Computer Arts (November 2003)

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FINDING NEMO Behind the scenes of Pixar’s latest CG movie

THE WORLD’S BEST–SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

FIGURES IN PHOTOSHOP Master perfect faces and forms using Photoshop, Poser & 3D models on the CD

NEW! ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE Exclusive previews of the all-new Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign

EXCLUSIVE TUTORIAL

COMBINING FLASH AND PHOTOSHOP Rob Lindström reveals his killer techniques

23 NEW REVIEWS! All the latest creative products on test Printed in the UK

No CD? Please see your newsagent

Outside the UK and Éire £6 C$ 19.95

NOVEMBER 2003

£6

1 1 9 771360 537024

Silver Bullet.

The Power Mac G5 – The world’s first 64-bit processor from Apple Introducing the Power Mac G5

Peace of mind

The Power Mac G5 is the world’s first computer with a 64-bit processor 1 — which means it breaks the 4 gigabyte barrier and can use up to 8 gigabytes of main memory.

In addition to the quality and value that’s part of the package when you buy at John Lewis, a free two-year guarantee is included too.2

Knowledgeable service The Power Mac G5 product line comes in three muscular configurations — 1.6GHz, 1.8GHz and a dual 2GHz model. They all feature the legendary SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW) as standard equipment across the line. And of course they come with two FireWire 400 ports, three PCI expansion slots, ADC connector, DVI connector, analogue audio in, analogue audio out, optical SPDIF in, optical SPDIF out, front headphone and speaker jack and built-in Gigabit Ethernet — all as standard equipment.

John Lewis – All under one roof John Lewis department stores stock the complete range of Apple products including the brand new and faster iBook, iMac, PowerBook and Power Mac G4 series. You’ll also find a huge choice of software, monitors, compatible printers, scanners and other accessories. 1

Personal desktop computer. 2See in store for details.

Customers return to John Lewis time and again because they know the sales assistants are fully trained by Apple. This means that you, the customer, can rest assured that you will get the best product to suit your needs.

Buying made easy Buying Apple equipment from John Lewis is one thing. But the story doesn’t end there. Not only will your Apple be delivered free but installation professionals can help you set up your computer for a small charge. All in all, John Lewis offers a service that is designed to make buying and using your Apple easier than ever.

Want to know more? Visit your nearest John Lewis.

Power Mac G5 from Apple. 1.6, 1.8 or dual 2GHz G5 Processor 256 or 512MB RAM • 80 or 160GB HD Superdrive • Airport Extreme Ready

INTRO F

THIS MONTH’S BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENT IS THE NEW ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE. FROM NOVEMBER, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO BUY THE BRAND NEW VERSIONS OF PHOTOSHOP, ILLUSTRATOR AND INDESIGN IN ONE SET

eel like you’ve just stepped into a Duran Duran video? That’ll be the bright and brash retro style of our cover image. This issue, we bring you a complete interactive package by providing all the techniques, inspiration and resources you need to create great work with Photoshop, Poser and a unique pair of 3D models. Alternatively, you can sit back and enjoy the massive range of superb digital artwork that’s on display. We’re honoured to be able to publish a rather original tutorial by Rob Lindström of DesignChapel fame (www.design chapel.com) on the making of one of his desktop images – one of the design world’s most popular downloads. His methods of vectorising an image in Photoshop and colouring in Flash, as revealed on page 38, gives some insight into why his work is so original. And this month’s biggest announcement is the new Adobe Creative Suite. From November, you’ll be able to buy the brand new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign in one complete set. A new version of Photoshop always causes a stir in the creative world, but this latest move not only improves on two other leading

COVER ILLUSTRATOR

design packages, it also makes them even more affordable – something that any level of digital artist or designer will find a bonus. We’ve previewed these latest programs, plus GoLive 7, starting on page 84. Many readers will have heard that Digital Arts World, formerly CA Live, won’t be happening this year, which is a great disappointment for us and many of you. However, the Computer Arts team will still be out and about this Autumn, starting with MacExpo (20-22 November, www.mac-expo.co.uk) and the Adobe Four City Tour (see page 22). Finally, within this magazine you’ll find our annual reader survey – taking the time to fill it in will help us tailor this worldleading creative magazine to your needs. Macromedia is offering one of two Studio MX 2004 suites to the first two readers pulled from the hat after 12 December 2003. This prize draw is open to readers worldwide, so get ticking those boxes and tell us what you want. Read on for news, Cinema 4D, InDesign, Flash MX and more. VICKI ATKINSON Editor, THE WORLD’S BEST-SELLING CREATIVE MAGAZINE

