small-scale projects

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raditionally speaking, Photoshop hasn’t been thought of as an artworking tool in the design industry, mainly because of the previously limited capabilities of the Text tool. But ever since version 7 of Photoshop the Text tool has undergone a complete overhaul, making it easier to use and more dynamic. One real advantage of using Photoshop to overlay text onto graphics is that you can apply styles and effects to the text that would normally be impossible to produce in another layout program. Most design work is usually output from a layout program such as InDesign or QuarkXPress, and in some cases from FreeHand or Illustrator, depending on the artwork requirements. With these programs you would normally import an image into a document and work with a low-res preview file. But when a graphic is placed into a Photoshop document, you can view the image at high resolution with the assurance that the colour will print accurately from the file. Another benefit is any amendments that need to be carried out, whether they are text or graphics, can be done by opening just the one file. With other advances in the functionality of Photoshop’s workflow options, the tool has proved itself to be a more useful and creative artworking alternative. Some of the main bonuses of working in Photoshop are the ease and versatility of using layers, the complete control over colour output and the ability to save out in many different file formats. Creating the pages for a whole magazine using Photoshop as the main layout program would not be practical. However, it gives you more freedom to produce creative typography and stylised graphics with a single page design, such as the cover of a magazine or an advert. For regular designs you can set up templates with guide rules and trim marks that are accurate and print-ready. You can

32 Computer Arts_April 2004

also create sets of actions for often-used commands, like styling up text, to help semi-automate the process. Another benefit is being able to import text from other programs, directly into text boxes that will take on a preset text style automatically. Once your design is ready, it can be saved in whatever format is suitable for the destination of the file. To begin with, you can save the document as a low-res JPEG to send to a client for approval. Then you can either choose to save as a PDF, which will encapsulate the text into the file

and give superior print quality; or you can save as a TIFF or JPEG, depending on the size of the file and the ultimate quality desired in print. For an advert, the best option would be to save the file as a PDF to prevent the text from losing its crisp edge. But if the advert is placed into an application that doesn’t support PDFs, a TIFF would be the next best thing. Make sure you don’t overcompress a JPEG file, as the file may be compressed again before printing. INFO Expertise supplied by Frank Bartucca, [email protected]

SETTING UP AN ARTWORK FILE

YOU CAN SET UP TEMPLATES WITH GUIDE RULES AND TRIM MARKS THAT ARE PRINT-READY, AND CREATE SETS OF ACTIONS FOR COMMANDS…

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The first thing to do is set up the document in the New dialog box. Select the Custom option from the Preset Sizes pop-up menu, then type in the width and height. It’s a good idea to work in millimetres if you can. Remember to include any bleed if necessary in the overall document size.

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Next, drag from the top-left corner of the rulers to the point where the guides intersect each other to adjust the zero point. You’ll see that the new position gives you an accurate reading from the top-left corner of the page without bleed.

When your document is open, press Ctrl/Command+R to bring up the rulers to drag in your guide lines. If you have included bleed, then allow for this by setting guide lines to the right bleed width all around.

Now set up guide lines for the live text area, then any further guides you may need, such as a centre line or a grid structure that follows a magazine page layout. Once the document is set up, save it as a PSD file to use as a template.

34 Computer Arts_April 2004

Profile

PROFILE

FUTUREFARMERS I like to oscillate between print, Web and physical spaces, just because I have a short attention span,” says Futurefarmers’ Amy Franceschini. “I don’t get sick of one medium if I’m jumping between them. We were doing physical spaces and exhibition spaces for a year, and then I went back to Web design and it was like, ‘Oh, Web design is so EASY!’”

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my Franceschini and the rest of Futurefarmers are well-used to switching between various media. If they’re not designing Web material for Adobe, Lucasfilm, Levi’s, the New York Times or NASA, they’ll be designing exhibition spaces for both commercial and purely artistic work. Or building online communities. Or giving lectures. Or receiving shedloads of awards. It’s an eclectic life for a woman who, in her words, “grew up amid the fields and orchards of California’s San Joaquin Valley.” Now ensconced in San Francisco with other core members of Futurefarmers, founder and partner Amy Franceschini works with Web, print, physical design and communities – both real and virtual. Rather quietly spoken and

immaculately articulate, she nevertheless has a slight Valley twang, interspersing her thoughts with plenty of “like, I was like” and having a slight rising inflection at the end of sentences. It’s a pleasing combination of high art and good old -fashioned humanity.

SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR Although her father was an industrial designer, Franceschini had no real yen to become one herself during her younger years. “I started out studying art as photography, and after I graduated from undergraduate school, I had an internship at a magazine called PhotoMetro,” she says. “My mentor at that time and the Editor of the magazine, Henry Brimmer,

Futurefarmers’ 3D character designs for Toys R Us, designed with the help of Goodby Silverstein and Erik Natzke.

Computer Arts_April 2004

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(Above and right) “Communiculture was an online community experiment and collaboration between several designers,” explains Amy Franceschini. “The space was developed to promote dialog between specialists, provide open resource libraries, knowledge and expertise. It evolved out of a desire to get to know Futurefarmers’ users. Instead of checking stats for numbers, we wanted to visualise the Futurefarmers’ audience as a growing forest.”

would always say, ‘You’re an artist, you’re an artist, you’ll never be a photographer.’ Somehow that kind of challenged me…” Thus she enrolled at the California College of Arts and Crafts to study design for a year. “I already had all these ideas, I just needed a way to manifest them. So I started working at a service bureau, which did Iris prints, and said ‘I’ll sleep on your floor if you teach me about this stuff.’ The guy said, ‘Okay, we’ll try you for a month,’ and he basically taught me everything, inside and out, about hardware and software.” While struggling with the early Web, Franceschini was approached by Olivier Laude, Creative Director of what was to become Atlas Magazine – an exquisite online mix of news, editorial, photography, guest columnists. Not that she was aware of any of this at the time: “At that point I didn’t even know what email was, let alone a Website. So he was saying, ‘I want this and this,’ and I’d say, ‘Yeah, cool,’ all the time thinking he wanted to do a magazine CALLED Online… “Atlas’ programmer, Michael Macrone, introduced me to what was going on. That was 1994. So I did Atlas and he worked really closely

people currently work there full-time – although not necessarily in the same country. Sascha Merg lives in Germany, while Sebastian Sztafij is a resident of Denmark. Her main design partner, though, is Josh On, a Kiwi who joined the farmers from the Royal College of Art in London as part of its Artist in Residence program. This provides a partiallysponsored residency for young artists to develop their work while at FF. During his own residency, Josh On was saddled with such piffling, minor stuff as work on Lucasfilms’ Star Wars Episode I projects, developing an interactive display device for its Website. Unsurprisingly, he stayed on after this opportunity, and now lives in San Francisco. “I find three people is a good size,” says Franceschini. “About three years ago, right during the boom, we had the opportunity to grow. We were going in that direction and we sat down to decide if we really wanted to be managers or be creative. So we decided to stay small and hire people if we needed them – just do really quality work and not get huge.” So would you turn away work if you don’t have time to do it justice, or you’re just not

WHILE STRUGGLING WITH THE EARLY WEB, FRANCESCHINI WAS APPROACHED BY OLIVER LAUDE, SOON-TOBE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF ATLAS MAGAZINE: “I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT EMAIL WAS, LET ALONE A WEBSITE. SO I WAS SAYING, ‘YEAH, COOL,’ ALL THE TIME, THINKING HE WANTED TO DO A MAGAZINE CALLED ONLINE…”

(Above) Poster designs and illos for the Mobile Backpack Theatre Project. This is currently on exhibit at the CooperHewitt National Design Museum, New York City.

with me to teach me how to design for the Web. That triggered a whole wave of stuff for me.” Franceschini’s ambitions of becoming a photojournalist soon fell by the wayside, as Atlas received a lot of positive attention and she decided to form Futurefarmers. “We did NEC’s international Website and then the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art accepted Atlas as the first site in their permanent collection. Then I became more comfortable with being a designer.”

TALKING POLITICS As Franceschini is keen to emphasise, Futurefarmers is more than just herself. Four

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interested? “We definitely do. We recommend other people that we know that could work on it. But with most jobs, we’ve been kinda lucky.” However, there can be friction, even if unintended. Work your way through the

Profile

REAPING THE HARVEST GET YOURSELF OVER TO THE FUTUREFARMERS STORE

The cover for Futurefarmers’ Harvest, a 170-page book published by IDN in 2002 and entirely designed by Amy Franceschini. Copies are still available from Futurefarmers’ online shop at www.futurefarmers.com.

elegant Futurefarmers Website, a mixture of almost twee imagery and hard-edged prose, and you can’t help but notice a political agenda. Indeed, both Futurefarmers’ personal and commercial work is tinged with the desire to say something and get people acting, particularly over environmental issues. Clicking an innocent-looking doll-like figure, for instance, takes you to a Flash game of Pinga. Although originally created for the AfterNeen exhibition in Utrecht, and partly an exercise in collaboration, it’s also a virulently anti-GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) statement. Gameplay involves catching seeds before they can land in a GMO field, redirecting moles and butterflies, and other good deeds. It’s ostensibly naïve, with a soothing trance-like soundtrack, but interspersed with the levels are not-so-subtle statements about which foods to boycott, related information links, and so on. Unfortunately from Futurefarmers’ point of view, many of the large clients that approach them have considerable financial interest in

these very areas. “We tend to do projects that are about environmental or political issues, and a lot of the time the clients that come to us are the ones we’re critiquing in our work,” laughs Franceschini. “We have to decide how to deal with that. A lot of clients say they want us to critique something, environmentally or politically, and then they find we can’t because they might be funded by that company. We have to negotiate our way through those sorts of situations. It’s quite disheartening, because they come to us with these political aims and discover they can’t express them.” Although not directly affiliated with Futurefarmers, Josh On’s They Rule (www.theyrule.net) is another hard-nosed political tool. It’s a Website that enables you to create maps of the interlocking directories of

A personal project that Amy Franceschini found particularly challenging was the Futurefarmers book, Harvest. “It was 170 pages long and I designed each page,” she says. “Josh On and I wrote all the text.” She also did the photography and just about everything else. “We did have a deadline, which was good because our publisher was, like, ‘We need it now!’ But you’re looking at a blank slate every time you start a new page – and I had never designed a book before.” Harvest, together with CD-ROMs and a toy called Pinga, is one of several products available from the Futurefarmers store (www.futurefarmers.com). It grew largely by accident. “We just started making things. We wanted to make a CD-ROM, that was our first thing. We were thinking we could possibly make money. The first project, Stimuli, was something I wanted to do to collaborate with people I hadn’t worked with before. So there were five of us on that project.” However, as many other designers have discovered, an online store selling your own merchandise is hardly a steady source of income. “We didn’t necessarily think we were going to sell the CD, but we had to print them, so if you do five, you may as well do a thousand. So we put them online… we haven’t sold very many. Then we developed the store further when we published the book. It’s really not been a profitable thing at all, but it gives a nice presence.”

The stylish introduction to Harvest, designed by Amy Franceschini.

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“To find out more about some of the remaining varieties of natural seeds, we created two interactive playscapes – a garden (left) and a game (above) – where you can try your hand at saving seeds and post your thoughts on the subject,” explains Amy Franceschini.

the top 100 companies in the US. The idea is that users add their own data on who sits on which board, which companies have interests in government, and essentially to show how the ‘ruling elite’ of corporate America have huge influence in every sphere. These political and environmental ideas are extremely important to Franceschini. “We have these tools to communicate with and I’d much rather try to do something positive and inform people rather than making purely aesthetic artwork.” she says. “On the other hand, I do love making beautiful environments, so I think

interested in interactive tools for online communities. “We just did a project for PBS and we’re doing one for Greenpeace to teach teenagers how to create a solar energy space. I think we have experience in that at this point.” After meeting with the clients and getting an idea of just what they need, FF brainstorms for a week – “Or however much time we have,” adds Franceschini – and come up with a list of dream ideas. “We go back to the client with those and they usually want them all. We have these different working constellations, depending on whether they want Flash or

“I’M INSPIRED BY SIMON STARLING BECAUSE HE’S DOING SCULPTURE, BUT IT RUNS PARALLEL TO THE SYSTEM ON THE INTERNET. IT’S LIKE INFORMATION VISUALISATION ON THE INTERNET, BUT DOING IT SCULPTURALLY. I FIND IT INTERESTING TO LOOK AT ART FROM THAT PERSPECTIVE”

Futurefarmers’ interactive garden site provides plenty of extra information on the natural seeds issue…

they complement each other. Also, as a business, it’s hard to say that’s our policy. We’d love to say that, but we’d be totally broke.”

INFINI-D AND BEYOND The process of developing a Website or user environment for a particular client varies dramatically. Amy Franceschini herself is

Director, and whether people are in the office and so on. Our process is really open. We usually toss files around to each other a lot, so it’s very much a collaboration.” Josh On handles most of the Flash programming, while others write databases and take care of the back-end stuff. Franceschini herself uses a mixture of Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Director, depending on the project – plus her unintended secret weapon… “For illustration, I still use this little program called Infini-D. It’s the first 3D program I learned how to use and I’ve stuck with it.” “It’s not a great animation program, but because of its limitations, it has its own style,”

An in-house experiment: a game where you must save natural crops from genetically modified pollen.

Futurefarmer’s Josh On devised this intriguing anti-war game. Play it for yourself at www.antiwargame.org.

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Futurefarmers’ interactive Toys R Us 3D character design, with the help of Goodby Silverstein and Erik Natzke.

Profile

Holding Patterns was an Internetbased kinetic sculpture made for Bay Area Now II at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, San Francisco.

THE FUTUREFARMERS Who are the Futurefarmers? AMY FRANCESCHINI Founder/Partner From California, USA SASCHA MERG Partner/Director/Programmer/Collaborator From Hamburg JOSH ON Partner/Flash Programmer/Collaborator From New Zealand, but lives in San Francisco MICHAEL SWAINE Collaborator/Fabricator From New York City, but lives in San Francisco SEBASTIAN SZTAFIJ Collaborator/Inventor From Poland, but lives in Copenhagen

continues Franceschini. “When you animate you have to move each part of each polygon, so everything looks like a wooden toy moving – which I guess is a signature feature of the Futurefarmers style, I don’t know.” She laughs. “People say ‘How did you get your colour palette like that?’ These are the sort of people who are using Maya, and I’m, like, ‘It’s the standard in Infini-D.’” Franceschini’s own colourful style is often compared to Osamu Tezuka, the Japanese animation artist who created Astro Boy, among other characters. “In the 40s and 50s, he did these really amazing comic books – those weren’t Astro Boy; those were his own graphics,” explains Franceschini. “People would always look at my graphics and say, ‘Wow, you’re totally inspired by Japan.’ And I was, like, ‘But I don’t even look at Japanese stuff.’ Then someone got me this book and I was, like, ‘Whoa!’” These days she’s more enthused by modern art, particularly the work of people like Simon Starling. “I’m inspired by him because he’s doing sculpture, but it runs parallel to the system on the Internet. It’s like information visualisation on the Internet, but they’re doing it sculpturally. I find it interesting to look at art from that perspective.” However, she’s not sure the rest of the industry shares her enthusiasm for new approaches. “At the moment, it seems like a lot of clients are asking for the same things clients wanted nine years ago. The main thing people are catching onto is that they want more user input. Right now, I’m not so interested in highly graphical or interactive environments online. Most of my time is spent with mailing lists and logs, and that’s the sort of vernacular that works for me. I think corporate clients aren’t ready for that – they need it to be slick and glossy. “But I don’t have any visions of the industry, really. Josh On is into activism and I’m into

Futurefarmers’ cover design for the now defunct Design Plex Magazine, Japan. The magazine covered all aspects of cutting-edge design and profiled key industry figures.

making art, so our minds are more there – those are our priorities. I haven’t got a call from a client asking for a totally innovative project for a long time. We try to push them to do something new… but I don’t feel like the industry has evolved that much.” For now, in Franceschini’s words, Futurefarmers is “just going to keep plugging along.” There are plans for a new book and an installation in a San Francisco museum: “Kind of like a digital hub, a social space for people who are working in art and technology.” And, she says, somewhat wistfully, “I want to move to a farm someday… but that’s just a distant future dream.” She pauses, and then the other Amy Franceschini, is back. “Sorry, it’s 10am over here,” she finishes. “I haven’t really woken up.” INFO Call +1 415 552 212, go to www.futurefarmers.com, or turn to page 28 to see Amy Franceschini illustrating on a budget…

Get in touch with any of the team on [email protected]

Futurefarmers developed these characters for MTV Japan, alongside numerous striking designs for cellphone wallpaper.

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MAIN ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD LLEWELLYN CREATED IN INDESIGN CS [email protected]

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INDESIGN

FROM XPRESS TO INDESIGN Making the leap from QuarkXPress to InDesign? Use our in-depth guide to make the transition as painless as possible. If you’re new to InDesign, there’s plenty for you here too If you’re a seasoned XPress user, daunted by the prospect of having to learn InDesign, don’t despair. While there are big differences between the two apps – all of which will be explained in this tutorial – both are designed to lay out pages, so you’ll find that InDesign offers the same basic controls as XPress. Many InDesign dialog boxes will seem familiar, although they won’t necessarily be in the same menus – Adobe presents many commands through palettes and palette menus, which may throw you at

first. On each page, we take a different aspect of InDesign, explain it in depth and then highlight how it differs from XPress. The main aspects of page layout are included: creating master pages, adding and formatting text, setting up style sheets, adding pictures, and preparing documents for print. Use the five-section tutorial to create the brochure on the coverdisc – you’ll find all the styling for the brochure marked up on a PDF. You can do each section separately – just open the relevant InDesign

document indicated at the end of each introduction, then compare with the completed version, Venicelayoutfinish.indd. INFO Susannah Hall both teaches and writes about graphics and Web software. Contact her on 07885 795 689 or [email protected]

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PART 1

USING MASTER PAGES To kickstart our tour, an essential part of DTP and design: master pages and document layout nDesign’s master pages work in a similar way to those in XPress. You place objects on master pages that need to appear on each page in your document. Given that you may have more than one style of page, InDesign enables you to set up more than one master page. It even enables you to set up Parent and Child master pages, so you can set up a parent master for a chapter style and child master for each chapter. (Changes made to the Parent master are always added to the Child master.) The main difference XPress users will notice when using InDesign is that you can’t select

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master page items on actual pages while you’re designing them. You have to hold down Shift+Apple and click. If you then make a change to that Master page item, the aspect of the object you have changed – the colour or the size, for example – is then detached from the master page. This means that if you change that same aspect (say, the size) of the object on the master page, it won’t be updated on the actual pages in your document. Look in the Tutorial\InDesign folder on the coverdisc and use Venicelayout1.indd to follow this tutorial.

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Adding an automatic page number is simplicity itself. First, create a text frame and click inside it so you are ready to type. Go to Type>Insert Special Character>Auto Page Number. Unlike XPress, a letter appears according to the master page you’re on. You can now highlight the letter and format it.

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The Pages palette in InDesign is the equivalent to the Document Layout palette in XPress, and you can use it to access a master page (by double-clicking), create both new ordinary pages and master pages, and reorganise your document pages. Display it by going to the Window menu or pressing F12.

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Go to the menu on the side of the palette and choose New Master. The options for the master page appear, enabling you to give it a name. Making it ‘based on’ another master page creates a child master page – this will automatically be updated when you change the page it’s based on.