EDITORIAL JACEY The job of creating our striking cover model (of the 3D variety) this month fell to Jacey, whose work has attracted such clients as Virgin Airlines and Marks & Spencer since 1997. The successful illustrator, represented by the Debut Art agency, creates work under three different guises, according to the appropriate style. His more graphical vector design, Flatliner, was selected to turn the 3D models from the coverdisc into this stunning 80s retro illustration using Photoshop and Poser – all the techniques behind it are revealed on page 24. WWW.FLATLINERONLINE.COM

THE CA TEAM VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RACHEL ELLIOTT OPERATIONS EDITOR [email protected] MARK PENFOLD STAFF WRITER [email protected] MATT GALLIMORE CD EDITOR [email protected]

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

Computer Arts_November 2003

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CONTENTS

NOVEMBER

ISSUE 89 FULL LIST OF CONTENTS

NEWS SUBSCRIBE TODAY

AND SAVE £38.99 AND CLAIM YOUR FREE GIFT NEVER MISS ANOTHER ISSUE –TURN TO PAGE 52

12 Adobe Creative Suite 13 Discreet combustion 3 14 Canon EOS 300D 22 Adobe’s four-city tour

TUTORIALS

24 Figures in Photoshop 38 Design Chapel 54 Flash MX 66 Cinema 4D CE 6 76 InDesign 2

FEATURES 32 Finding Nemo 46 Airside in profile 60 Helping Hand 74 Lars Rehnberg interview

SHORTCUTS 37 Dreamweaver MX 45 FreeHand MX 65 Final Cut Express

REVIEWS

83 Full listing 85 Photoshop CS 88 Illustrator CS 90 InDesign CS 92 GoLive CS 97 Canon PowerShot G5 102 Group test: DVD-writers

REGULARS ILLUSTRATION BY AIRSIDE See page 46 Have your work featured here – email [email protected]

10 Your letters 30 Win one of two copies of the brand new Adobe Creative Suite! 52 Save £38.99 and get a FREE copy of The Adobe Photoshop Handbook 2 when you subscribe 59 Special US subscription offer! 108 Back issues 116 Exposure 122 Retrospective

ON THE COVER 24 FIGURES IN PHOTOSHOP

Discover the creative possibilities of Photoshop, Poser and your two free DAZ 3D models – Michael and Victoria – with our expert cover tutorial by top illustrator Jacey

32 FINDING NEMO

We talk to Pixar about the company’s latest animated feature, exploring the inspiration and techniques behind this fishy tale

38 DESIGN CHAPEL The famous Swedish illustrator shares his techniques for the first time. Discover the secrets of fantastic vector illustration in Photoshop and Flash with this exclusive tutorial

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83 REVIEWS

Check out the Computer Arts verdict on all the latest creative software and hardware

84 ADOBE’S NEW CREATIVE SUITE

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New versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive in one bundle. Our world exclusive previews begin on page 84

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS 46 AIRSIDE

We talk to the legendary design studio about psychedelic promos, making it big whilst having fun and, of course, those furry knitted creatures

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54 FLASH MX

Combine Flash and Photoshop to create stunning Web interfaces. Full expert tutorial

66 CINEMA 4D CE 6

In our second Cinema 4D CE 6 tutorial, we give you the lowdown on the application’s awesome animation tools

66

102

102 GROUP TEST

With DVD-R becoming almost as accessible as CDs, we check out the latest external burners

FULL LIST OF CD CONTENTS

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PC & MAC FULL PRODUCT

CINEMA 4D CE 6

This industry-standard 3D app is yours for free!

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very issue, we strive to bring you the best demos, free products and design resources on our cover CD. This month: two great DAZ 3D models, Michael and Victoria, a full version of the fantastic Cinema 4D CE 6, and exciting new demos of Macromedia’s MX 2004 apps.