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To add guides to your master page, go to the Layout menu and choose Create Guides. You can choose the number of columns and rows. You can also drag guides from the rulers and, unlike in XPress, select them and specify their precise position using the Control (CS only) or Transform palette.

To create your actual pages, drag the master page down to the section below (you will need six for this particular brochure). Unlike XPress, items from a master page are locked on the actual pages. To select them, just hold down Shift and Ctrl/Command-click on them.

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To create a section, either go to the Pages palette menu or Layout>Numbering and Section options. If you have Allow Pages to Shuffle (Pages palette menu) activated, odd numbers will automatically become right-hand pages, so uncheck this for the brochure we’re creating, as we want page one to remain a right-hand page.

Tutorial

PART 2

HANDLING TEXT Get to grips with type in InDesign and take your brochure to the next level ll text in InDesign sits in a frame, the equivalent of a text box in XPress. You can use two tools to create one of these: the Frame tool or the Text tool. Just click and drag either tool diagonally to create a frame. The keyboard shortcut for placing text is Ctrl/Command+D, instead of E in XPress. If you’re going to carry on using XPress, you can change the keyboard shortcuts to more closely match those in XPress by going to Edit and selecting Keyboard Shortcuts. When importing formatted text, remember to unformat it by unchecking the Retain Format

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box in InDesign 2 or showing Import Options in InDesign CS, then checking Remove Text. InDesign doesn’t have an exact equivalent to XPress’s ‘automatic text box’ – a feature that adds pages with linked text frames to accommodate the text you have. However, if you create linked text boxes on a master page spread, placing text and holding down Shift when you click in the master page text box on an actual page, InDesign creates the necessary pages – but only the first time you do it. Use the file Venicelayout2.indd (on the CD) to follow this section of the tutorial.

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Select Type>Glyphs to see and add characters from within a font – for our example brochure, you need to add a bullet. To line up the type under the bulleted first line, place the cursor before the first word of the paragraph and go to Type>Insert Special Character>Indent to Here.

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Place the file venice.rtf into a text frame on the second page (numbered 1). Make sure you have removed the formatting, following the instructions above. To format your text afresh, use the Type menu or the Character and Paragraph palettes (and their menus), or in InDesign CS use the Control palette.

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In the Paragraph palette menu, Adobe Paragraph Composer and Adobe Single Line Composer control how Adobe calculates your line endings – either by line or paragraph. If editing text, you may want to stick to Single Line Composer to prevent line endings changing throughout the paragraph.

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Unlike Quark XPress, in InDesign there’s no keyboard shortcut that enables you to resize the text and its frame by dragging. The closest option is pressing E to change to the Free Transform tool, then holding down Shift while you drag the corner of the text frame to resize.

To link text frames, use the Selection tool to select the first frame, then click and release on the red plus or the blue box at the bottom-right corner. The cursor now becomes ‘filled’ with text (as shown), and you can either click in another text frame or click-drag to create a new one.

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To remove a link between two frames, click the blue arrow at the top left of the frame, then click the frame your text is coming from. To see the links between your text frames, go to the View menu and choose Show Text Threads.

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PART 3

STYLE SHEETS If you’re used to style sheets in QuarkXPress, you’ll find things very familiar in InDesign ust like QuarkXPress, InDesign offers Paragraph and Character style sheets, which apply either to an entire paragraph or selected characters, respectively. The most efficient way to work with these is to use keyboard shortcuts – both to navigate through the text and to apply the styles. If you are using InDesign CS, you can also nest styles within other styles. This is particularly useful if you want to, say, insert a dropcap at the start of your paragraph in a different colour, or set up bullets for a list. You can define a character style to be applied

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automatically at the start of a paragraph to a certain number of characters or words, or until a particular character appears, such as a colon or a tab. You can set up more than one, too, so that the first nested style applies to the first character, the second to a series of words before a tab, and the rest of the paragraph is styled according to the paragraph style. There are numerous options to work with. Find the file Venicelayout3.indd from the InDesign Tutorial folder on this month’s coverdisc and start experimenting with style sheets using our six-step guide below.

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InDesign displays a + sign beside a paragraph or character style to show that additional formatting has been applied to the text. You can remove the additional formatting by clicking the style while holding down Alt or Option. To additionally remove any Character Styles when applying a Paragraph Style, hold down Shift + Alt/Option when you click.

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To create a paragraph style sheet, format a paragraph in the style you want, and in the Paragraph Style Sheets palette (press F11), choose New Paragraph Style from the menu. Give the style a name and choose a keyboard shortcut. You can use any combination of Shift, Alt/Option, Ctrl/Command and the keypad numbers.

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To apply a paragraph style, click within a paragraph (you don’t have to select it) and press the keyboard shortcut. To move to another paragraph, simply press Ctrl/Command and the down arrow. To select the rest of the text in a text frame, press Shift+Ctrl/Command+End.

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Follow the same process to create a a new character style (press Shift F11 to display the palette) – it will only apply to characters you select. You’ll notice that InDesign leaves a character style applied, even when you change a paragraph style – very different to Quark XPress.

As well as double-clicking a style in the palette to make changes, you can also change some text with the style applied. Once you’ve done this, choose Redefine Style from the Styles palette menu to update the style – and all text with the style applied.

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To nest a character style within a paragraph style, click Drop Caps and Nested Styles within a Paragraph Style Sheet dialog box. Under Nested Styles, choose a character style, then define it to apply to one word in the paragraph. Note that you can also choose ‘up to’ and then select a particular character.

Tutorial

PART 4

HANDLING PICTURES Here’s where InDesign really differs from XPress – especially with its Selection tools n InDesign, pictures go in frames just like text does; unlike XPress, though, there’s no distinction between text and picture frames – you use the same Frame tool for both. When placing pictures, it’s a good idea to deselect everything. This is because it’s quite easy to accidentally replace some text with a picture. A useful keyboard shortcut here is Ctrl/Command+Shift+A to deselect all. Like XPress, a preview of the picture will be displayed in the document, and a link created back to the original file. You can embed picture files in your document, which you may find

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useful for small pictures, but this isn’t a good idea for large images as the document size can easily become unmanageable. XPress users may find it tricky to get used to using the two Selection tools with pictures. The Selection tool selects both the picture and the frame, while the Direct Selection Tool enables you to select and move the picture around inside the frame. If you click and hold you will see a preview of the entire picture (slightly faded outside the bounds of the picture frame). Try all this out for yourself, using the file Venicelayout4.indd to follow steps 1-6 below.

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You can check the status of your pictures in the Links palette (similar to Picture Usage in XPress). Double-click the entry in the Links palette to see the status of the file. Using the Go To Link button at the bottom of the palette is a useful way to navigate through your document.

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To add a picture to your fledgling InDesign document, you can either create a frame from scratch or go straight to File>Place. Doing the latter means that your cursor becomes filled with the picture; if you click and release now, a frame is automatically created that’s the same size as your original image.

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To resize the picture, go to Object>Fitting and choose from the options. If you want to check the percentage of your image, select the image with the Direct Selection tool and read the value in either the Transform palette or the Control palette.

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To select and move a picture inside a picture frame you’ve already created, choose the Direct Selection tool (the white arrow). When you click to select the picture, you will see its outline in orange – contrasting with the default blue frame selection colour. Simply drag it around within the frame.

Place the picture txtwrappic.jpg and move it over one of the text frames. To make the text ‘runaround’ as in XPress, go to the Text Wrap palette (under the Type & Tables submenu in InDesign CS). Choose Wrap Around Object Shape and choose Photoshop Path from the available options.

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To add a dropshadow, select the picture and choose Object>Drop Shadow. Choose from the options and click Preview to see the effect. You can also change the opacity of your image – and the Blending mode in the Transparency palette.

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PART 5

WORKING WITH TABLES Finally, how to use tables in InDesign – and how to prepare a document for print o one can fail to be impressed by the variety of controls InDesign offers for formatting tables. For many people, it’s the main reason for crossing over to InDesign – XPress is renowned for overly complicating the task. To send a document to print, InDesign offers a useful Preflight option that checks for any problems such as RGB pictures, extra colours, missing fonts and pictures. Once the checking is done, you can package your document, choosing whether to collect together fonts and pictures as well. Alternatively, if you send a

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PDF to print you can export your document to a PDF, setting up your own PDF styles. Adobe has anticipated that many XPress users will be switching to InDesign in the near future, so its Website has some helpful information, not only on InDesign itself, but also on converting XPress documents. Go to www.adobe.com/support/products/indesign. html for more details. Meanwhile, follow our instruction below to explore the many features on offer, using Venicelayout5.indd from the Tutorial\InDesign folder on your coverdisc.

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One of the most useful controls that InDesign offers is the ability to add patterns of colour and shading to multiple rows and columns, so you can make the data stand out more clearly – you can add a fill or stroke to every other row, for example. Go to Table>Table Options>Alternating Fills.

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You can only add tables in InDesign to text frames, so before you do anything else, create a text frame. Go to Table>Insert Table and select the number of columns and rows you require (type the figure in directly or use the arrow keys). To display the Table palette, go to Window>Type & Tables>Table.

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Within the Table palette, you can change the number of rows and columns, and also insert or delete rows and columns using the menu on the side. You can control the row depth and column width, too, along with how the text sits within the rows, the rotation of text – and the indents within each cell.

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You will often need to adjust the cells within the table, either by splitting or merging them. To split cells, place the cursor within a cell and go to Table>Split Cell Horizontally or Split Cell Vertically. To merge cells, simply select the cells by dragging and go to Table>Merge Cells.

To check your document before you send it to print, go to File>Preflight. InDesign now checks the document and presents this Preflight dialog box with a summary of any problems it finds. You can see more detail by clicking the options on the left. Our example looks clear, so on to the next step.

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Save your document and go to File>Package. You can now enter instructions for your printer, then indicate where you want the folder with your ‘package’ to be saved and choose which elements InDesign should include – fonts, images and so on. Click Package. Your document’s now ready to go!

ILLUSTRATION BY BENOIT GUERVILLE www.widecinema.com

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Tutorial

PHOTOSHOP & POSER

COMIC ART Expert tutorial and 50 professional tips: everything you need to know about creating your own digital comic book Comic art is traditionally seen as pencil art and paint work. Today, however, thanks to digital tools and graphic styles that are more collage than drawing, producing great comic art is often just a matter of knowing the key techniques. In this tutorial, we’ll teach you how to use Photoshop and a few scans of real-world paint and textures to create rich backgrounds. Then, we’ll move to Poser to prepare characters and use its Cartoon Render options. Back in Photoshop we’ll enhance the Poser renders and blend them in the page. The best part is you only need basic drawing skills to do all this. Then, from page 54, you’ll find 50 expert tips on digital comic-book illustration – from leading artists Ashley Wood, Ben Templesmith and Chris Gossett. The tips take an in-depth look at colour, narrative, technique, software, typography,

dialogue, effects and more – it’s an essential guide to creating any artwork for print. In the meantime, though, climb up the towers of Notre Dame to discover the nocturnal adventures of our private detective… INFO Text and illustrations by Benoit Guerville, [email protected] and Mireille Frenette [email protected]

THANKS TO… • Christian Lerolle, colourisation artist at Atelier 510 TTC. Find out more at perso.wanadoo.fr/atelier.510. • Ashley Wood, the first artist to draw HellSpawn, www.ashleywoodartist.com. • Ben Templesmith, another HellSpawn artist, www.templesmith.com. • Chris Gossett, creator of The Red Star, www.theredstar.com. • Yann Degruel, leading French comic book artist.

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PART 1 COMPOSITION

PART 2 BRING YOUR CHARACTERS TO LIFE

Set up the page layout and create a suitably atmospheric background

Thanks to Poser and its Cartoon Renderer, you can create characters without a single paint stroke

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Now’s the time to go crazy! Dig out your old paint box and grab a few sheets of paper, then doodle and splash paint, making some coarse brush strokes. Allow this to dry, then scan it. Apply these textures on top and behind the cathedral. You can also scan old books, leather, and more. Vary the Blending mode of each layer until you’re satisfied with the results.

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Begin by sketching several layouts for the entire page. The page needs to be designed so that the reading direction is obvious: from left to right and up to down. You should try and aim for a dynamic layout with visual rhythm. Here, the first sketch has been discarded because the page wasn’t properly balanced.

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In Poser, choose the Businessman from the People tab. In the Pose tab, pick New Standing Set>Blowing Bubbles. You’re going to create the pose of a detective lighting a cigarette with a match. Move the camera back, then zoom in using the Focal Length button located on the bottom-left of the camera Control panel to get a long lens shot – use a focal value that will avoid distortions of perspective.

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Your background is finished. To minimise file size, save it as a PSD file and make a flattened TIFF copy. Now use the TIFF as the background layer. To facilitate work, build each frame in a separate document. When a frame is finished, link the layers and use the Move tool to drag and drop it into your main document.

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Find a picture of a building – this is where you’ll set up the action (we’ve used Notre Dame, but any will do). Open it in Photoshop, press Ctrl+T and use the contextual menu (right-click) and the Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys to transform the perspective of the image to suit your needs. On a new layer, trace the building’s outline with a small brush.

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Set up the size and position of each frame in the page. See how they occupy space and mask your background. Make several empty cases and fill them with a neutral colour. Give each frame a grungy border to make it stand out. Either draw the borders by hand or stamp the frame’s borders with the Brush tool, using custom-designed brushes that you’ve already created and captured (Edit>Define Brush).

^

3

Paint lighting effects on the outline of the building using a hard brush. Be careful to choose a light direction and stick to it throughout. To do this correctly, you may want to fire up your 3D software to make and light a rough model that will help your see where you should place the highlights.

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Roughly position the character’s arms in the correct position. Now switch to orthogonal views (Front, Left, Right…) to fine-tune the pose. Check the Inverse Kinematics (Figure>Use inverse kinematics> Left Arm and Right Arm) to easily pose the character’s hands using the Edit tools (R, W, T and Z).

INSIGHT ALL-PURPOSE BRUSHES It’s easy to create grunge and dirt brushes for your images. Either use pictures or scans of real-world objects (old books, stones, leaves), desaturate them and apply a strong contrast setting, or start with the Cloud filter, then apply others, such as Grain and Sponge, to create an interesting texture. Use Edit> Define Brush to make the most of these textures.

9

Stage your lighting in a dramatic way. Here, you need to simulate the light produced by the match. Create a contrasted lighting scheme that will enable you to do your work in Photoshop with heavy shadows and bright highlights. Put the main light just below the character’s face and two secondary lights behind him. It’s now time to render…

^

PART 3 3D EFFECTS After rendering in Poser, it’s time to transform your 3D model into richly textured images befitting a comic

Tutorial

INSIGHT BEWARE THE PRINTER Before sending your work to press, you should speak with your printer to find out which colour profile they use. You may request a copy of their own profile (a small CSF file) that you will use to prepare your own work. For more information, refer to the Photoshop Help files.

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The characters are still too flat, and need to integrate better with the page. As in Step 12, select and paste several paint stains that will cover most of the page. With Select>Colour Range, select the darker tones of the stains and set the Tolerance to 60. Copy and paste on top of the characters and set this new layer to Colour Burn mode.

10

In Poser, move your working window towards the upper-left corner of your screen by clicking on the document name and dragging it. Click on the document size that appears on the upper-right corner of the window and type in the required value. In the Document Display Style palette, choose Cartoon w/ Lines. Now, go to Render>Antialias Document, then File>Export>Image to save this render. Don’t forget to save the Poser scene for later use.

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Set the stains in Screen mode and give them an Inner Glow and an Outer Glow effect (in the bottom-left corner of the Layers palette). Select the right hand and arm. Use Layer>Add a Layer Mask>Hide Selection to place the light behind them. Duplicate the layer to strengthen the glow, then touch up the layer with a soft yellow, 300-pixel brush to intensify the effect of the match light.

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Better, but the texture is too even. Create a new layer. With a natural media or grungy brush (opacity set to 20 per cent), touch up the areas you want to darken but avoid trailing the brush around the canvas. Make sure that you ease the transitions where shadow and highlights areas meet.

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Open the render in Photoshop and Resize it (Ctrl+T) to place it in the desired frame. In the Layer palette, Ctrl-click on the frame background thumbnail to select its outline. Press Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection, and with the Poser render layer selected, press Delete to erase everything outside the frame. Using the Magic Wand, select the background colour of the render and hit Delete. Use Layer> Matting>Defringe to remove any light outline.

With the Magic Wand, select the shaded areas. Press Ctrl+U and bring Luminosity to 0. Select the other areas and set the colours and contrasts to your taste. Choose an image of paint stains (you’ll have made this in Step 4) and use Selection>Colour Range to select and copy the stains. For now, paste these into the frame. We’ll be using them later on…

For the third frame, find or sketch a picture of a gargoyle. Use Ctrl+T to resize it (it doesn’t matter if it gets blurred). Make a copy that you will use as a reference for shadow and highlight touchups. Use Image>Adjustments>Threshold to switch the image to black and white. Now touch it up with a hard brush, using the copy as a reference.

Let’s now add the effects that will breathe some life to the frames. The red clouds are simply paint stains set in Overlay mode. The cigarette smoke and the girl’s stockings are made with a nice calligraphic font, reshaped using the Liquify tool. The background of each frame has been textured with the scan of an old book’s blank page, and the frame borders have been cut out with grungy brushes.

FINAL STEP

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ow to convert to CMYK. Go for View>Proof Setup>CMYK Then View>Proof Colours. This way, you can see how your image will look when printed (you can work with Proof Colours from the start). Make any adjustments and save a TIFF copy in CMYK mode (Image>Mode>CMYK) for print. Don’t forget to embed the required colour profile (use the Save dialog box) to ensure the print is true to the original.

50 EXPERT TIPS Master comic-book illustration with our professional tips and techniques Comic-book artists Ashley Wood, Ben Templesmith and Chris Gossett share their work methods, Photoshop techniques, practical shortcuts, and all the tricks you need to make a big difference in your work – from scanning line drawings to sending off files to your printer

THE GROUNDWORK 1

SCAN YOUR DRAWINGS

Whether you’ve created your drawings in ink, pencil or with paint, editors will need you to scan them at a high resolution before colourisation or inking. Scan your page at 1200dpi in Bitmap mode; this will provide you with a high-res scan in a manageable size. This file will serve as a basis for the rest of your work.

2

SCAN YOUR TEXTS

If you write your texts by hand, scan them separately from the original drawing. If they are already on the original page, create two separate files; you will have to clean them up so that one has the text and the other just the drawing. You’ll also work at 1200dpi in Bitmap mode. The editor will bring the two files back together at printing time.

3 TOUCHING-UP THE SCANS Most scans require a little bit of contrast adjustment. Use the Levels tool (Ctrl+L) to ensure that your blacks are really black and your whites are really white. Be careful not to lose part of the line drawing.

4

THINK BIG!

To avoid disappointment at the printers, it’s wise to make your document slightly larger than the printing size – say, a few millimetres (known as b ‘ leed’). This is because in most cases, images usually lose a few millimetres at printing time. This is not a problem if a white border surrounds your page, but it has to be a consideration if you’re working with border-free images. Discuss this issue with your printer.

© Star traveller

5 ORGANISE YOUR FILES Your comic book may have up to 50 pages, and

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each one of them will consist of several individual plates – such as the scans of your line drawings, the colours, the texts, the onomatopoeias… Be sure to design an effective method for naming your files so that the colour plates get associated with the appropriate line drawings. Don’t forget that if your comic book is printed, it’s the

printer who will have to re-assemble your pages, so make sure that he or she can immediately understand your file system. Our suggestion: keep it simple, like page01-colour, page01-linedrawing, and so on.

6

SET UP YOUR PAGES

7

ALPHA LINE DRAWING

8

CMYK OR RGB?

Several editors request that artists work in very high definition (600 or even 1200dpi). However, most of the artists we speak to tell us they work in 300dpi without encountering any problems. Only the line drawings should be scanned and saved in very high definition. To prepare the multi-layered document in which you will do colouring and special effects, open your 1200dpi scan in Photoshop and change the mode from Bitmap to Greyscale, setting the Greyscale Size Ratio to 1. Then bring the file down to 300dpi using the Image Size function. Be sure to check the Bicubic Resampling box.

Printing will be done in CMYK mode. For best results, there must be absolutely no black in your colours. Some of the artists we met suggested the following method: Use Selection>Colour Range to select the white areas of your line drawings. At the bottom of the Channels palette, click on the second icon from the left: the selection becomes a new alpha channel. Deselect (Ctrl+D) and fill the page with white. Double-click on the Quick Mask icon at the bottom of the Tools palette. In the Quick Mask option, set the opacity to 100 per cent and choose the Black colour. In the Layers palette, click on the eye next to the alpha channel to activate it. Your black line drawing reappears, but it is now completely independent from the rest of your work.

Some editors will ask you to work in CMYK, because that will be the printing mode. However, the disadvantage here is that this mode prevents you from using many Photoshop filters. Some comic illustrators find the differences minimal, and the results can also depend on the printer used for the job. You could choose to work in RGB and convert to CMYK at the end, then see if it makes a significant difference.

50 Tips

FULL COLOUR

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You’ve converted your black line drawings to an alpha channel but your file is still in greyscale. Use Image>Mode>RGB to convert your document to colour. By keeping the alpha channel visible, you will be able to colourise your drawing by working on the RGB channel without ever touching the black line drawing. Save your work as a PSD file. You will be working in this document until the end. If you should run into a problem, your greyscale line drawing TIFF file will serve as a back-up.

ADDING COLOUR ONE OR SEVERAL LAYERS?

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If you’re only doing the colourisation of your pages, working in RGB with the alpha channel will result in very reasonable file sizes, since you’ll only need one layer. However, if you’re compositing various elements your documents will have several layers. Be careful, as a comic book file at 300dpi can rapidly become very heavy.

ADDITIONAL BLACK

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If you want to add more black elements on top of your original line drawing, you should do this on a new layer, which you’ll then convert to a new alpha channel using the process described in Tip 7. You can create as many alpha channels as you wish in Photoshop.

ALPHA INTERVENTION

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Remember that alpha channels can be altered just like any other layers. You can therefore modify your line drawing during the colourisation phase if needed. You can paint, erase, select and more on this alpha

channel. However, be sure to use 100 per cent black for any touch-up work that needs to be done. And don’t forget that you’ve saved your line drawing as a 1200dpi bitmap file; since that’s the file the editors require for the black channel, you will have to transfer your modifications into that bitmap file.

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YOUR FIRST COLOURS

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UNDER THE LINE

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FIRST PASS

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PICKING COLOURS

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COLOUR SWATCHES

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A PERSONALISED SWATCH

Using the techniques from the previous tip, colourise the entire page. This first pass will have flat colours without shadows or highlights, and will give you a first idea of where your colour page is heading. For certain types of comics, the work stops here.

You are now ready to colourise your masterpiece. Contrary to what you’re probably used to, you won’t work in the Layers palette, but in the Channel palette. Activate the alpha channel and with the Magic Wand select the area you want to colour. Use Shift or Alt-click to add or subtract areas to your selection. If your line drawing is very rough and some areas are not closed, you will have to touch-up the selections to be able to select only the desired areas.

Once more, to prevent alignment problems at the press, it is mandatory that your colours reach well under the black line drawing. To do so, use Selection>Modify>Expand and expand the selection by 1 or 2 pixels so that it runs a bit under the black line.

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SHORTCUTS

The main part of the colourisation process begins here. Pick a colour and fill the selection. Since you’ll be repeating this process many (many!) more times, it’s useful to know the various keyboard shortcuts. Press Alt+Backspace to fill with the foreground colour, and Ctrl+Backspace to fill with the background colour; press X to toggle between those two colours; press I to activate the Eyedropper tool.

Colour is a narrative element that helps you tell your story. Intense colours give punch to your images, and soft colours tend to bring out a more soothing atmosphere. Keep in mind that your reader gets a first global vision of your page before he or she starts reading it frame per frame. This means that it’s preferable to use a limited colour scheme to keep your page together and avoid a messy look (unless, of course, that’s what you’re aiming for!).

A practical way to apply the previous tip is to create colour swatches in which you will record the main tones used in your page. Although many professional colourists create their colours as they go along, colour swatches will help you see the kind of mood you’re trying to evoke more clearly.

© Delcourt

Find an image with a colour scheme you like, then convert it to Indexed Colours (Image>Mode>Indexed Colours). You will instantly get a 256-colour palette that will be more than sufficient to colourise your page. Go to Image>Mode>Colour Table>Save. Next, go to Window and make sure that Swatches is selected. Click on the little black arrow on the top-right corner of the Swatches palette and choose Replace Swatches. In the dialog box, make sure to choose Colour Table (*.ACT) instead of Swatches (*.ACO) in the File Type dropdown menu.

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A PERFECT BLACK

To be sure you achieve a nice deep black in print, the blacks need to be ‘supported’ by a background colour, which will help ensure that absolutely no white areas appear under the line drawing. In your page, select everything that will remain white: dialogue balloons, page borders, frame borders, some onomatopoeias (check out the image above)… Now invert the selection (Shift+I) and fill it with a neutral colour. This colour will not show in the final print, so its hue doesn’t matter.

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COLOUR VARIATIONS

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ALPHA CHANNEL ALTERNATIVE

After this first pass, your page will contain a limited number of colours. This is a good time to try other colour schemes if you’re not completely pleased with this first draft. Duplicate your colour layer and play with the Hue/Saturation command (Ctrl+U). For example, you can select all the blue tones and change them to green or purple. You’ll be surprised how such a simple change can alter the mood of a page.

If you don’t want to work with the alpha channel, you can always create a layer that will contain your line drawing. By doing so, you can easily change its opacity to check that your colours reach under the black line. However, it is crucial that you remember to remove this layer prior to sending your finished work to the printer.

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ROUGH DRAWING

If your drawing style is very rough, with most areas not closed off, it may be more efficient for you to colourise your drawing by painting directly with a brush without using selections. In this case, be sure that your colours always reach under the black line.

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DARK SIDE

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INTO THE LIGHT

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HARD AND SOFT BORDERS

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FROM BACKGROUND TO FOREGROUND

It’s now time to give some contrast to your page. With the Magic Wand, select a flat colour area and paint a shadow with a brush. Most of the time, this shadow will be a darker variation of the main colour, but it could also be a completely different hue, depending on the lighting set-up of the scene.

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BRUSHES GALORE

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GRADIENT COLOURISATION

Digital colourists usually build up a personal brush library as they work, so that they can quickly paint elements like clouds in the sky, leaves on the trees or bricks on the wall – basically, anything that they paint regularly to speed up workflow. This way, you can quickly create, say, a pouring rain effect using a brush with several vertical lines. Draw your desired brush pattern on a white background, then circle it with a selection and choose Edit>Define Brush.

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GO FOR TRASH

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NARRATIVE STYLE

Artists like Ashley Wood and Ben Templesmith use a mixture of techniques related to collage. Their starting point is not a line drawing, but several graphical elements that are mixed and superimposed. Constructing the page becomes more like compositing. If you want to emulate this style, create each frame separately, then bring them back into your main page and combine them with all kinds of textures and effects.

© Ashley Wood

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Using Photoshop’s Gradient tool is an effective way of simultaneously creating the flat colour along with its shadow and highlight. The tool’s numerous options (Linear, Radial, Angle, Reflected, Diamond) offer varied effects. You can also create more complex gradients by using the Layer Styles Effects, such as Bevel and Emboss or Inner Glow. In this case, the gradient will follow the shape of the selection exactly.

ADVANCED COLOUR 30

BASIC PRINCIPLE

If you plan to use complex colourisation with many layered effects, the method outlined in the previous tips may narrow your options. After the first flat colourisation, it may help to create new layers to isolate certain parts of the images or apply overall effects. This way, you will be able to use all of Photoshop’s options – especially its many Blending modes.

Your graphic style should match the mood and environment of your story. The Red Star is influenced by Russian constructivism, a style that lends itself well to sharp edges and 3D-rendered flat colours. HellSpawn tells a gothic and morbid story, well served by earthcoloured tones and a chaotic, dirty composition. Your story and environment will therefore partially determine your choice of techniques.

Bring some light touches to simulate highlights and reflections by hand-painting inside the selection you made in the previous tip. You don’t have to limit yourself to just one colour tonality for shadows and another one for highlights. The more colour variations you use, the more defined your image will be.

There are many ways to apply your shadows and highlights. It’s all a matter of taste. For The Red Star, Snakebite, its colourist, uses brushes with hard tips and creates overlapping tones. You can achieve this look by playing with your brushes’ Blending modes and opacity. You may prefer the softness of the airbrush, or the roughness of small brushes that will give your objects a textured look. Experiment and find your own style.

© Ben Templesmith

You’ll find the colourisation process easier if you follow some kind of routine. For example, there are artists who work from background to foreground; the background colours tend to be softer, desaturated by the atmosphere effect. You may prefer to work with another technique, such as character by character. It’s really down to taste, but choosing one will improve your workflow.

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PAINT

Painter’s impressive Cloning tools are extremely powerful. With them to hand, you can transform any flat 3D composition into a real work of art. Open the image you want to paint and go to File>Clone. A new document named Clone of… appears. Go to File>Clone Source and check the document Clone of… Choose the Brush tool and, in the Option bar, in the Brush Category option on the upper right, select the Cloners. In the Colour Info menu, click on the Stamp icon and start painting. You’ll be amazed by the results.

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50 Tips

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GO BEYOND DIGITAL

© Delcourt/Yann Degruel

If you enjoy highly textured compositions, remember that natural media and real-world textures offer you unlimited resources. For example, grab a sheet of paper, a paintbrush and watercolours, and create splotches, stains and all kinds of doodles. Scan these in and use them in different ways to give punch and a natural feel to your work.

to a square with a resolution of 72dpi. Add a black background layer, then on a new layer on top of your drawing, begin to paint volumes (such as the muscles of a character) in greyscale with a soft brush. Keep in mind that this isn’t about shading the drawing but representing volumes more effectively, with darker greys for sunken areas and lighter greys for raised ones. Turn off the layer with the original drawing and save the file as a flattened TIFF.

40 MORE VOLUME Create a new terrain in Bryce. In the Terrain Editor, go to Editing Tools>Pictures and click on Load just above the left thumbnail. Load your TIFF image. Click on Copy on the left thumbnail and Paste on the middle one, then Apply. If required, use the Smoothing option several times, or lower then raise the terrain resolution to get rid of the aliasing effect. Leave the Terrain Editor and choose the Top view. All that’s left is lighting and texturing with procedurals or images, to get a 3D render that you will mix with your drawing in Photoshop.

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SPECIAL EFFECTS

Many comic books use Photoshop to create lighting effects, flames and smoke. Filters like Lighting, Lens Flare or the Dodge tool can be particularly useful here. A negative effect (Ctrl+I) can suggest an intense light projected on the characters during an explosion, so experiment with this option, too.

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SKETCH

The Poser sketch render can help you achieve a believable sketch effect on a 3D character. Go to Window>Sketch Designer to open the Sketch Renderer interface. Many settings are available. When you’re happy with the preview, go to Render>Sketch Style Renderer. You can also export this setting by choosing File>Export>Painter Script then play it back in Painter, but this time using Painter’s Natural Media brushes.

TEXTURE LIBRARY

If you often work with textures, you’ll have to scan many elements at a minimum of 300dpi, and you’ll quickly end up with tons of CDs full of files bearing the evocative names of splotch01, splotch02, splotch03 and so on. To save time, use the Contact Sheet function from Photoshop or ACDSee to print, and make an easy-tobrowse paper catalogue.

SETS

Working with complex perspectives is never easy, even for experienced artists. 3D software can help you build the main shapes of your sets with only a few primitives. If you’re not a 3D artist, Adobe Dimensions can help you easily construct the same kind of thing. Since your set will be in 3D, you can change lighting and points of view at will much more easily. You can also enhance this model with 2D techniques.

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CHARACTERS

Poser can be a choice ally for the comic artist who can’t draw. This software will help you set up very dynamic character poses and facial expressions. It also offers a wide range of render styles, from flat cartoon renders to sketch renders that can be exported as scripts to Painter. Finally, you can depend on the Web for countless resources – new characters, lighting sets, accessories and costumes.

39 VOLUME Just like Masanume Shirow (of Ghost in the Shell fame), you can use Bryce to give volume and texture to your drawings. Open your work in Photoshop. Resize it

DIGITAL HANDWRITING

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KABOOM!!!

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FINDING FONTS

Most comics use a handwritten style of lettering, but in many cases it’s actually a digital font, recreated in a font-editing program from scanned handwritten text. The key word here is readability. The lettering will most often be in capital letters, unless a more standard font is used, such as Arial or Impact.

Onomatopoeias (sound effects such as BANG!) are key graphic elements in comics, and Photoshop is the ideal tool to generate them. By associating the Text tool and the Transformation functionality to create perspective effects, you can create expressive sounds, such as footsteps closing in or the subterranean growl of some monstrous unseen entity. You can also add other effects to make your s‘ oundtrack’ more expressive; you’re only limited by your imagination.

Even if you want to give personality to your comic’s dialogue, you may not want to create a brand new font by yourself. There are plenty of free font sites on the Web – take a look at www.1001freefonts.com to get started. Alternatively, if money’s not an issue, browse the collections at sites like www.t26.com and www.fontfont.com – well worth the investment.

3D ARTWORK 47

CARTOON RENDER

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STYLISED MODELLING

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INTEGRATION

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2D TEXTURING

Most often, comic drawings are characterised by black outlines and flat colours with little texture, so there’s usually no reason to bother adding bump and specular effects. One of the easiest ways to get a comic render is to use a cartoon shader, and most 3D applications now have one. The result is usually a flat render with an outline that can be used as it is or improved in Photoshop.

CAN’T DRAW, WON’T DRAW? 37

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DIALOGUE AND SPEECH 42

LET’S TALK

The font you choose and the design of your dialogue balloons are a major part of your storytelling. Beyond simple effects like bold, italics and capitals, a font can go a long way to suggest the sound or the tone of a voice. One simple example is choosing a square font for a robot voice. In the same manner, the shape and colour of the dialogue balloon can be quite expressive. In HellSpawn, the main character’s balloons are black with white typography, evoking a beyond-the-grave voice that suits him perfectly.

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Contrary to most standard 3D work, what you’re aiming for in comics is non-realism. Your characters and objects must fit your story, not the other way around. The modelling could be very angular for a thriller and very round for comedies. Don’t hesitate to exaggerate a bit – your readers need to grasp your characters and their personalities at first glance.

THE DEATH OF DIALOGUE BALLOONS

European comics still use white dialogue balloons massively, but in the States, comics like Sam and Twitch (Image Comics) simply do away with the balloons; the text is white with a light dropshadow. This frees up space and tends to create a less c‘ artoonish’ mood.

According to most comic book pros, the main challenge when using 3D in comics is mixing it successfully with 2D elements. The Red Star team has accomplished this in a spectacular way, but it researched the process for about a year before coming up with the right mix. Our main piece of advice, is keep your 3D as flat as possible and give some volume to your 2D elements.

To lessen the all too recognisable look of 3D, you can render your scenes with a simple flat grey material. Next, import the rendered image in Photoshop and apply texture effects using various Blending modes. This way, you can paint your textures by hand and apply them to your 3D image, which will only be used to give a bit of volume and provide the lighting effects.

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Q&A

3DS MAX

SHORTCUTS In 3ds max, you can produce area lighting with a few simple mouse clicks – so why would you want to use more traditional techniques? The answer is they’re fast.

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f you’re rendering a scene to create a production-quality image, you could enable area shadows and lights, turn on Radiosity or enable mental ray. However, old-school techniques could be a better solution. Computers have become faster and faster, but renderers still render a scene slowly. This is due to the degree of sampling required to produce a highquality image, especially if the scene requires numerous tube lights. In a production environment, where you need to deliver final renders on time, this isn’t always a viable solution. Which is where this shortcut comes in… Envisage this problem. Even though 3ds max has a strip or area light/shadow feature, which can be tweaked to get the desired balance between quality and render time, to produce decent soft shadows you have to work with a lot of light samples. Area lights are only onesided, so you are working with two lights, one facing in the opposite direction. This sounds like a good solution, but a seam where the two lights meet could be visible in the render, and it also takes a while to output. And what if the strip light is a weird shape – like a neon sign? This means venturing into Radiosity territory, and the natives are quite hostile. To solve this problem we can use the standard set of lights (Omni, Spot, and Direct) to create the desired lighting effect. For this shortcut we’ll use Omni lights.

Analysing our initial scene (on the CD), we have a simple, self-illuminated cylinder that mimics our tube light, and an array of nearby boxes which need to cast appropriate shadows. To simulate the entire tube illuminating these boxes (and the surrounding areas above and below), we need to evenly scatter Omni lights down and around the length of the cylinder. Note that the top and bottom of the tube light also emits light, as well as the centre. This would be even more apparent in the shadow of an object being illuminated by a tube light with a large diameter; the shadow would be lighter the further it progressed away from the object. To do this, and to distribute the lights over the surface of the cylinder, we can use a Helix set to the same radius. Set the original Omni light to travel down the length of the Helix over 100 frames (with no acceleration or deceleration at the start and end of the motion, or you’ll end up with an excess of lights at both ends of the tube!).

it. This is so the single light doesn’t travel down the length of the tube during the animation. To simulate real-world lighting falloff, we can also use Inverse-Square decay. This behaves like real-world light, with Attenuation determining the furthest distance at which the decay should be calculated. With the Omni light being cloned several times, you’ll use a lot of memory to calculate the shadows (especially in high-detail scenes), but not an excessive amount; if memory is an issue, amend the size, but bear in mind that an Omni light casts six shadows, not just a single one. Think of it as six individual Spot lights, each casting light in a different direction. The resulting shadow map (leave size set at the default 512 for now) needs to be blurred, so that banding will be visible in the resulting fake area shadow. A Sample Range of ten or 20 will suffice, but if you decide to reduce or increase the map size, do the same for the Sample Range. For example, if you double the size of the map, double the Sample Range to prevent the shadow from being too blurred or too sharp. The outcome is a traditional area light shadow. The shadow cast from one side of the light is illuminated from the other, forming the darkened point in the middle of the shadow where the least light affects it. It looks effective and renders quickly, which is the result we’re after.

Next, snapshot the Omni light 20 or so times (using instancing) over 100 frames, so we have an even distribution.