CD89 CONTENTS MICHAEL & VICTORIA (PC + MAC) FULL PRODUCT: Give your Poser-based illustrations a lift with two exclusive, free, limitedresolution models from DAZ 3D. Turn to page 8 for more information and our reader offer

emand for our exclusive Cinema 4D CE 6 giveaway last month proved so high that we’ve decided to give it away one more time. Cinema 4D CE 6 has all the tools of the awesome Cinema 4D XL 6, including polygon, NURBS and Subdivision Surface modelling tools, some fantastic IK, FK and timeline animation tools, plus one of the best renderers in the business. The single limitation is that rendering output is limited to 600x400 pixels.

REGISTERING YOUR SOFTWARE

CINEMA 4D 6 CE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Upgrading to CE+ via our special offer on page 72 will enable you to take advantage of the full XL 6 toolset, but will not entitle you to upgrade to Cinema 4D R8 using our reader offer.

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PC Pentium •

64MB RAM • Win 95/98/ME/2000/XP MAC: PowerPC • 64MB RAM • OS 8+/OS X Classic

You can begin using your software straight away using the serial numbers below. However, after three months you must register your software to continue using it. To do so, go to: www.cinema4d.com/ca

SERIAL NUMBERS: PC 62081701052-907D9C MAC 62082701052-BE4725

INFO www.cinema4d.com

MAYA PLE 5 (PC + MAC) FULL PRODUCT: Yours to keep: the Personal Learning Edition of Maya 5 from Alias. Discover new modelling, animation and rendering features in this brand new release

CINEMA 4D 6 CE (PC + MAC) FULL PRODUCT: If you missed out on Maxon’s awesome 3D app last issue, it’s here one more time! Turn to page 66 to learn about its animation tools, and page 72 for our upgrade offer

FLASH MX 2004 (PC + MAC) EXCLUSIVE DEMO: Take both Flash MX 2004 Pro and Standard for a 30-day test-drive. Exploit Timeline Effects, behaviours and more…

DREAMWEAVER MX 2004 (PC + MAC) EXCLUSIVE DEMO: Try out the brand new version of Macromedia’s industry-standard Web and HTML authoring application for 30 days

PHOTOSHOP TOOLKIT This month’s Toolkit includes UV Mapper Classic (Dual), UV Mapper Pro (PC), Mask Pro 3 (PC), Vertigo 3D demos (Dual), Redfield plug-ins (PC) and HeadPhotos (Dual). See your CD inlay for individual system requirements

TUTORIAL FILES All the files you need to complete this month’s expert tutorials. This month: our Photoshop and Poser cover feature, plus Cinema 4D, Flash MX and more. Find all the folders in the Tutorials folder in the root of your cover CD

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STUDIO MX Be the first to try out Macromedia’s new Web design tools

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njoy our exclusive 30-day demos from Macromedia’s upcoming Studio MX 2004, including Flash MX, Flash MX Professional and Dreamweaver MX. Take Flash MX and MX Pro for a test-drive and discover Timeline Effects, behaviours and fantastic video tools. Move onto Dreamweaver for some stunning CSS-orientated tools and a brand new, easier-to-use interface. Next month we’ll begin a new tutorial series dedicated to the MX 2004 suite of tools, enabling you to make the most out of Macromedia’s brand new suite. INFO www.macromedia.com/uk

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ESSENTIAL RESOURCES

DAZ MODELS: MICHAEL AND VICTORIA Two classic Poser figures – plus the chance to upgrade to Michael 3 for only $19.95 (£12.50)

POSER FIGURES

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ou’ll find the most famous couple in 3D on your coverdisc – DAZ’s Michael and Victoria models have been a favourite in the 3D community for years (see www.renderosity.com for some prime examples). This month, we’ve joined forces with DAZ to offer you the pair in a limited resolution format for use as part of this month’s Photoshop and Poser tutorial, starting on page 24, or in your own work. For use with Poser or the forthcoming DAZ|Studio software, these figures can each be manipulated

to display many different appearances in a wide variety of poses. You can then import them into a range of 3D programs, including Cinema 4D, 3ds max and LightWave for animation, the Web or, as in the case of this month’s cover feature, illustration. When we gave away Victoria back in issue 83, DAZ ran a special reader offer for upgrading to Victoria 3. This month, it’s offering you a new deal for upgrading to her equally pliable Poser-mate: Michael 3… INFO Head to www.daz3d.com Coupon Code: M3Upgrade

Turn to page 24 to discover how you can create this striking illustration using Poser’s Victoria, supplied on this month’s CD. Then try designing your own using Michael, also supplied.