AREA LIGHTS ARE ONLY ONE-SIDED, SO YOU ARE WORKING WITH TWO LIGHTS, ONE FACING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION…

INFO Expertise supplied by Pete Draper: [email protected], www.xenomorphic.co.uk

Now we need to make the original light unique so that we can turn it off and hide

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Tutorial

PHOTOSHOP • ILLUSTRATOR

FIGURE DESIGN IN ILLUSTRATOR Digital artist Nick Reddyhoff’s trademark style is all about montage. Use this tutorial to create a professional-quality image and try out a new style A “ lthough I live in a sleepy little village on the West Norfolk coast, the fast pace of city life and the advertising world still has a big influence on me and my work – all the sharp images, new designs and products,”says Nick Reddyhoff – an ex-art director who has left the field of advertising in London for a life of freelance artwork. Reddyhoff’s client list includes ad agencies, design groups and publishing houses – from The Times through to Citrus Publishing. His style involves taking an original image and transforming it into a montage in Illustrator; for this tutorial, we follow the creation of one

of these striking illustrations, by re-interpreting an original image in an abstract way. You’ll start by taking a selection of your photographs, roughly sketching them on paper, adding some colour, then scanning them in one by one to create a layered PSD in Photoshop. From here it’s into Illustrator, where you’ll be experimenting with line work and colour, developing each layer before bringing it all together as a montage. INFO Illustration and tutorial by Nick Reddyhoff. Get in touch via Debut Art on 020 7636 1064 or [email protected]. You’ll find more of Reddyhoff’s work at www.debutart.com

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PART 1 PHOTOSHOP First off, choose your ideal subject and start your preliminary sketching

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Create a new folder. Scan the sketches in one by one, saving them in the folder and opening each one in Photoshop. Because there is more than one scanned sketch for the illustration, save each file with a distinctive name – it will be much easier to remember the sketched images this way, and manage the illustrative process.

1

Carefully choose a subject for your illustration. Find something that interests you personally, and something you feel confident tackling. Inspiration can come from anywhere – your previous work, royalty-free images or digital photography you take especially for the project.

5

Save the Photoshop image as a JPEG file. With several scans on board, Illustrator can become a little sluggish, so it’s best to make the file as small as possible while still keeping a good level of detail.

7

Once all the sketches are in the composition file, go straight to Layer Properties in the Layers panel and name each layer, using the same names as the original reference files.

8

You are now ready to start putting the composition together. At the moment, all the sketches are on individual layers and are at the wrong size, so we need to resize them. Don’t worry about the final composition at this stage; just scale the sketches so they are all visible in the file.

2

For this tutorial, Nick Reddyhoff chose some of his individual photographic images as inspiration – one of which you can see here. From these he created numerous A4 sketches on paper, based on the images, then added some block colour. You can use whatever media you choose to add colour.

6

Now to decide on the overall composition. Create a new document in Photoshop at the size you want your final illustration to be. Name it ‘composition’ and save it. Open all the scanned sketch image files, then click-drag each one into the composition file. Double-click on the image to place it in the new file, automatically creating layers.

9

To scale your sketches quickly and accurately, click on the layer of the sketch to be scaled and go to Edit>Free Transform. The Transform box now appears around the selected sketch, so hold down Shift and click-drag the corners with the mouse.

^

INSIGHT WHY PHOTOSHOP?

3

Keep your sketches within A4 limits, so you can scan them in at the same size on a low resolution. The file size for this sort of scan needn’t be any bigger than three or four megabytes.

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If you’re wondering why Nick Reddyhoff used Photoshop to create a montage, as opposed to simply scanning a sketch and working from that, his answer is this: “Working directly with a sketch, you can’t change the strength, colour, placement or size of each part of your image quickly, and this process has a major influence on the final composition.”

10

Once all the sketches are at a more manageable size, save the file as a PSD. Now you can start thinking about the final composition.

Tutorial

PART 2 ILLUSTRATOR Use colour and line work to build up a montage

11

Next, it’s back to traditional pen and paper. Sketch the layout you’ve created so far and don’t worry about it being too accurate – a rough layout will suffice at this stage.

12

Scan this rough layout and place it on a layer in the composition file. Set the opacity of the layout layer to about 60 per cent – just enough so you that can see both the layout and the sketched images underneath. Scale the sketches to roughly match the layout and use the Eraser tool to carefully take out any areas you don’t need.

14

Now you’ve decided on the composition of your piece and what you’re trying to achieve using this style of illustration, open up your copy of Illustrator and create a document from scratch. Import one of the sketches via File>Place. Lock the placed item and create a new layer for your trace line work.

15 13

When composing an illustration, you should give it a focal point if you can, a point that interests the viewer and entices them to look more closely at the work. There’s no magic formula to this, but often taking a break and coming back to the image afresh helps you see things from a different perspective. Think about colour balance and how one image connects with another.

Using the Pencil tool, and setting the weight as 0.5m black with no stroke in fill, break the sketched image down into simple line work using the light and shade from the image as a guide.

16

The characters are too flat and need to be better integrated with the page. Using the method outlined in Step 12, select and paste several large paint stains to cover most of the page. With Select>Colour Range, select the darker tones and set Tolerance to 60. Copy and paste over the characters and set this new layer to Colour Burn mode.

^

INSIGHT WACOM TABLETS We’d recommend using a Wacom tablet for this kind of project – it’s ideally suited to a freehand style of digital art. Unlike a mouse, a tablet gives you more control over the lines you’re drawing, and is just like drawing on paper with a pencil.

17

Lock the simple line-work layer and set the Pencil tool stroke weight to 1mm. Choose a different or bright colour for this, so you can see it clearly against your previous work.

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18

When drawing the abstract line work, try not to be too precise or too complex; you can always clean it up later. If you set the Cap and Joint on the Curved setting, it helps.

19

Once you’ve finished an area, select the line work and group. Choose another colour for a different area, select the line work and group again. Continue to use contrasting colours for other areas, as this helps when selecting fill-in colours later on.

20

When you’ve finished all your line work, it’s time to start blocking in the colours. This is where the simplicity of working with Illustrator comes to light. It’s easy to select paths and fill with colour, simply using the Colour palette.

22

When you’ve got the colour swatches up, you’ll see just how easy the process is. When making your selection, take a look at the colours in the original image you used for inspiration. Select five to six colours in a row from the Swatch menu, as this way they’ll have the same hue when they’re turned darker or lighter.

23

Colour detailed areas first. Spend time getting the colour right, and if you feel the jump from one colour to the next is too harsh, use a gradient.

25

The illustration should start to come together now. You can begin cleaning up the paths where necessary, and thinking about how each area of the image will interact with the others.

24 21

Don’t bother with the CMYK sliders at this stage; instead, choose the Pantone Colour Swatch libraries. Bring this up by going to Window>Swatch Libraries, and choosing Solid to Process.

64 Computer Arts_April 2004

Experiment with the line weight and colour as you work, and remember that we’re not trying to recreate the original inspiration reference – we want to interpret it in an abstract way. As you build up to colour, you may find that you either need to add new line work to improve the image, or to erase some of the original line work.

26

Once you’re happy with all the individual images, create a new Illustrator file to the size of the finished illustration, select each image, group them, then copy and paste into the new file. There’s no need to add new layers, because each image will be grouped.

^

Tutorial

INSIGHT HONING IN At this stage, you’ll find it easier to concentrate on each layer and part of the image individually. Spend time on the details for a better overall effect.

30

If the illo is going to be printed in a four-colour process, make the Pantone colours CMYK. Select all the colours on the Swatch pop-up and double-click on any swatch to open the Swatch Options window. Click on Colour Type, select Process Colour, click on Colour Mode, then select CMYK.

27

Once you’ve carefully copied and pasted all the illustrations into the new file, as shown above, you’ll need to start working on the actual composition of the illustration.

29

Even at this stage, don’t be afraid to move things around and change the colours or line weights. Remember that we’re no longer working with five illustrations – this piece of work has to function as a single image.

28

Now refer back to the original Photoshop file and position the illustrations roughly in the same areas. Make some creative decisions as to what needs to move and which illustrations should be at the front. Ask yourself whether you need to add some more detail to help the elements interact.

31

Once you’re happy with the composition, clear all the menu windows from the screen, sit back and take a look at the illustration in its entirety. Sometime, you can get too close to a project and not be able to see the effect of the whole composition.

FINAL STEP

B

ut if you are happy with the result, save your image as an Illustrator EPS file and you’re done. Experiment with these techniques using other original sources as the foundation of your images, and take a look at www.debutart.com to see more of Nick Reddyhoff’s portfolio, where he has applied his trademark montage style to commercial projects.

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Q&A

FREEHAND

SHORTCUTS Using simple techniques in FreeHand, you can add detail and life to your logotypes. Here, the typographical gurus at Identikal show you how to get the best out of your letterforms, using one of their recent projects as an example feel,”Hayes explains (see image above). To do this, Identikal relied on a strict grid. This had to cover all the elements within the logotype, so that when a shape was changed or moved in any way, it could be snapped back into place without harming the smooth flow of the other letterforms and shapes. O “ nce we had accurately arranged our grid, we had to make sure that each glyph flowed into one another to create clarity and hierarchy within the logo,” continues Hayes. W “ e then needed all this work to be signed off by Def Jam. As soon as the client was happy with the shapes, we could get cracking on the typeface and its 60+ glyphs.”

I

dentikal (www.identikal.com) was recently approached by Def Jam recordings, and asked to create an original logotype for the up-and-coming urban music artist, TAZ. Def Jam was looking for something that particularly related to the culture of urban-style music, and that captured the essence of the artist and his character. The solution Identikal offered was to create a typeface as well as a logotype that had a street typography theme, using thick and thin lines. Def Jam liked the idea, so Identikal produced range of different concepts to choose from.

With the logotype signed off and the typeface created, Identikal used the thick and thin line technique to create a range of different shapes for the logo. T “hese shapes will be used for a variety of things – like T-Shirts and sleeve artwork – and in ranges of sizes.”Above, you can see clearly how Identikal harmonises the logo with the typeface; notice how the logotype stands out among the glyphs of the typeface. W “ e’re happy with the result,” concludes Hayes. A “ s are TAZ and Def Jam. We’re looking forward to seeing how the logotype is used in the future.”In the meantime, follow the tutorial below and try out Identikal’s techniques. INFO Expertise supplied by Nick Hayes of Identikal: [email protected], www.identikal.com

CREATING FUNKIER LOGOTYPES

These rough visuals included a range of grafitti styles and techniques. T “he artist TAZ seemed to really like it – it represented the music scene and his style,”says Identikal’s Nick Hayes.“ In the end, after a lot of tweaking and changing, their client chose a logo that they felt suited him most. This was the thick and thin line logotype that was based on a ‘dub piece’ style of grafitti. Identikal needed to add some more diversity to the shapes, and also, because this logotype would need to be made into a working typeface, they had to consider how other glyphs would work well with the current letterforms.” W “ e created this thick and thin logotype style in FreeHand, and because it is a vector logotype, we could change it and add to it until we got the right look and

BECAUSE IT IS A VECTOR LOGOTYPE, WE COULD CHANGE IT AND ADD TO IT UNTIL WE GOT THE RIGHT LOOK AND FEEL…

1

It’s really important that you create an accurate grid to work with. This enables you to make changes to each shape within the logotype and then place it back in order.

2

3

4

Once you’ve created your logotype, group the shapes and duplicate the logo. Snap both logos to the grid, with the top logo having a white fill and the bottom layer a thick outline of black. Your work now comes to life!

When creating a flowing logotype, make each individual letter flow from one to the next. With the TAZ logo, for instance, each letter connects snugly with its neighbour.

Once you’re happy with the background outline, expand the stroke of the outline to the correct thickness of line. Now combine these outlines, so you get one large shape behind your flowing logotype.

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ILLUSTRATION BY SCOTT HANSEN www.iso50.com

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Tutorial

• FLASH • DREAMWEAVER • FIREWORKS

WEB DESIGN MADE EASY Create a simple Website based on an illustration: Using Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks together, you can produce a beautifully interactive site – and there’s no steep learning curve If you’re trying to create a Website, and you’re new to the Web design scene, the last thing you need is a huge learning curve standing between you and your new site. This is often the case with talented illustrators, who are brilliantly gifted but have never tackled a Website before. Well, thanks to Macromedia’s MX suite of tools, now almost anyone can create a simple, good-quality site without paying loads of cash for training. Here, we demonstrate how to build a simple Website that’s based on an illustration by Scott Hansen (www.iso50.com) – see Hansen’s profile on page 74. We’re going to start by chopping the image up in Fireworks, bringing it into Dreamweaver and then adding Flash elements to give it some interactivity. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have gained the basic knowledge required to turn a quality illustration into a simple Website to showcase your work. When you’ve completed this tutorial, take a look at the Masterclass MX 2004 magazine, free with this issue. The fourth in our series, this latest issue explores the benefits of integrating the Macromedia MX programs. INFO Tutorial by Ryan Carson from the Creative Fight Club that is www.bd4d.com. You can get in touch on [email protected]. Supplement available to subscribers and UK newsstand only.

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^

INSIGHT

WEB PAGES Create a simple but highly visual site with one of your illustrations or graphics – and all in just 25 steps

OPTIMISING YOUR HTML When you’re slicing your images up in Fireworks for the first time, try to select each segment in a way that will produce the smallest file sizes. The best way to do this is slice up areas of one colour. This will enable you to use a background colour in the HTML, instead of a graphic, and it will cut down the overall size of your HTML page.

7

Now create the slice where the Flash navigation is going to be placed. It’d be a nice touch to bring out the deer as the user rolls their mouse over them, particularly as they’re the visual focus of the piece.

1

Start by opening up your high-resolution image in Fireworks and saving it as 72dpi image. Because most screens can only display this resolution, there’s no point having it any higher.

4

Now that we’ve got the illustration down to a size that’s Web-compatible, we need to prepare it for inserting into a Web page. Fireworks has a wonderful tool called the Slice tool that we’ll be using for this.

8

Note that once you create a slice with the Slice tool, you can easily resize the slice by dragging one of its four corners or any of its sides. Try zooming (Ctrl+= on the PC or Command+= on the Mac) into the deer and fine-tuning your slice.

2

Go to Modify>Canvas>Image Size. Choose 72dpi for Resolution and make sure Pixels/Inch is selected. This will reduce the width and height of the image quite significantly, which is perfect for us, because we want the image to fit inside the Web browser window without scrolling.

5

We’re going to be making the navigation in Flash and adding an Iframe, so we need to chop up the image accordingly. Normally, it wouldn’t be wise to make a Website that is this heavy on graphics, but as it’s going to be a portfolio site for an illustrator, this is acceptable. There’s going to be an Iframe that will act as the window for viewing different pages (About, Contact, Past Work and so on).

9

Now feel free to create slices for the rest of the illustration, until the entire image is covered. You can create these however you please. The main reason for slicing the image up is to ensure the site loads efficiently when someone visits it.

3

Now that we’ve knocked the resolution down to the appropriate level for Web browsing, we need to size the image so it fits in a browser. As we’re creating a portfolio site for an illustrator, it’s safe to assume that the site visitors will be using a screen resolution of at least 1024x768. Go ahead and resize the width and height to fit into this size (Modify>Canvas>Image Size). Make sure you leave Constrain Proportions checked.

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6

Now we’ll start slicing up the illustration so we can use it in the Web page and in the Flash navigation. Choose the Slice tool by selecting it from the Tools menu or hitting K. Go ahead and make the first slice where the Iframe is going to be placed.

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT UPDATING LINKS In Dreamweaver, you can update links in a page’s Flash file without having to open Flash. First, if you haven’t done so already, set up a home page for the site. In your site definition, click on the Advanced tab and then select Site Map Layout. Make sure Display Dependent Files is checked. Now all you have to do is open up Site Map View (Window>Files) and select Map View from the dropdown. It’s that straightforward. Alternatively, hit the + sign next to your SWF file and the links should appear beneath it. Click on the link to modify it and hit Enter. When Flash asks if it should update the links in the SWF file, hit Update – and you’re done!

10

Let’s name some of the slices so that when we export them, it’ll be easier to identify them and create the HTML. Choose the slice where our Iframe is going to go and open up the Properties panel (Ctrl+F3 on the PC, Command+F3 on the Mac). Type ‘iFrame’ in the Slice text area. Now choose the slice over the four deer and enter ‘flashNavBackground’ into the Slice text area on the Properties panel.

15

When you’re ready, click Save on the Export window. Fireworks will go ahead and create all the images and the HTML file to accompany it.

13 11

Here’s where the real magic of Fireworks MX comes into play – when exporting this illo to a Web page. First, we choose what kind of images we want to export: GIF or JPEG. Open up the Layers panel (F2) and lock the Background layer.

Now that we’ve chosen what types of images we’d like to export, we need to choose how the HTML page is going to be built. There are two standard options: HTML tables or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). We’d highly recommend CSS, as it produces cleaner code and it gives you greater control over the page layout. Click File>Export.

14 12

Drag-select the whole page to select all your image slices. In the Properties panel, choose JPEG – Smaller File in the dropdown. This tells Fireworks to create JPEGs that are highly compressed when it exports these images. If you prefer, select each slice and choose a different type.

In the Save as type: dropdown, choose CSS Layers (.html). Now click on the Options… button. Choose Generic XHTML from the HTML Style: dropdown on the General tab. It’s always good practice to make sure your HTML is XHTMLcompliant, too (technogeek for ‘It will look better in more browsers’). You can leave the remaining options set to their default values.

16

Open up Dreamweaver and find the HTML file that was just created for you by Fireworks. You can see the many tags it has generated; these are CSS tags that specify where the images rest on the page. They are absolute X and Y values.

17

Now we’re going to add the Iframe to the page. Inside the tag, replace the tag with this:

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^

INSIGHT

GET YOUR SITE NOTICED There are a few important portal sites that will help your site get more traffic. Make sure to submit your new link to these sites: Design is Kinky (www.designiskinky.net) K10K (www.k10k.net) BD4D (www.bd4d.com) Newstoday (www.newstoday.com) Linkdup (www.linkdup.com) Pixelsurgeon (www.pixelsurgeon.com) Surfstation (www.surfstation.lu) Computerlove (www.computerlove.net)

23

After you’ve exported the Flash movie (Shift+Enter on the PC, Command+Enter on the Mac), go back to Dreamweaver. Select the deer layer. In Code view (View>Code), select the tag and delete it. The click Insert>Media>Flash. Browse for the nav.swf file we just exported.

18

When working with Dreamweaver, it’s always an excellent idea to create a Site. Hit F8 or Window>Files to open up the Files Panel. Choose Manage Sites… from the dropdown, then choose New… Now enter in a Site Name and browse for the folder where your HTML file lives.

21

Trace the shape of the deer with the Paintbrush tool, then select it and hit F8 to turn it into a symbol. Choose Button and give it an appropriate name, then double-click your new symbol and add a smooth rollover effect for the button. This will give the Web page an interactive feel, instead of using simple HTML link hotspots on the images.

19

The next step is to create simple contact.html and blank.html pages. Blank.html will be the default page when a user comes to visit this site; they can then navigate using the Flash nav we’ll create later on. Create a new file in Dreamweaver and save it to the same directory as your homepage. Dreamweaver MX 2004 is great, because it automatically creates CSS styles for your text colour and font size, instead of using the ancient tag.

22

Copy the Beam root and label the copy ‘Rays’. Instance the Beam Generator event and label the new event Rays Generator. Remove the SpawnFork and Spawn-Trails tests, and the Scale and both Force operators. Wire this new event to the Rays root.

20

Now that we’ve created our basic homepage, we can create the Flash navigation. Open up Flash MX and create a new document 156 pixels wide by 74 high. Import the background image (flashNavBackground.jpg) exported from Fireworks.

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24

Now we’ll demonstrate a handy feature of Dreamweaver MX and its integration with Flash. Select the Flash file in Design view, then click Play in the Properties panel (Window>Properties). This enables you to actually see what the SWF looks like, without even leaving Dreamweaver.

FINAL STEP

Y

ou’ve now taken an illustration and turned it into a simple yet attractive Web portfolio site. Carry on exploring the powerful capabilities behind the MX suite of tools. When you’ve completed this tutorial, please send us links to all those beautiful new Websites at: [email protected].

1

2

3

4

1. A poster for Sacramento-based musicians Command Collective. “It was one of the first complex posters I ever did,” says Hansen.

the previous posters I’d done for CC,” explains Hansen. “I wanted to bring all the trademark elements together.”

2. A flat vector-style event poster, created in Illustrator.

5. An early poster for Command Collective, created in Illustrator. “This was the first time I tried to experiment outside the boundaries of what I considered a typical concert poster,” remembers Hansen. “Many of the techniques developed while making this poster are now central to my process.”

3. A promotional poster for Hansen’s next album, Huron Spectrum, available in spring of this year. 4. This is another Command Collective poster for a new show in San Francisco. “With this one I wanted to embody the style of all

74 Computer Arts_April 2004

6. Artwork for Hansen’s new EP, Tycho The Science of Patterns.

Profile

PROFILE

SCOTT HANSEN EMAIL [email protected] WEBSITE www.iso50.com

Scott Hansen’s life is a constant stream of design – from his day job as an in-house designer to his evenings of composing music and designing impressive posters. I“work for a Web hosting company. It’s pretty boring, so I work on ISO50 stuff to keep myself sane,”he says. I“’ve been doing a lot of freelance design and illustration lately, so I’m looking towards doing that full-time.”His clients range from magazines to small businesses and record companies. His prime software tools? Photoshop and Illustrator. I“ “ sually, I do the distressing and detailing in Photoshop,”he explains. U photograph interesting textures and extract them to overlay and give a brushed or worn effect. I also use gradients and shading.” We find out what makes him tick – and it seems to be music… Which Website do you visit most?

Google. Beyond that, I tend to frequent Johan Bakken’s site, www.styleboost.com, to get my daily dose of design. What are you obsessed by?

Creating music and designing posters. Name one brilliant illustrator/designer

Arnaud Mercier (www.elixirstudio.com). What are you working on now?

A couple of logo and branding projects for The Dual Group (www.thedualgroup.com). Plus several new poster designs for a show I have coming up in San Francisco, and the next version of ISO50. What is your strangest client experience? 5 6

I was working on a project with Dusty Brown (www.pushobject.com) on a numerologist site. During one of my first meetings with him, he began to describe his philosophy on the creation of the world. It involved aliens populating the Earth for the purpose of mining or something… What do you read in bed?

Any magazine I have lying about: Future Music (www.futuremusic.co.uk) most of the time. And the occasional book. What is your ultimate ambition?

To support myself making music and designing posters full-time. What is your favourite city?

San Francisco. How do you celebrate completing a project?

A pitcher of beer and a relaxing night with friends. Best album to work to?

Arovane’s Atol Scrap. If you weren’t busy being a designer, what would you be doing now?

Finishing my album. Music is my first love, but it’s very hard to make much money at it – I pay the bills with design. What keeps you awake at night?

Making music. By the time I get home from my day job and put in some hours on freelance design projects, it’s pretty late, so I tend to be up extremely late trying to make time for music.

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REVIEWS

Visit our Website for the Computer Arts online reviews archive:

www.computerarts.co.uk/reviews

SOFTWARE

VERDICT

★★★★★ OUR FIVE-STAR RATING EXPLAINED For a piece of software or hardware to make it into Computer Arts’ reviews section, it has to reach a certain standard. Truly dire products will be ignored, which is why you’ll rarely see one-star ratings. Our reviewers are experts in their own fields. We assess tools from the viewpoint of the professional designer. Does the product do what it’s meant to do? Is the interface clean? Is it quick, reliable and useful? And is it good value?

Studio Artist 3 P78 Boris RED 3GL P80 DAZ|Studio P82 Stitcher 4 P83 iModeller 3D 2 P84 VideoToaster 3 P86 HARDWARE

Olympus E1 P87 Canon i990 P88 Creative Stuff P90 BOOKS

Logo, Font and Lettering Bible P92 Extending Flash MX 2004 Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips GROUP TEST

Computer Arts Recommended awards are only given to products that are particularly good value, or truly excel in what they do.

COMPOSITING APPLICATIONS P94 After Effects 6 Commotion Pro Mirage Digital Fusion DFX+4 Combustion 3

Occasionally at Computer Arts, we come across a piece of software that we can’t put down, but we don’t know exactly why. Studio Artist 3 from Synthetik is a one such application. Its range of features is, without doubt, remarkable – and its workflow suitably quirky. Results are great, too. Turn the page for the full review. This month, we also have an exclusive preview of the forthcoming DAZ|Studio – a tool that looks to be the first serious competition Curious Labs’ Poser has had in a long time. Boris RED 3GL proves to be a great tool if you’re looking for quality video effects in a hurry, while reliable panorama-creation app Stitcher struts its stuff with an excellent version 4. Turn to page 84 for the Computer Arts verdict. In terms of hardware, we have our normal eclectic mix of gear and gadgets in Creative Stuff, as well as a superb Canon A4 photoquality inkjet and the Olympus E1 – a digital SLR that doesn’t quite deliver, despite some top specs. And last but not least, we’ve rounded up five of the best compositing apps available – see if you agree with our verdict. Until next time… Rob Carney Deputy Editor [email protected]

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STUDIO ARTIST 3

MAC

$379 ($179 UPGRADE)

GRAPHICS A brand new release of the world’s only ‘graphics synthesiser’ Æ CONTACT Synthetik Software Buy online www.synthetik.com

Æ SYSTEM MAC PowerPC • 32MB RAM • QuickTime 6 • OS 8.6 or higher, including OS X

Æ FOR • Huge range of presets • Video tools are excellent • Great fun to use

AGAINST Æ

• Difficult to learn • Even harder to master

W

ith every iteration of Studio Artist, we’re both impressed and baffled. Why? Because it’s unlike any other painting, rotoscoping or natural media tool currently available. The interface is quirky, just about everything runs from a single context-sensitive palette and the learning curve is positively vertical. That said, the rewards can be fantastic… The concept underpinning Studio Artist is automation. Or at least semi-automation. The app differs from other image-editing programs by asking you to define a source image right from the start. Only then does it ask you to define a canvas. This is because Studio Artist holds a source image in RAM and then draws from it, according to your actions. Sound confusing? Well, it is a little at first. At its most basic level, you can import a source image, then hit a preset and sit back while Studio Artist recreates your image in a natural media stylee. The application has over 3000 such presets – so you’re a little spoilt for choice. These are divided into logical categories, ranging from standard natural-media effects, such as Watercolour, Oil and Pencils, to more quirky offerings such as Bubbly, Fur and Liquid. Each category holds a plethora of individual paint styles. In the Liquid category, for example, you’ll find Active Liquid, Frothy Ink, Flowy Liquid and others. Each one boasts its own particular properties, some of which you can edit using the Paint Synthesiser dropdown menu. Here you

SYNTHETIK SOFTWARE HAS GONE TO GREAT EFFORTS TO HELP YOU GET STARTED. LET’S FACE IT, YOU’RE GOING TO NEED IT

can alter everything from blending modes to random flow, but it takes some getting used to. At first, you’ll be sliding sliders and clicking buttons without a clue as to what you’re doing. Persevere, though, and it does eventually click into place. And then you can save individual settings to a Favourites pane for use in future projects.

GRAPHICS SYNTHESISER One thing we should mention early on when talking about Studio Artist 3 is the sheer effort Synthetik Software has put into the introductory materials. Let’s face it, you’re going to need them. Included with the app are over eight hours of video tutorials across three CD-ROMs. This is the kind of extra content that every creative app should ship with. In-keeping with the current trend of tracing bitmaps to create clean, vector-based images, Studio Artist 3 introduces a ‘Vectorizer’ tool. This is pretty straightforward, converting regions of bitmaps into vector paths and objects, in the style of the preset you choose. You can save out the resulting image as an EPS for further editing in Illustrator or other vector app. In addition, you can apply this effect to still images or imported QuickTime files. Studio Artist 3 is pretty nifty when it comes to handling QuickTime files, and generating movies from still images as well. That said, the process can prove rather tricky until you’re accustomed to Studio Artist’s quirky ways. You’ll probably struggle to even find the timeline (it’s in the Layers palette) at first, let alone create any sort of animation. But once you’ve negotiated Bé zier warps and morphs and the basic-looking, yet pretty standard keyframe-based timeline, all fits into place. One of the app’s best features is the ability

VERDICT

★★★★★ This isn’t the easiest graphics application to get to grips with – particularly for those wanting to dig a little deeper; the learning curve is hugely frustrating. Fast results are possible if you rely on the paint presets, but persevere and Studio Artist 3.0 really comes into its own. Studio Artist 3 adds a Vectorizer tool – making it possible to quickly transform bitmap images into editable EPS files like these.

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Review

Æ FEATURES • Image processing • Real-time video effects • Warping • Morphing • Timeline-based effects • Vectorisation tools • Auto-painting and rotoscoping • Over 3000 editable paint presets

The application incorporates a plethora of animation features, and can import QuickTime movies for rotoscoping. It’s relatively easy to keyframe morphs, warps, Bézier curves and other image elements.

The image-processing tools are simply superb, offering a genuine alternative to the effects produced by bog standard Photoshop filters. A huge number of editable parameters are provided.

to warp an image according to the position of Bé zier curves. This simply involves keyframing the position of curves and results are generated very quickly. The keyframe method is obviously how you morph, warp or blend one still image into another. There are other animation possibilities with this app, though. For instance, using the Presets and Paint Synthesiser tools, you can set up a Paint Action Sequence. This is basically a recording of paint effects – and works much like Photoshop’s Actions command. You can then apply this PAS to a source image, generating a QuickTime movie file. Using this method, you can get a step-by-step painted effect, building a painting up over time. It’s a neat trick. Onion-skinning is also available, for precision animation.

Studio Artist 3 comes loaded with over 3000 paint presets – and enables you to use them in an automatic, semi-automatic or completely manual way.

ROTOSCOPING MOVIES The other animation possibilities come in the form of rotoscoping. Import a QuickTime movie into Studio Artist 3, select a Paint preset, then use the app’s auto-rotoscoping to generated a painterly effect on each frame – thus creating a filtered QuickTime movie. Just like when applying an effect to a still image, you can choose for the app to automatically draw from your source image, or you can build up the effect manually. Both techniques can be time-consuming, but the results look terrific. Another feature worth noting is the fact you can grab stills or real-time moving images from an Apple iSight or other FireWire camera. This application isn’t the fastest, though, and tends to fall over on older machines with low-end specs. Of course, as with most intensive processing apps, the more RAM the better – but with Studio Artist 3 you’d be advised to kit out your Mac with at least 1GB, especially if dealing with video files or huge source files. If you can, opt for the OS X version; it’s quicker than its Classic counterpart. There’s also no multiple Undo, which is very frustrating for what is largely an experimental application. That said, the pros well outweigh the cons. Studio Artist 3 is the kind of application that’ll appeal to everyone from the graphics novice with meagre graphic design or illustration skills to the professional firmly rooted in the graphics, illustration or video industries. It’s scalable in power, depending on what you want to get out of it – and whatever you do get out of it generally looks good. It’s quirky and unique, and sometimes even we’re not quite sure why we like it so much… Once mastered, though, it’ll help you achieve great things.

You can use Studio Artist’s many paint presets manually or apply them automatically. With the latter, you simply import an image, hit the Action button and let the app do all the hard work.

The new Vectorisation tools enable you to create a vectorbased image in a number of different styles – including Cubit and edge extraction. You can then save the results out to EPS.

MSG What’s that? Modular Synthesised Graphics? Oh it’s all the rage, apparently… Studio Artist 3 introduces MSG – not the Chinese foodstuff additive, but Modular Synthesised Graphics. This is the application’s new presetbased modular effects and graphical synthesiser plugin architecture – which enables you to expand the software beyond its standard preset effects. There are a number of MSG preset collections supplied with the

application, and by combining these, adjusting sliders and so on, you can create an unlimited number of different effects – for use on your still or moving images. Then, you can save out the effect and reuse it within Studio Artist’s Paint Synthesiser. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is – but then that’s half of what learning SA is all about!

The Bézier warp tools enable you to select part of an image and then modify the curve over time. The content follows the direction of the curve.

One great feature of Studio Artist 3 is the ability to grab from a FireWire video camera, be it an iSight or DV camcorder. You can also process real-time video.

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BORIS RED 3GL

PC AND MAC

£1115

SPECIAL FX Apply animated text, 3D titles, filters, particles and 3D layers, directly from the timeline Æ CONTACT Planet PC 01274 713 400 www.borisfx.com

Æ SYSTEM PC/MAC Works with over 20 NLEs from Adobe, Apple, Avid, Discreet, Media 100, Sony and more. For a full listing, take a look at www.borisfx.com

Æ FOR • OpenGL for quick rendering • Simple 3D titling and animation • Good lighting effects

Æ AGAINST • Although workable, the keying isn’t the best on the market • Average particle effects • Quite pricey

Spheres and planes are manipulated in 3D, although beginners may find the interface easier to implement than those in After Effects.

W

ith previous releases, Boris Red was sometimes thought of as an inferior version of After Effects, but this is a little unfair – its 3D titling makes it a very different beast. If you own After Effects, you might not need the other features that Red has to offer; Boris’ titling app Graffiti would be a better choice. But if you own Final Cut Pro or a similar NLE and want to delve into special effects and 3D titling, Boris Red 3GL has a lot to offer. Despite the two massive manuals, it’s IF YOU OWN FINAL CUT PRO OR A SIMILAR NLE relatively easy to learn, intuitive, and works AND WANT TO DELVE INTO SPECIAL EFFECTS largely directly from your timeline. AND 3D TITLING, RED HAS A LOT TO OFFER You apply Red as a filter in your editing timeline, then the interface appears and it feels like you’re in another app. This saves time because you don’t have to repeatedly export and import clips, and you can see the results in the timeline. In this respect, Red is far better than After Effects. Although the latter is regarded as one of the best titling and compositing apps, Red provides serious competition, especially with the 3D titling tools. Long overdue is the ability to type and edit text directly over the video image. Boris Red 3GL isn’t the best The Photoshop-like Text tool is something that users have compositing application on longed for and it genuinely expedites workflow. You can the market, but it has good still access the Text window to make adjustments, but then filter effects, advanced control you can make most changes via the more intuitive Controls of 3D layers and quick 3D window. Block justification snaps text into place when titles. It’s relatively easy to required, which saves some fiddly messing about. learn, even for beginners.

VERDICT

★★★★★

If you want better keying and don’t need the 3D titles, stick to After Effects.

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ENHANCED WORKFLOW In this upgrade, the interface looks the same as ever, but it’s far less clunky thanks to the new ‘enhanced workflow’. This

means that many of Red’s annoying problems and difficulties have been eradicated. Keyboard shortcuts are customisable, workspaces can be saved and you can store favourites in the Filter palette. This is what you’d expect from a product that wants to get into the same ballpark as After Effects Pro. Unlimited Undos are also a big help. This program has always been noted for the instant transformation of text into 3D text, with the option to animate each character independently. Red 3GL has improved animation control, so that you can animate individual letters, groups or who batches of words. It’s possible to create and animate, add multiple lights and composite broadcast quality 3D titles in minutes. As well as all the expected controls, there are many ways to add textures and clips to letters, with control over every face, edge and bevel of a character or word. Speeding up the whole process is Red’s implementation of OpenGL, to make 3D workable in real time. Although you don’t need an OpenGL card to use Red, having one will let you do all your 3D work almost instantly. It’s possible to move 3D objects, cameras and lights in complex animations, and have them render so quickly you don’t feel like you’re rendering at all. Without one, Red is as painfully slow to render as any other 3D application. As you’d expect, countless effects filters are included; this release sees 40 new additions, although many are lifted from other Boris products. Some are more useful than others, and require imagination to get good results. If you’re a Final Cut Pro user, though, why bother with Red’s limited colour-correction filters when you can use your own? There’s no harm in having the filters there, and some are very useful, especially when it comes to keying. Light Wrap can be found in many filter and compositing apps,

Review

Æ FEATURES • Expanded 3D effects environment • 2D and 3D animated charts • Advanced title animation • Direct placement and editing of titles on a video image • Over 40 new filters • Optical flow technology • Instant effects • Workflow enhancements • Faster renders • New hardware and software integration It takes just moments in Boris Red 3GL to lay textured 3D text, properly lit and composited, over your video footage.

letting background light wrap onto a foreground element, but Red’s version is easy to use and creates good results with minimum fuss. Other classic filters include Light Zoom, one of the best ray-creation filters on the market. Red’s overrated natural media creation doesn’t appear to have improved at all – a click of a button and you can, in theory, create customisable wood, metal and plastic. But the textures look far too CGI. With much effort, you can toggle, filter and composite them to create good results, but there are simpler ways to achieve the same effect, such as importing real textures. There are several different rendering modes in Red, for different types of 2D and 3D work. Although there are technical reasons for having a variety of render modes, Final Cut Pro users (who work in a mode-free environment) may find this frustrating. If you want 3D layers to intersect, for instance, you need to select a different render mode. You also need to gather objects into 3D containers before they’ll intersect. In an ideal world, there’d be no need to switch modes or gather objects in this way. Boris is very proud of the fact that Red 3GL works with lots of third-party plug-ins, and can be integrated with over

OPTICAL FLOW Red’s smooth filter for controlling time Time remapping is found in most effects apps and enables you to convert ordinary footage into slow motion, or slur between fast and slow-mo. Results can be disappointing, though, with degraded footage and an artificial feel. Red’s Optical Flow filter offers greater control and generates much smoother results. Slowing down footage often creates stuttering; for true slow motion, you should really speed up your film camera. With video, good slow motion

is thought to be just about impossible. But Optical Flow does a surprisingly good job, with both film and DV footage, and the results look unprocessed. This filter will be extremely popular, given that slow motion is so frequently required in film, commercials and music videos. The learning curve for this filter is steeper than most aspects of Red, though, so be prepared. To get the most from it, you’ll need to sit down with the manual and work through it step by step.

A combination of OpenGL technology and enhanced workflow make Red quick, even with complex 3D composites.

New natural media include Rock and Steel Plate, which you can easily apply to 3D surfaces. You can animate all the parameters, too.

20 NLEs, but for the average user you’ll only want to know whether it works with your application. Although this level of compatibility is welcome, it is perhaps more of a matter of company pride than user benefit.

WEIGHING IT UP One of the more unexpected new additions to Red is the instant creation of charts and graphs, which can be rendered in 3D. To some this may cheapen the product by making it look like a corporate-presentation workhorse, rather than a high-end effects package, but if you ever need to create a 3D pie chart, you now have an easy way to generate what you want. The charts animate beautifully and are easy to work with. Particle generators remain a little disappointing and dated. With expertise and patience, you might be able to create some worthwhile particle effects, but nothing to compare with the effects you’d get from a dedicated particle generator, or a compositors such as combustion 3. Compositing is now such standard fare in effects applications that it’s easy to forget that this is one of Red’s better points. Although many users wouldn’t dream of compositing in anything other than Shake or After Effects, you can do perfectly good work in Red, with a little patience. Although it lacks the advanced keying found in Primatte and Keylight (which are bundled with the aforementioned apps), you can still pull good mattes and tidy them up as required. You won’t be able to do everything you can imagine, but with this many filters, and such simple control of 3D layers and objects, Red is a good introduction to compositing and special effects software.

Typing directly over the video image, then manipulating the words in the control window, makes creating animated text in Red 3GL much easier than before.

New filters include a variety of Spiral and Radial blurs, along with Light Zoom. More subtle filters, such as Match Grain and Degrain, are less striking initially, but equally useful.

You can create striking 3D pie charts and graphs instantly, and then animate them in 3D space. Impressive results take seconds.

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PREVIEW

DAZ STUDIO

PC AND MAC

£Free

3D Watch out, Poser – your market-leader status could be about to change

DAZ Studio offers a significantly friendlier interface than Poser, particularly when it comes to browsing your 3D assets.

Æ CONTACT DAZ Productions +1 801 495 1777 www.daz3d.com

Æ SYSTEM PC Pentium III 300MHz • 128MB RAM • 10MB HD space • OpenGL graphics card • 32-bit colour • Win 98 MAC G4 400MHz • 128MB RAM • 10MB HD space • OpenGL graphics card • 32-bit colour • OS X 10.2

VERDICT PREVIEW At zero cost, there’s no reason not to give this public beta of DAZ Studio a look – the first full version will be available any time now, so keep an eye on www.daz3d.com. The tool is competent, if basic, and it’s built on sound ideas, although its future value will depend on how far DAZ and third-party companies can develop it. Having seen how DAZ operates, we’re cautiously optimistic. Watch this space…

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O

ver the last decade, Curious Labs’ Poser has reigned supreme as the king of low-end 3D tools – but now DAZ Studio steps boldly into the marketplace with a public beta, a somewhat shocking price-tag and a wealth of good intentions. Exciting developments, it seems, are just around the corner… DAZ has a remarkably bold vision for the program: it plans to give it away for free! The company believes that by increasing the marketplace for figure posing, it can increase its core business substantially and thus bolster its own future. To encourage take-up, the application has been designed with highly extensible architecture, which means third-party developers will find it much easier to create extra modules for it. These may take the form of rendering, animation, texturing, modelling or manipulation tools. Each new add-on should also integrate seamlessly with the interface. DAZ even has plans for a plug-in certification program. It’ll come as no surprise, then, to learn that DAZ Studio in its current form poses no threat to Poser – nor is it meant to. This is a bare-bones system that will only begin to realise its potential when companies start adding extra functionality. Still, the core program already addresses a few Poser weaknesses, and hints at exciting developments to come.

UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT The first thing you notice about Studio is that it has a much tidier interface than Poser. All its windows and palettes are stackable, dockable and resizable. This means that, unlike Poser, you won’t find libraries opening on top of editing windows. The Content (library) window is situated on the left-hand side of the screen and, like Poser 5, you can add additional libraries; say, a Poser 4 runtime, a custom objects folder, and the native Studio content. By default,

As with Poser 5, DAZ Studio now provides direct control gizmos that you can drag to rotate and translate your figures more easily.

the Content menu is two items wide, but you can enlarge it at the expense of the Editing window. Although it hasn’t yet been implemented, there are plans by the final version to create a more flexible filing structure, through which you can create virtual folders and subfolders in which to store your content – without affecting the actual physical file locations. With the massive expansion in free and commercial content, this addresses one of the most significant limitations in Poser, as version 4’s prehistoric design adds so much time to the browsing stage of scene creation. In stark contrast to Poser, there are also proper scrollbars at every folder level, making it easier for you to navigate your stored content more quickly. The Camera controls are above the Content pane – and there are lots of them. Two very welcome new controls are Camera Rotate (as opposed to Scene Orbit in Poser), and Aim at Selection. Gone are the specific body-part cameras, replaced instead with the more logical Frame Selection. Speaking of selections, Studio includes extended selection, so you could select the left arm of ten characters, then rotate each of them in a single operation by ten degrees. There are now three types of lights: point, distant and spotlight, which extend the subtlety that you can bring to your scenes. That wouldn’t count for much if the renderer was poor, or excruciatingly slow. Fortunately, Studio has a new, fast, high-quality RenderMan-compliant renderer licensed from 3Delight. There are very few options to customise the renderer just yet, but they’ll hopefully come in the final version. The program supports OpenGL, which Curious Labs kept talking about but never managed.

NEW METHODS Although Studio doesn’t support Poser 5 files, it does have its own advanced texturing engine, which falls midway

Review

Æ FEATURES

Clothes conform to standard figures, but you can forget about resized or morphed characters; you’ll have to design their kit yourself.

We experienced quite a lot of problems like this when importing old Poser scenes. The lack of kinematics doesn’t help.

between Poser 4’s ultra-basic offering and the sophisticated node-based engine of Poser 5. Displacement mapping is supported, as are different lighting models, but none of the nice, node-based options from Poser 5 are present. DAZ has changed the Poser way of selecting figures and objects within a scene. No longer is every figure listed separately, requiring you to select the figure in one menu, then its specific body part or prop in another. Nor are props listed as sub-components in separate menus. All elements are contained in a single, scrollable list. Figure elements can be shown individually, or collapsed into groups.

awkward one. Another important caveat: Studio doesn’t support animation, sketch-style rendering, kinematics, Python scripting, Poser 5 scenes, and lots more besides. With its numerous shortfalls, Poser was always there to be shot at, and DAZ Studio has stepped up to have a go. The only trouble is, it has so many visible inadequacies of

DAZ STUDIO IS A SYSTEM THAT WILL ONLY BEGIN TO REALISE ITS POTENTIAL WHEN COMPANIES ADD EXTRA FUNCTIONALITY

EARLY CRITICISMS Having said that, body parts are now classified into far too many sub-groups. To edit the right eye, for instance, you have to follow the following path (opening collapsed folders at every stage): figure/hip/abdomen/chest/neck/ upperneck/head/right eye. You can avoid all the clicking by choosing the Expand All option, but then the menu turns into a vast list that takes ages to search through. As bones are also optionally displayed in this list, DAZ seems to have substituted one unwieldy system for a much better, but still

its own that it’s as likely to take a bullet as it is to dish one out, especially now that Curious Labs has started polling users for its Poser 6 wishlist. DAZ Studio is a work in progress and addresses many of the frustrating interface flaws in Poser. Unfortunately, it also introduces some of its own. Still, it’s a big step in the right direction – and because it’s free it’ll certainly introduce new users to the field. The program is useable, even to Poser owners, and can only get better from here.

• Figure-posing package • Accepts Poser-compatible models • Imports Poser scenes • Poser-beating renderer • Superior memory management • Extensible architecture supports plug-ins • Better file-handling planned • Better asset and model browsing than Poser • Moderate texturing engine • OpenGL scene view

(Above, left) Here’s the main control panel. Note the lack of a master scale control, and the fact that all figures revert to their master geometry names, rather than their figure names. (Above, right) The highly capable texturing engine is slightly more advanced than Poser 4’s, but not a scratch on Poser 5’s.

COMPATIBILITY Using other image formats with DAZ Studio DAZ Studio has to offer some level of compatibility with Poser files to bring on board existing users. It does this using Import mode, as well as supporting most standard content for Poser 4 and below. However, import problems do happen. The lack of kinematics introduces distortions and complicates posing, and we had lighting problems. DAZ is working hard to iron out these glitches – this is a beta, after all – but

the company admits that 100 per cent compatibility is unlikely. Still, it’s surprising to see that Studio doesn’t support Python scripting, especially as DAZ sells many Python-based Poser apps for scene/object manipulation and light creation. If DAZ is going to bring the community along on its journey, it’s going to have to work extra hard to ensure our older files don’t become obsolete overnight.

The program certainly boasts a far better asset browser than any version of Poser – at last, no more time wasted finding content!

With its two new types of light, you can create more interesting set-ups, although your existing light sets won’t look the same. DAZ has conducted extensive tests to achieve maximum compatibility with existing models, but there may still be some glitches to iron out.

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83

STITCHER 4

PC AND MAC £410

IMAGE EDITING The painless way to create panoramas for print and the Web Æ CONTACT Computers Unlimited 020 8200 8282 www.realviz.com

Æ FEATURES Create full 360x180-degree panoramas Stitch multiple rows of images of any resolution ● Unlimited input and output resolution ● 16-bit colour/channel support ● Lens distortion management ● Automatic colour equalisation ● QuickTime VR hotspots ● Exports directly to QuickTime VR and Shockwave ● Spherical, cubic, cylindrical or planar panoramas ● Photoshop integration ● Interactive QuickTime VR preview ● New interpolation methods ● Stencils for removing artefacts ●

●

Æ SYSTEM PC Pentium III 500 MHz ● 128MB RAM ● 50MB HD space ● Win 98 SE/ME/2000 SP2/XP ● 1024x768, 24-bit resolution MAC PowerPC G3 ● 128MB RAM ● 50MB HD space ● OS X 10.1 ● 1024x768, 24-bit resolution

Æ FOR ● ●

Excellent quality Control over output

Æ AGAINST ●

Relatively expensive

VERDICT

★★★★★ Stitcher 4 isn’t the cheapest stitching program around, but if you’re after quality and versatility, anything else would be a false economy. This is a high-end tool with a refreshingly friendly interface that simply gets the job done.

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(Above) As well as standard image and cropping previews, you can adjust QuickTime VR previews in real time. (Left) With good-quality images, you can sling together an effective panorama in a matter of minutes.

N

ow that most digital cameras come with their own stitching software for free, who on Earth would pay for it? Well, Stitcher 4 is aimed largely at professional creatives who need to create the highest-quality panoramas, be they simple images or interactive QuickTime presentations. Basic operation is almost automatic. Load your sequence of images, paste one as a starting point, and then line up the next as accurately as you can by eye. If you’ve taken the pictures correctly, this generally involves a little panning and rotation. Then let Stitcher ‘stitch’ the two together and repeat the process. Once your panorama is complete, you can apply equalisation to all images to balance out their luminosity – particularly handy with skies and other bright areas. Again, if the pics are well-exposed to begin with, Stitcher’s equalisation is extremely effective. Of course, there are problems. Although Stitcher can read lens focal length data from EXIF images, and tries its best to calculate it from other sources, sometimes this isn’t enough. Pics with a low focal length, or those taken with cheaper lenses, often result in distortion, which can make the stitching process impossible. Still, the app can analyse two badly aligned pics, re-distort them and then apply the results to the whole sequence. If you find unwanted artefacts in the panorama, such as an object that has moved across a frame overlap, Stitcher provides a quick way to remove them, using stencils. Just mark the offending area and the software ignores it, using data from the previous or next image (for more sophisticated solutions, see the boxout). Horizon alignment can be carried out automatically, or by hand if necessary (by defining known vertical edges in the scene). Stitcher even has a somewhat cheeky answer to the problem of the image ‘hole’ which occurs at the base of a spherical panorama. Since the camera and tripod is placed there, it’s practically impossible to take a shot of the ground, so Stitcher suggests sticking your logo there and provides a simple option for this. Once you’re ready to render, you’ll find a pleasing number of options. Stitcher supports panoramas in planar,

cylindrical, cubical and spherical formats, along with their QuickTime equivalents. (You can also embed hotspots and define navigation for QT output.) Shockwave 3D and even that old warhorse VRML are also supported, along with a host of image file formats, including native Photoshop PSD. New to version 4 is the ability to select your interpolation method, from the basic and quickest Nearest right up to the high-quality Lanczos5, which can take an age with large images. Cropping, selecting a render area and image size are pretty straightforward using the interactive preview. Stitcher is one of those rare apps: a program which does its job exceedingly well, provides all the tools you need and doesn’t take two days to learn. It can sometimes seem less forgiving than cheaper stitching programs, particularly with inferior images, but there are ways to rectify this. Now it comes with Photoshop support, there really isn’t much more that Realviz can add. This is an excellent app brimming with great ideas. ■

COMPATIBILITY Stitcher 4 joins the design masses One of the most significant additions to version 4 is the ability to output layered Photoshop files. This is useful because the blending between images is stored as a mask file with each layer, and thus can be edited to remove anomalies. For example, a moving object in a scene will usually not be the same from one image to the next, or may not appear at all. This results in a ‘ghosting’ effect; cars, birds and people can all look like semitransparent blurs. By painting out the mask in Photoshop, you can alter the blends between the two images to minimise the prominence of such artefacts (or just remove them altogether). In fact, Stitcher can also work ‘live’ with Photoshop (or any other image editor), updating in realtime. You can export to Photoshop, alter the parameters and then re-import automatically back to Stitcher.

Review

IMODELLER 3D 2

PC AND MAC

$529 (£280)

3D Create excellent 3D models from still images in a matter of minutes

Æ CONTACT VR Interactive Buy online www.vri.ca

Æ PRICING Web version $129 (£68) Pro version $529 (£280)

Æ FEATURES • Quick and easy calibration • Automatic masking • One-button modelling and texturing • Masks to control texturing • Output to major 3D formats

Æ SYSTEM PC Pentium II 400MHz • 64MB RAM • Win 98/ME/NT/2000/XP • A digital camera MAC G4 • OS X 10.1.5 • A digital camera

Æ FOR • Fast capture • High degree of automation • Good manual tools

Æ AGAINST • Expensive • All images have to be calibrated • Meshes could be neater

VERDICT

★★★★★ iModeller 3D 2 manages to automate the modelling process without sacrificing the manual tools. It lacks some of the functionality of its competitors (like the use of non-calibrated images), but the ability to use multiple masks is a powerful feature.

You can go from a set of images to a finished model in four clicks and about three minutes – but results depend on your shooting environment.

O

ver the last few years, a new way of modelling real-world objects in 3D has emerged. It’s not perfect, but if you want to model a non-shiny, convex object using nothing but a digital camera, you can now do it in just a few minutes with a number of packages – the most well-known being UZR 3D, D-Sculptor and Canon’s Software Object Modeller. iModeller 3D, formerly UZR 3D, turns the task into a simple 2D masking job. To model an object, you print out a sheet displaying a marker pattern, stand your object on it (preferably surrounded by a plain background), then snap it from a dozen different angles. From the marker pattern, the software calculates the camera position and zoom setting, and plots the object in 3D space. The shape of the object is then masked in each image, creating a series of silhouettes which the software uses to ‘carve’ out a 3D model. Version 2 streamlines the process considerably, the interface having just four buttons. The first adjusts the exposure of your images to ensure uniformity; the second detects the marker pattern in each image; the third attempts to mask the object automatically; and the fourth builds the 3D model, grabbing textures from the images. This process is fine if you take your photos under studiolike conditions, but if not you’ll need to improve the calibration of your camera and clean up the masking of the object. Fortunately, iModeller 3D supplies manual tools for the job. Calibrating the camera is a matter of pointing and clicking to dictate where the marker points are in your shot. Masking is improved by painting the mask in or out. One of iModeller 3D 2’s main improvements over its rivals is the ability to create not one, but four different

masks for an object. The first is the object mask, which defines the shape of the object. The second and third enable you to dictate which areas of each image should be used to generate textures. This means you can pick the best images for each part of the texture, ensuring that important features, like labels, are captured flawlessly. The final mask enables you to pick out areas of your model for increased mesh density, so the flowers/leaves of a potted plant, for example, are rendered in higher level than the pot itself. A fast, simple-to-use tool that’s well worth trying out.

WEB vs PRO Should you pay £68 or £280? If you intend modelling 3D objects simply for Websites, then the cheaper Web version of iModeller will do just as well. It outputs models as UZR files with the option of a pre-prepared HTML page and Java Applet, so you needn’t worry about coding anything yourself. If you don’t want ‘real’ 3D, you can also export the model as a QuickTime or Flash file. But if you need more functionality – say, you want to animate and render the object – you’ll need to be able to transfer it to a 3D application. For this, you’re going to need the rather more expensive Professional version. This enables you to export your model and its textures for use in 3ds max, Maya, Cinema 4D or LightWave.

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VIDEOTOASTER 3

PC £2500

DV Everything you need for post-production or live studio work, in one box Æ CONTACT Computers Unlimited 020 8200 8282 www.newtek-europe.com

Æ PRICING VideoToaster 3 Post £2500 VideoToaster 3 Live £3500

Æ FEATURES • Uncompressed video capture • Real-time editing and DVE • 3D modelling, animation and rendering • Compositing and video painting • Live video mixing

Æ SYSTEM PC Pentium 2.4GHz • 1GB RAM • Two or more U160 SCSI 15000rpm hard drives, with a controller on a 64-bit PCI bus • NVIDIA or ATI graphics card • Win 2000 (SP3) or XP (SP1)

Æ FOR • Excellent range of software • Cost effective • Full uncompressed video suite

Æ AGAINST • Lack of sound tools • No DVD authoring • Tough hardware requirements

VERDICT

★★★★★ Budget studios will find VideoToaster an ideal set-up – nothing compares. The arguments for using it as a post-production suite are also strong, apart from the weak audio tools and lack of DVD authoring. Choosing VideoToaster 3 makes the most sense if you don’t already have any video tools, and as an autonomous software/hardware bundle it’s excellent value for money.

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It looks familiar, but new workflow-based features and the ability to create Mac and PC projectors from one copy will surely entice upgraders.

V

ideoToaster 3 is a complete post-production and video-mixing suite, offering everything you need to capture, edit, caption and add 2D and 3D effects to video (even uncompressed video) in real time. The more advanced Live version offers a breakout box and fader that enables you to connect up to eight component sources, which you can mix live and send out in any form you choose. In other words, you can use VideoToaster as the centre of a TV studio. The suite comprises a bundle of strong tools: VT Edit (unsurprisingly, an editing package), Aura (a video painting tool), Digital Fusion (not the full version, but the central modules of this compositing package) and LightWave (NewTek’s flagship 3D application). As the software within the suite changes, VideoToaster itself shifts up a gear. However, version 3 isn’t a major overhaul, although newcomer Digital Fusion is a much improved character generator, similar to TitleDeko, and boasts the same kind of presets, both for layout and type styles. Scrolling text on/off the screen is just a matter of a few clicks, but if you want anything more exotic, you’ll need Aura, the full Digital Fusion or LightWave. Still, better control over keyframed effects is now possible. Keyframes are switchable between linear and interpolated, and there’s simple click-drag control of all animated functions. Batch capture has been introduced, too – and there’s a new ‘Tool shed’. This is a list of handy scripts for, say, changing all the transitions on your timeline or automatically snapping edits to a musical beat . VideoToaster falls down quite heavily on audio. The product is based on real-time editing, yet a lot of audio work and effects aren’t practical in real time, currently at least. This is a shame; VideoToaster could’ve had these abilities as non-real-time effects or bundled with a separate audioediting program. It’s also missing a DVD authoring tool; most editors, even low-end ones, provide this function. If you’re an educational establishment, a Web broadcaster, a local TV station or anyone wanting to set up

YOUR TWO OPTIONS Which VideoToaster should you buy? VideoToaster 3 comes in two iterations: Post and Live. The former will set you back £2500, and for your money you get the editor, LightWave, Aura and Digital Fusion. On the hardware side, you get the Toaster card itself, which offers one input/output. For £3500, there’s VideoToaster 3 Live. The advanced model provides the same software bundle, plus a breakout box giving you eight component or 24 composite input/outputs. You also get a mixer remote – like a mini mixing desk. This piece of hardware is simply a controller, featuring a T-bar fader and controls to select transitions and cameras. Without it, you have to do your fading and switching between outputs on-screen. The mixer gives you a much more tactile control over your output. Find out more about the two versions of this suite at www.newtek-europe.com.

a video studio from scratch, VideoToaster is the quickest, slickest, cheapest way to do it. You get everything you need and more, and you can mix live footage from several cameras with VT segments, title captions, live effects and rendered 3D. You’ll even be able to use shots compressed in other video formats in real time on your timeline. If your requirements are more modest, and you don’t plan to broadcast or do live video mixing, VideoToaster will still appeal. You get a strong real-time editor, one of the best 3D packages on the market, a high-quality capture and playback set-up, and two powerful effects packages – all for the price of 3ds max.

Review

OLYMPUS E-1

PC AND MAC £1820

PHOTOGRAPHY The last major camera manufacturer enters the digital system SLR market Æ CONTACT Olympus 0800 072 0070 www.olympuspro.com

Æ FEATURES Highly splashproof magnesium-alloy body ● Five-megapixel 4/3 Kodak CCD sensor ● 4/3 lens mount ● Removable focusing screen ● CCD clean on start-up ● USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces ● sRGB or Adobe RGB colour space ● Noise reduction ● RAW+JPEG support ● User-upgradeable firmware ●

Æ FOR Well built Good battery life ● Nice optics ● ●

Æ AGAINST Expensive Heavy ● Limited accessories ● ●

T

he new Olympus E-1 digital SLR is the first camera to be built around the new 4/3 (pronounced fourthirds) standard devised by Kodak and Olympus. It’s the first of its kind, but for such a ‘revolutionary’ camera design, it doesn’t actually look all that revolutionary. The build quality of the E-1 is solid and the magnesiumalloy body surprisingly heavy for a camera that’s designed to be lightweight. Indeed, the E-1 feels similar to its fixedlens predecessors, the Olympus E-10 and E20. The lens supplied with the E-1 kit is no sylph, either. The Zuiko 14 – 54mm f2.8-3.5 zoom lens (roughly a 28-105mm in 35mm terms) has a pleasingly wide aperture and is well up to the high standard of all Olympus optics. Auto-focus can be switched between continuous or single-shot modes, or you can opt for manual focus using the “focus by wire” system. The E-1’s shutter offers speeds up to 1/4000th of a second, and the sensitivity of the digital sensor can be racked up as high as ISO 3200. You can also switch on a special noise reduction circuit to reduce digital noise in shots taken at the high ISO sensitivities. Graphics professionals will be pleased to note that there’s a choice of sRGB or Adobe RGB colour spaces, so the images should slip easily into the workflow of most studios. Unusually, there’s a choice of USB 2.0 or FireWire interfaces for transferring images to your computer, which makes it ideal for PC and Mac users. The images themselves are stored on CompactFlash cards or MicroDrives, and the FAT322 file system enables large storage cards to be used. Images from the E-1 are relatively smooth and polite at speeds of ISO 100–200, but if you switch up to ISO 400, even in RAW mode, the artefacts start to kick in. Images can be noisy and

The rear of the camera boasts the usual dials and controls, a 1.8-inch TFT colour display – and, of course, a single-lens reflex viewfinder.

disappointing and, as such, the E1 doesn’t produce images as smooth as the Canon 300D or the Nikon D100. On the positive side, battery life is exceptionally good, largely due to the switch from AA cells to a larger rechargeable battery, similar to the type found in both Nikon and Canon SLRs. Because the E1 is being targeted at professional users, no pop-up flash is included. That’s slightly surprising, since even the Canon 10D has a small flash for occasional fill-in use. If you want to use the E-1, be prepared to fork out another £300 or so for the dedicated flash unit. For all the alleged advantages of the new lightweight 4/3 standard, the E-1 weighs in at hefty 660g, excluding battery and lens, which makes it no lightweight. If the aim was to produce a compact professional camera that’s really light and easy to carry, then Olympus has missed the target. There are good things about this camera, but it’s clearly still a first shot by Olympus. With a limited range of lenses and accessories, coupled with a high price for what is only a five-megapixel camera, the E-1 has its work cut out if it wants a decent slice of the professional digital SLR cake. ■

FOUR-THIRDS The new standard in digital photography

VERDICT

★★★★★ The Olympus E-1 is quite a good first attempt, but it’s far too expensive and the image quality isn’t really up there with the best digital SLRs on the market. Hold on to your money for now and wait to see what the E-2 is like.

The E-1’s lens system, a Zuiko zoom, is a formidable beast.

Olympus has a great pedigree in digital cameras, but it’s taken a long time launching its own professional digital SLR system with interchangeable lenses. One reason for the delay was the decision to go with the new 4/3 standard: a new benchmark for digital SLRs. As yet, however, only Olympus, Kodak and FujiFilm have expressed an interest in 4/3, and Olympus is the only manufacturer to have released a 4/3 camera. The new standard shares a common lens mount that, in theory, enables a 4/3 lens from any manufacturer to be used on any 4/3 camera. The lenses should be smaller and lighter, and are matched to the new 4/3 sensor that Kodak has built for the Olympus E-1. This new digital chip is slightly smaller than the type used by Canon and Nikon in their high-end cameras, so the lenses need a shorter focal length to obtain the same angle of view.

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CANON I990 BUBBLEJET

PC AND MAC £299

PRINTER More ink helps Canon produce colour photos to rival conventional silver halide prints Æ CONTACT Canon UK 08705 143 723 www.canon.co.uk

Æ FEATURES Large 5376-nozzle print head Microfine 2-picolitre droplets ● A4 photos in 37 seconds ● Speeds of 16ppm (mono), 12ppm (colour) ● New 7-ink ChromaPLUS technology ● Replaceable print head ● Separate ink tanks ● PictBridge direct printing ● USB 2.0 high-speed interface ● Postcard paper tray ●

●

Æ SYSTEM PC Any PC running Windows 2000/XP • USB 2.0 MAC Any Mac running Mac OS X 10.2.7 or higher • USB 2.0

Æ FOR Superbly fast Virtually grain-free ● Replaceable print head ● ●

Æ AGAINST Large footprint Fussy colour setup ● Lots of ink cartridges to replace ● ●

VERDICT

★★★★ For high-flying professional photographers, the i990 gets close to the quality of ‘proper’ colour photos. The addition of the red ink widens the colour gamut, but does make the device tricky to set up. That said, this superb printer will earn its place in any graphic or photo studio.

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T

he latest crop of photo-quality inkjet printers can turn out pretty impressive results. The multi-ink technology – including special photo cyan and photo magenta colours – that are used on high-end printers can produce images virtually indistinguishable from standard silver halide prints, at least when output on special glossy photo paper. Of course, technology never stands still for long, and now printer manufacturers are looking for ways to produce even higher photo quality prints. Canon’s answer is to broaden the colour gamut of its dye-based inkjet technology by adding yet another ink (a special red) to the five already used (cyan, magenta, yellow, photo cyan, photo magenta and black). Apparently, red is lacking in the current CMYK technology; and with it, Canon hopes to create even more vibrant and grain-free digital images. Thankfully, all the inks are held in separate ink tanks, so you only need to replace each colour as and when it runs out. That’s just as well, because the eight ink tanks cost between £8 and £10 each. As well as upping the colour gamut of the i990, Canon has also increased the speed of this A4 photo printer by developing the longest and highest density print head of any inkjet on the market. With a staggering 5376 nozzles delivering ink droplets measuring just two picolitres in volume, the i990 can rip its way through an A4 photo in around 30 seconds. Borderless prints take a fraction longer. While the i990 is definitely fast and furious, the new red ink does make itself felt in the form of a magenta cast. Before you can start turning out those grain-free photos, you’re going to have to spend some time calibrating the printer and then fitting it into your colour workflow. Out of the box – even with the appropriate ColorSync profile selected – the i990 seems to turn reds into a shade that’s closer to cerise. People look as if they’re wearing lipstick and everyone has a pink face. Still, ICC profiles are supported, so the fine-tuning shouldn’t be too big a deal. The i990 is fitted with two USB interfaces, one of which is a high-speed USB 2.0 port. It’s strange that these two

haven’t been combined into one interface, since the standard is backwardly compatible. To the front is a USB-type socket through which you can transfer photos directly from any PictBridge-enabled digital camera. If you print a lot of postcard-sized photos, then the inclusion of a special 4x6-inch print hopper is also welcome. To switch over to postcard-sized prints, you simply turn a rotary knob to engage the smaller size. This enables you to print snap-size photos without the hassle of changing paper. ■

CHROMAPLUS Canon’s most realistic digital prints yet? The i990 sees the introduction of Canon’s ChromaPLUS technology, which uses an additional red ink to widen the colour gamut of the printer in the yellow to red area. By increasing saturation by 60 per cent, Canon claims output closely matches that of positive colour film. Canon claims the special ‘6’ series inks are the lightest on the market, which accounts for the ultra-smooth tonal gradation on output. The droplet size is just two picolitres, which is constant. The i990 doesn’t squirt bigger drops for large areas of flat colour, so to get faster printing speeds, it uses the largest print head of any printer – the MicroFine Droplet Technology print head has a staggering 5376 nozzles, each ten microns in diameter, squirting ink from eight reservoir tanks.

CREATIVE STUFF OUR MONTHLY ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST GEAR AND GADGETS

SONY MSV-A1 PRICE 45,000 yen (£223) COMPANY Sony WEBSITE www.sony.co.jp

MPIO HS-100 PRICE £150 COMPANY mpio WEBSITE www.mpio.com

There was once a time when 32MB was a lot of storage for a flashbased portable storage device. How technology progresses, eh? This mpio model holds a whopping 1.5GB of data – meaning you can cart around enormous video files, a huge number of MP3s and thousands of documents quickly and safely. The USB 2.0 interface makes for snappy transfer times, and the fact that it looks good is a welcome bonus. It only costs £150, too, which makes it a real bargain.

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Although looking remarkably like a Clié PDA, the Sony MSV-A1 is something quite different: a personal handheld TV recorder, weighing only 120g, which can capture up to two hours of footage on a 128MB Memory Stick Duo (although there’s no internal memory to speak of). Currently surfacing in Japan, the MSV-A1 captures broadcasts in MPEG-4 format, which roughly translates to VHS-quality footage. Now you need never miss an episode of EastEnders or Footballers’ Wives again.

Review

PIMP WATCH PRICE $129 (£67) COMPANY Tokyoflash Corp WEBSITE www.tokyoflash.com

What can we say, other than wow? This watch is one of many at Tokyoflash.com and it’s as retro bling as you can get. Although not the best timepiece for getting the time right in a hurry, it’ll certainly look terrific on your wrist. The bad news? Stocks are limited, so email: [email protected] now if you want to bag one. Tokyoflash will contact you when a watch becomes available. We can’t wait…

BADGE IT! PRICE £14.99 COMPANY Bandai WEBSITE www.bandai.com

This contraption had everyone at the Computer Arts office fascinated. Looking rather like a small robot from the 80s, it’s actually a toy that enables you to create your own pin-badges. So now you can turn your favourite image into a pin badge design – very cool. At only £14.99, the Badge It! comes with 15 badge bases, clear laminate seals and safety pins. Check out more pinbadge goings-on at www.wearitwith pride.com, where top designers are kickstarting a designer badge boom.

SQUEEZEBOX PRICE £250 COMPANY Slim Devices WEBSITE www.ihavetohave.it

Although iTunes and the ability to store MP3 files on your Mac is great, sometimes the quality of sound coming from your desktop speakers just isn’t good enough. If you don’t fancy plugging your Mac into your stereo every time you want to play a tune, then how about the Squeezebox? This gadget wirelessly beams MP3s from your Mac to your stereo. But you don’t use it with iTunes; it comes with its own interface that enables you to browse tracks by artist, album or genre.

BEOLAB 5 PRICE £10,000 COMPANY Bang & Olufsen WEBSITE www.bang-olufsen.co.uk

Now this is what we call a great pair of speakers. Looking like a cross between a Dalek and a coffee perch at Starbucks, you can guarantee that this latest revolution in speaker technology will blow your socks off. The best bit is the fact that these B&O speakers sound the same (and indeed great) wherever you put them. This is due to a clever elliptical lens system, that directs the sound of mid and high frequencies towards the listening area, and to digital signal processing (DSP) which counters the effects of room gain while pumping out the bass. The worst bit? They cost ten grand.

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BOOKS

HEAVENLY TYPE AUTHOR: Leslie Cabarga PRICE: £18.99 PUBLISHER: David & Charles ISBN: 0715316990

Y

ou would be forgiven for thinking that this title is part of the popular Bible series of softwarededicated manuals. We assumed the same thing. However, the Logo, Font and Lettering Bible is something completely different and, dare we say it, much more interesting. Behind the subtle, yet typographicallysound black and white cover lies a tome bursting with colour, humour and relevant advice. The layout of this book screams quality, and every page is virtually a piece of typographic design in its own right – a lot of time and effort has obviously gone into both the look and the content, making it a great piece of eye candy as well as a great read. Which is what you’d hope for when you shell out nearly twenty quid – but don’t always get…

TAKING FLASH FURTHER

DREAMWEAVER TIPS

AUTHOR: Keith Peters & Todd Yard PRICE: £35.50 PUBLISHER: friends of ED ISBN: 1590593049

AUTHOR: Joseph Lowery & Angela Buraglia PRICE: £30.99 PUBLISHER: New Riders ISBN: 0735713790

T

T

here are literally hundreds of books available that cover Flash MX 2004 – all of which aim to give you a better understanding of the tool and what it can be used for. The latest title from the omnipresent friends of ED, Extending

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The book starts by introducing the reader to the theories of type and logo design, detailing influential figures and movements in the history of the modern logo. It then goes on to give some great commentary on famous and not-so-famous logos, deciphering the underlying techniques and thought behind them in a succinct manner. All this is followed by chapters that describe typesetting instruments, stencils, and possibly more familiar digital tools such as Illustrator and Fontographer. Terms such as F ‘ lush left’ and Bé zier curves are covered from a factual, yet entertaining point of view. Inking styles are dealt with, as is when and when not to autotrace, along with variations on outlined logos. In fact, we can’t think of anything that’s missing from these pages. This book is really made up of snippets of information pieced together in a highly graphical way, yet each section links together perfectly, drawing the reader in using colourcharged imagery and bold chapter headings. If you’re after a grounding in type and logos, this is the book to buy: it’s original, beautiful and extremely entertaining. ■

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Flash MX 2004, is aimed at those very much familiar with the app and its inner workings, bringing a guide to extending its features. These include timeline effects, behaviours, components, and the new MMEexecute function – the latter providing coders with a way to add elements and create add-on tools. This is a code-heavy book, and those new to Flash MX 2004 should stay clear until they’ve mastered ActionScript. While the tone is friendly, with sample code littered throughout, it can be rather daunting for anyone without a thorough knowledge of the Flash scripting language. For those who know ActionScript, JavaScript or XML, this book is extremely interesting – it shows you exactly how to expand Flash’s toolset to suit your needs. It’s a little pricey, but worth it if you need to customise Flash for a particular project or brief. ■

he Killer Tips series, developed by Photoshop guru Scott Kelby, has branched out into the world of Web development – namely Flash MX 2004 and Dreamweaver MX 2004. The latter program is the focus of this title, and rather than provide an in-depth guide to using the tool, it gives a wealth of informative snippets for making your Dreamweaver development a quicker and easier process. Beginning with snappy advice on how to customise the interface, Dreamweaver MX 2004 Killer Tips then goes on to offer valuable advice on tasks such as quickly resizing browser windows, adding a path to a database, and starting or stopping a ColdFusion server. Other, more basic tips include how to set the default browser in Dreamweaver and how to change layer contents. As in Scott Kelby’s Photoshop books, the authors keep the tone consistently light and

accessible, and each tip is coupled with a colour screenshot. This title is for those who aren’t accustomed to the intricacies of Dreamweaver. Experts will find it handy; novices will find it invaluable. ■

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Group Test

GROUP TEST

COMPOSITING APPLICATIONS With a decent compositor at your fingertips, you can refine your footage, tweak colours and lighting, add disparate elements and incorporate special effects with ease. We put five top contenders to the test Need to bring elements from more than one video clip into a single frame? Or alter the contents of your video to correct colour, add distortion or remove unwanted trademarks? Then you need a compositor. Most video editors provide a basic complement of compositing tools (simple chromakey, colour correction and titling, mainly), but their limitations become readily apparent when you need to work on parts of a frame rather than the entire shot. Here, we compare five packages, exploring in great detail each one’s toolset and working environment. A successful compositor enables you to work quickly with complex effects (with playback of scenes kept as near to real time as possible), and takes care of the necessary technicalities almost invisibly, so you’re free to concentrate on what’s important: creating the perfect shot. All the packages in our Group Test provide a basic toolset – colour correction, keying, matting and masking, text and effects filters – and enable

you to create basic animations over time. Nowadays, however, images rendered by 3D packages can be more than just simple pictures. Extra channels enable you to save out mattes for such attributes as depth, highlights and even face normals. If you’re working with 3D, it’s therefore useful to have a compositor that can import this kind of data. Video painting is also a worthwhile tool; with it, you can paint or clone onto video frames as though they’re still images. This is a great way of doing things if you want to, say, paint laser bolts into a sci-fi scene or create cartoon animations for your title sequence. 2D motion-tracking is useful and now a standard feature in most packages (3D isn’t available in any compositor yet, but it’s only a matter of time). Warping and distortion tools are also becoming more widely available. And, of course, if you’re designing for the Web, look out for Flash output options, too…

P96

AFTER EFFECTS 6

P96

£664

COMMOTION PRO

P97

MIRAGE

£799

£709

P97

DIGITAL FUSION DFX+4

P98

COMBUSTION 3

£811

£852

ILLUSTRATION BY FUTUREFARMERS www.futurefarmers.com

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AFTER EFFECTS 6

COMMOTION PRO

The industry standard, and now better integrated with its fellow Adobe titles

Great video painting tools for the animator who works frame by frame

S

A

PC AND MAC £799

PC AND MAC £664

Æ

Æ

till the most popular compositor in its price range, and a staple of post-production work throughout the industry, After Effects is such a versatile compositor, it’s even being used in Web design. Despite having too many tiny windows and palettes full of fiddly controls, it’s relatively easy for beginners to pick up, and it’s certainly powerful. Improved integration with its sister apps (Premiere, Illustrator and Photoshop) ensures a smoother workflow, too. The Render Queue, used to output finished movies, is something of an oddity, but the rest of the tools are easy to master, offering good control over keyframes and the ability to use parenting and scripting to automate your animation. What’s keeping After Effects ahead of the game right now are primarily tools it’s borrowed from Photoshop. The first is Liquify – the imagewarping and morphing effect introduced in Photoshop 7. In After Effects, Liquify CONTACT is fully animatable, so you can alter Adobe the way a warp is applied over time, Buy online changing the expressions on people’s www.adobe.co.uk faces or painting in distortions with just a few simple brush-strokes. SYSTEM After Effects’ Text tools are more like PC Pentium III • 128MB RAM those in Photoshop, too. Here, you’ll find • Windows 2000/XP the Range Selector, a simple device MAC Power PC • 128MB RAM which enables you to quickly animate • Mac OS X 10.2.5 individual words (or letters). The result is that with a couple of keyframes you can do some very fancy text animation – making letters drop into shot one by one, for example, or words jiggle and bounce independently of one another. Finally, Adobe has re-configured AE’s video painting tools to be more After Effects may look a little like those in – yes, you guessed it – untidy compared to apps like Photoshop. You can now paint onto combustion, and some of its individual frames or sequences, and filters are tuned to giving instant results rather than animate your brush-strokes over time. highly controllable effects, After Effects comes in two shades: a but its basic tools remain Standard and a Pro version. After Effects innovative and powerful. Pro (£1075) boasts extra filters, extended keying tools and motion-tracking.

VERDICT

★★★★★

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Æ

Æ

t first sight, Commotion Pro looks startlingly like Photoshop. The Tool palette is almost identical, with its line drawing, paint tools, erasers and cloning brushes. As you’d expect, this makes video painting the app’s specialty… Unlike most of the other packages in our Group Test, though, Commotion doesn’t store each paint stroke as a separate event, so you can’t go back later and, say, remove or resize a single stroke. That said, keeping the paint in layers (as it is in Photoshop) rather than strokes does simplify your timeline enormously, thus making the package easier to work with. Tools range from standard airbrushes through to natural media brushes, plants, text – and even fire. They’re all configurable, too, so customising your own is easy. Cloning is provided; with the versatile Superclone tool you can easily pick which clip you want to clone from/ copy to, and whether you want to clone over one frame or many. CONTACT Aside from video painting, Pinnacle Systems Commotion also offers more traditional Buy online compositing facilities. Among the range www.pinnaclesys.com of keying tools is the well-liked Primatte keyer. Colour correction filters are much SYSTEM like those in After Effects – but don’t PC Pentium II 333 • 128MB expect the quality of tools you get with RAM • Windows 98 SE/NT or later combustion or Digital Fusion. MAC G3 or G4 • 218MB RAM Commotion Pro’s particle system • System 9 or later offers plenty of control, but isn’t easy to work with. It’s designed to create fire effects, but better results are possible with other systems, and you can’t customise particles. Motion-tracking, however, is a strong component, and with Time Remapping you can speed up/slow down footage super-smoothly. Commotion manages to Note that Commotion Pro loads every combine powerful video painting with good matting, frame of a video into memory before it tracking and compositing begins work – which means opening tools. Unfortunately, the footage takes a little longer than it does particle system is poor. in other apps. It also limits the length of The package is definitely clip you can work on. On the positive a 2D rather than a 3D tool. side, playback is super-fast, even when you’re dealing with complex effects.

VERDICT

★★★★★

Group Test

DIGITAL FUSION DFX+ 4

MIRAGE PC AND MAC £709

Mirage brings the power of Painter and Photoshop to your video footage

M Æ

Æ

irage (formerly known as Aura) is a very different beast to its rivals – although it provides masking and mapping tools, keying, text and colour correction, its main specialty is in video painting. Most compositors boast painting tools of mixed sophistication, of course, but only Mirage enables you to treat video frames the way Photoshop treats still images, using a range of natural media tools and brushes. You can paint on a single frame, or a range of frames, so the level of control is extremely high. You can even paint on several layers. And again, as in Adobe’s industry-acclaimed package, you can clone features, painting material taken from one part of the frame over another. Using a soft-edged brush, the joins are practically invisible. In addition, you can clone from one frame to another – to, say, remove wires (or unwanted pedestrians) from a shot. You can also clone sequentially from CONTACT the same clip, or another clip; if you Bauhaus Software clone a moving object from one Buy online shot to another, you can clone it as a www.bauhaussoftware.com moving image, not just a still frame; Mirage has no trouble dealing with SYSTEM such data-intensive tasks. PC Any PC capable of Image filters are also available, running Windows XP/2000 offering the kinds of glows, paint effects, MAC Any G3 or above and image manipulation you’d expect running OS 10.2.6 from Photoshop. Mirage’s particle system is excellent, too, providing a high level of control and a good range of presets – you can create anything from billowing smoke to pixie dust, and all parameters are animatable. It’s not as good as combustion’s offering, but it’s pretty close. If you need precise control But all this painterly flexibility comes over every frame of your at a price. You can forget about playing video, Mirage offers some with camera angles or layering elements great tools that really put Photoshop-like power at into a 3D composition – Mirage is strictly your fingertips. However, it a 2D operation, nothing more, nothing does so at the expense of less. Even though its text tools are on a traditional compositing tasks. par with its rivals’, it fares less well than its Group Test rivals in other respects.

VERDICT

★★★★★

PC £811

A professional compositing application with plenty of room for expansion

D Æ

Æ

igital Fusion is a modular program, which means workflow is the same whether you buy the basic package (£811), the complete seven-module suite (£2021) or configure something in-between (modules cost between £235 and £470). But even at its simplest level, Digital Fusion delivers cinema-quality special effects; the only downside is that the cheaper iteration leaves out tools you’d take for granted in other less prestigious packages. The clean, easily configurable layout is reminiscent of combustion, although there are more buttons, tabs and controls, which tend to be fiddly and get in the way when not required. However, its main interface relies on a flowchart view, which provides an instant picture of the way your effect is CONTACT put together. Each effect or piece of Eyeon Software footage shows up as a box, and you 01635 551295 create composites by linking the boxes www.eyeonline.com together. Whenever you click on a box, the tools relating to it appear. This makes SYSTEM it easy to add/remove elements or to work PC Pentium II or greater • 80MB HD space • 256MB on alternative versions. RAM • Windows NT4/ Digital Fusion’s image filters don’t have 2000/XP • graphics card quite the range of After Effects’, but they capable of displaying are fast and well-tuned to professional 1280x1024 in True Color users. Glows, blurs and diffusion effects are particularly good – and creating a softfocus or film-like look, or altering colours or exposure, is a breeze. Extra modules add more advanced features – better keying, enhanced colour correction and the ability to manipulate the speed of a clip over time. MotionWorking with Digital Fusion tracking and camera stabilisation come in is a dream – the tools are so powerful and easy to use. But a second module. 3D tools, video painting the basic package doesn’t and particles are available separately. The come with particles, motionremaining modules improve rendering tracking, 3D import or video and expand input/output functionality. painting. The full suite will This makes the basic Digital Fusion set you back around £2000. quite cost effective, but the price goes up quickly once you add the modules.

VERDICT

★★★★★

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WINNER

COMBUSTION 3 PC AND MAC £852

Neat, tidy and with the prettiest particle system on the planet Æ CONTACT Discreet Buy online www.discreet.com

Æ FEATURES • Full 3D compositing • Masking, keying and colour correction tools • 2D particle system • Text generator • Video paint tools • Basic video editing • DV capture • Image distortion/ morphing tools • Effects filters

Æ SYSTEM PC PIII 850 • 256MB RAM • Windows XP/2000 MAC G4 800 • 512MB RAM • Mac OS X 10.2

Æ FOR • Good basic toolset • Well implemented working environment • Excellent particle system

Æ AGAINST • Limited text tools • Video painting not up to Commotion or Mirage standards • Intimidating for new users

Thanks to an impressive pedigree, Discreet’s combustion rules the roost. Highlights include superb 3D integration and super-smooth playback.

C VERDICT

★★★★★ combustion 3 combines the best working environment of the compositors we’ve tested with a basic toolset that comes straight from professional post-production suites. Playback is fast and smooth, and the particle system is excellent. On the minus side, the text tools are a little basic and video painting – although quite powerful – doesn’t include natural media.

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ombustion starts off with a great advantage. Its creator, Discreet, is responsible for the high-end flame and flint suites, virtually the industry standard in compositing software. From them, combustion takes a professional and well-developed workflow, plus most of the apps’ top keying, colour correction and motion-tracking features. The results speak for themselves… All the basic tools are clear and to the point – and kept very much out of the way unless you’re using them, which is a godsend. The top two-thirds of the screen is devoted to your scene, so you always feel that the image, rather than the toolset, is the central focus (as it should be). Rendering is very fast and works without you having to worry too much about setting it up. combustion also adopts its elder brothers’ file formats, so if you’re working on a complex project, you can – for example – do all your laborious rotoscoping and colour matching in combustion, then transfer straight to the more expensive suites for the final work. One of combustion’s big selling points is its particle system. Developed by the programmer of Particle Illusion, it offers an instant and virtually real-time approach to creating 2D explosions, waterfalls, gunshots, Matrix effects, nebulae, and anything else that requires particles. There are dozens of presets for instant fairy dust, smoke plumes, and even strobing disco lights, but the system is flexible

enough to enable you to adapt these or create your own from scratch. The results are invariably excellent. Another important benefit is the app’s superior integration with 3D. Besides being a full 3D compositor, combustion works more intimately with 3D apps than most; it can store alpha mattes, distance mattes, object id mattes, shine mattes, even face information, within the image file. combustion can then access this data, so you can alter an image even after it’s been rendered – adding distance blur or effects to a single object, for instance. Video painting is quick and easy, too, enabling you to paint and clone non-destructively. Use simple brushes, design your own, or paint with particles; you can even grab individual brush-strokes and move, rotate and resize them instantly. Warping tools make an appearance in version 3, and are comparable in quality to those available in After Effects’ Liquify tool. Usefully, you can tie warps to the motion tracker, so the effect moves with on-screen objects. V3 also sees the introduction of basic editing tools. With these, you can cut together sequences of shots – very useful if your effects span multiple cuts. Another new arrival is automated animation. Write scripts to dictate the way animated functions behave, or pick from a library of pre-sets and simply drop them on any animatable object. If you want to create Web versions of your work, the new Flash export tool will also prove useful. Handle with care, though, if you want to avoid unfeasibly large Flash files.

Group Test

CONCLUSION

Ë

Discreet’s hugely powerful application leads the pack, but rival compositors aren’t that far behind… Digital Fusion and combustion 3 both showed their high-end pedigree with the strongest sets of commonly used working tools and the clearest presentation. Unsurprisingly, both packages are aimed at professionals, and fine-tuned to get the everyday compositing jobs done with as much clarity and as little mess as possible. Yet combustion 3 still wins out. Digital Fusion’s modular construction means that the basic package lacks many of the tools you’d expect. Buy the complete Digital Fusion and your system would certainly equal, if not exceed, a combustion 3 set-up, but then it would cost more than twice as much. And while it can’t compete with the specialists when it comes to video painting – it’s good, but not great – at least combustion offers a complete range of robust tools on a stable platform. For strength of basic tools, combustion 3 and Digital Fusion are top choices. For 3D integration, combustion 3 and After Effects have it. For particle systems, it’s combustion 3 and Mirage.

Ultimately, the program you opt for will depend as much on what you’re comfortable with as any impressive feature-set or unique tool. After Effects is still a major player, although over the past few years its challengers have grown ever more confident. Still, it’s managed to keep pace – and its latest release boasts some brilliant innovations. It’s also tightly integrated with the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite, which is a powerful argument for any user. Certainly, if compositing is just a small part of your work, you’ll will find it comforting to see the same toolbars and menu items you find in Photoshop, Illustrator or Premiere. Commotion Pro and Mirage both provide excellent painting tools. Cloning, custom brushes and natural media, plus the option to use Photoshop plug-ins (Mirage), effectively put a wide range of animatable effects at your fingertips. And while you can’t use them to work with 3D composites, both give superb control over every pixel in your movie. If you’re a 2D animator, that kind of power can’t be beaten.

PRODUCT

AFTER EFFECTS 6

COMMOTION PRO

MIRAGE

DIGITAL FUSION DFX+4

COMBUSTION 3

PRICE

£664

£799

£709

£811

£852

SCORE

4

3

3

3.5

4.5

MOTION-TRACKING

Pro version only

Yes

Yes

Extra module required

Yes

VIDEO PAINTING

Limited

Yes

Yes

Extra module required

Yes

CLONING

Yes

Yes

Yes

Extra module required

Yes

SCRIPTING

Yes

No

Yes

Extra module required

Yes

FILTERS

130+

83

58

Up to 88

111

3D CHANNEL IMPORT

Depth matte only

None

None

Extra module required

Yes

PLUG-IN COMPATIBILITY

After Effects

After Effects

Photoshop

After Effects and Digital Fusion

After Effects

FLASH EXPORT

Yes

No

No

Limited to text tool

Yes

TIME CONTROL

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

3D COMPOSITING

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Computer Arts_April 2004

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EXPOSURE SUBMISSIONS: Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW, United Kingdom See Get Exposed, below, for full details

GET EXPOSED

1

Send your work to us, along with an explanation of your techniques and software, the titles of each piece, your telephone number and email. Images should be sent as PC or Mac TIFF or JPEG files, on CDROM or Zip disks. A hard copy is a great help. We will endeavour to return all entries that provide an SAE. All contributions are submitted on the basis of a nonexclusive worldwide licence to publish, both in printed and electronic form. Post hi-res files for print to: Exposure, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW.

2 1 NAME David McClure JOB Graphic Designer, Illustrator CONTACT [email protected], www.velcrobelly.co.uk SOFTWARE Photoshop, Illustrator, Streamline IMAGE TITLES 1. Elvis, 2. Water God, 3. Roman Road “I’ve been running Velcrobelly, a graphic design and illustration company since 2001. In my illustration, I try to combine realworld sketching with painting and composition techniques within the digital environment to get the best out of both worlds.”

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3

Exposure

2 NAME Ilias Sounas JOB Illustrator, Flash Animator CONTACT [email protected], www.grafistas.gr/ilsounas SOFTWARE Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator IMAGE TITLES 1. Love In The City

1

“I love cartoons and this is obvious in my illustration. Photoshop is a great application for drawing but Illustrator gives me better, cleaner line art. The image shown here, Love In The City, was a finalist in a Greek design competition.”

2

1

3 NAME Phil Brown JOB Illustrator CONTACT 01248 422 260, www.philbrownillustration.com SOFTWARE Photoshop IMAGE TITLES 1. Spotty Dog, 2. Beautiful Nation “I tend to base everything I do on drawing initial lines to catch an expression or gesture – one that persuades me there’s a character or design that will work. Using a dip pen allows for accidental marks, which tend to add energy to the piece.”

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1

3 NAME Roisin O’ Shea JOB Freelance Designer, Illustrator CONTACT [email protected], www.bittengraphics.com SOFTWARE Illustrator, Photoshop IMAGE TITLES 1. Always Done “This image is from a book I designed for my final project at college last year. The book is made from thoughts, quotes, poetry and armchair philosophy, married with their chosen graphic. Always Done is based on the line ‘If you do what you‘ve always done, you have what you‘ve always had.’”

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Exposure

8 NAME Teodoru Badiu JOB Artist, Mulitmedia Designer CONTACT [email protected], www.theodoru.com SOFTWARE FreeHand, Photoshop IMAGE TITLES 1. Theodoru 2, 2. Dreamer 2

2

“These are some new examples of my work – mixed experimental illustrations that I created for my personal portfolio.”

1

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1

4

2

3

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5

Exposure

6

8

7

7 NAME Thea Brine JOB Illustrator CONTACT [email protected], 020 8877 0072 SOFTWARE Photoshop IMAGE TITLES 1. Amusement, 2. Green Ma, 3. TES Equith, 4. Exclusion, 5. TES Change, 6. Tipsy, 7. Housing Estate, 8. Old Devils “I would be lost without Photoshop – it’s such a fantastic and versatile tool. You can do pretty much anything with the program; it doesn’t have to be for highly finished, tight photo effects, it can just as easily be used in a rough, intuitive way.”

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RETROSPECTIVE ISSUE 30 APRIL 1999 K2, a games console with mysterious powers, and Eric the puppet

EDITORIAL 01225 442 244 VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] RODDY LLEWELLYN ART EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RACHEL ELLIOTT OPERATIONS EDITOR [email protected] JON ALONGI CD EDITOR [email protected] MATT GALLIMORE SENIOR CD EDITOR [email protected] JEN WAGNER ONLINE EDITOR [email protected]

CD PROBLEMS 01225 822 743 [email protected]

A

bustling cover with a rather sexy image from Jacey introduced this month’s Photoshop tutorial. Inside, there was more on the semimythical K2 – or InDesign, as it was eventually titled. Is it perhaps only now that Adobe’s ‘Quark-killer’ is having a real effect on the industry? The PlayStation 2 was also revealed, allegedly boasting the “ability to synthesise between behaviour and emotions.” Riiiight. With videogames becoming ever more realistic (emotions aside), we looked at the state of the art in gaming graphic design, including the forthcoming Quake III Arena – destined to be the waster of many a lunchtime in the office. The battle for 3D software market share was starting to hot up, too, as we reviewed Maya NT 1.0 and prices dropped across the board. form•Z made one of its regular appearances, along with Canvas 6 and the 300MHz G3 – sans SCSI interface, which rattled cages. Finally, some April fools found their way into Exposure, from the CA team themselves. When the work of Stig Flanders was published, the illustration world was never the same again… ■

Contributions from Jason Arber, Frank Bartucca, Mat Broomfield, Ryan Carson, Andrew Coningsby, Simon Danaher, Christian Darkin, Yan Degruel, Pete Draper, Amy Franceschini, Mireille Frenette, Futurefarmers, Dan Goodleff, Chris Gossett, Benoit Guerville, Susannah Hall, Scott Hansen, Identikal, Christopher Kenworthy, Christian Lerolle, Vicky Mitchard, Mark Ramshaw, Nick Reddyhoff, Ed Ricketts, Ryan Shelton, Mark Sparrow PHOTOGRAPHY Katharine Lane-Sims PRINT TPL Printers (UK) Ltd REPRO Radstock Reproductions Ltd

CONTACT Computer Arts magazine, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW 01225 442 244 ISDN 01225 789 293 Subscription queries 0870 444 8455 Overseas subscriptions +44 870 444 8455 or email [email protected]

ADVERTISING 01225 442244 LEE HAINES key account manager [email protected] GEORGE LUCAS sales executive [email protected] MELISSA WATKINS classified sales executive [email protected]

DIGITAL DIVISION JOHN WEIR publishing director SHEENA PITTAWAY publisher FIONA TULLY marketing manager CLARE TOVEY production manager PAUL MCINTYRE group art editor SARAH WILLIAMS software copyright coordinator

PRODUCTION DAVID MATHEWS ad design point of contact KATTY PIGOTT production coordinator MIKE THORNE commercial print buyer

CIRCULATION & LICENSING RICHARD JEFFERIES circulation manager RICHARD BEAN overseas licensing manager SIMON WEAR overseas licensing director Computer Arts has licences in China, France, Italy, Poland, and Spain

UK DISTRIBUTION Seymour Distribution 020 7396 8000 86 Newman Street, London, W1T 3EX

THE FUTURE NETWORK

FLASHBACK

ABOVE The many moods of Eric, briefly the most famous puppet in the world. RIGHT Dungeon

Keeper’s devil character was sadly the best thing about the game.

It’s no less than eight years since a small team of digital art enthusiasts at Future Publishing kicked off what we now know and love as Computer Arts, and it’s now the leading title in its field. That field has changed massively in those eight years – DVD is no longer a mystery, and Photoshop is now a household name. We continue our look back with 1999’s issue 30…

ROGER PARRY non-executive chairman GREG INGHAM chief executive COLIN MORRISON chief operating officer & managing director UK JOHN BOWMAN group finance director Tel +44 1225 442244 www.thefuturenetwork.plc.uk Computer Arts is a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations Jan-Dec 2003: 22,888 Computer Arts is the registered trademark of Future Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks and copyrights in this issue are recognised, and are acknowledged where possible. If we have failed to credit your copyright please contact us – we’re happy to correct any oversight. Material submitted is accepted on the basis of a worldwide right to publish in printed or electronic form. All contents © Future Publishing 2004. Future Publishing is part of The Future Network PLC. The Future Network produces carefully targeted specialist magazines for people who share a passion. We aim to satisfy that passion by creating titles offering value for money, reliable information, smart buying advice, and which are a pleasure to read. Today we publish more than 90 magazines in the UK, US, France and Italy. Over 80 international editions of our magazines are also published in 28 other countries across the world. The Future Network PLC is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FNET).

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