UPGRADE TO MICHAEL 3 Buy yourself a strapping hunk for the price of a CD On page 94 of this issue of Computer Arts, you’ll find we loved Michael 3 so much we awarded it a commendable four stars. Using a strategically designed high-resolution mesh of over 74,500 polygons, it enables you to create the most realistic-looking human figure you’ve ever imagined. Alternatively, you can tap into the 398 head and body morph targets to fashion the most outrageous of

characters. Visit www.daz3d.com for further information. This month, we’ve teamed up with DAZ to bring you an exclusive offer: upgrade from Michael 1 on your CD to Michael 3, and get $10 off! Add the Michael 3 Base Upgrade product to your DAZ shopping cart and then enter ‘M3Upgrade’ in the coupon field during checkout to receive the saving. All purchases charged in US dollars. One of Michael 3’s many guises...

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LETTERS DUNE BUGGY I recently discovered your Computer Arts magazine (issue 84) at the local book store and was totally blown away by the depth of coverage, writing styles, and the many offerings included on the CD. So, of course, I immediately purchased it and am now reading issue 86. Since I’m in the process of acquiring Photoshop 7 and Painter 8 skills, I really appreciated your Conceptual Illustration and Photoshop to Infinity tutorials. These were lots of fun and a great source of inspiration for me. I also appreciated the plug-ins included on the CD. But the real showstopper in issue 86 was the Realsoft 3D 4.5 Special Edition software on the CD and the tutorial for the dune buggy. What a great way to get started in modelling, animation, and rendering! I’m amazed at how much information I am able to acquire in a very short amount of time after a thorough reading of your magazine, and the hands-on training obtained from the tutorials – there’s nothing published in the US which even comes close to what you offer. Hopefully, you will continue to focus on Photoshop and related software as well as 3D programs. Any

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 ON THE COMPUTER ARTS DISCUSSION FORUM AT FORUM.COMPUTERARTS.CO.UK. FOR TECHNICAL QUESTIONS, SEE SHORTCUTS LISTING IN CONTENTS

chance for special editions or demos of LightWave, 3ds max, Amapi Designer, Carrara Studio or Maya in forthcoming issues? That would be terrific! Thanks so much for doing such an excellent job. Bill Opdyke

CD SECRETS Excellent magazine, thank you – I especially love the variety of software and resources on the cover CD – Cinema 4D for one. I would like to ask if some of the bigger graphics software companies could come to the party with more full versions of earlier programs. Or perhaps educational versions, like some of the 3D programs are doing at the moment. Also, if anyone still has trouble with the glue on the CDs, I use my wife’s hairdryer to heat it up and then just roll it off with my thumb. No marks or ripped covers at all… Michael Spence We’d all like to see a covermounted version of products Photoshop, Flash or Painter – hell, why not 3ds max? But it’s a big deal for any company to provide older products, and if it doesn’t fit in with their

marketing strategy it doesn’t happen. Educational versions was something that caused a stir around the 3D community; it might yet catch on in the 2D graphics world… Rest assured, we spend a lot of time talking to software manufacturers and stock libraries about this sort of promotion, as you can tell by the content on your CD. Computer Arts is in the privileged position of being the best-selling creative magazine, so we also put a lot of effort into getting exclusives on demos and educational versions, as well as full programs.

GOING LIVE Just a quick note to tell you how much I enjoy your magazine. I don’t get around to picking it up every month, but I appreciate how much time and space you guys spend on giving us an objective view of all those toys that are so tempting and so draining on our wallets. I’m experienced in Photoshop and Illustrator and I am comfortable with all of Adobe’s products. I’ve also been taking Web design/development classes in Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. All these are obviously Macromedia and there are no classes in

★ LETTER OF THE MONTH SMELLING OF ALMONDS? First, I’d like to thank you for distributing the fantastic app, Cinema 4D CE – it’s an incredibly good deal and I’ve already upgraded to CE+. There’s

one thing that I’m disappointed in, though – the lack of SLA. Smells Like Almonds adds a great deal to the functionality of Cinema and without it

Cinema 4D CE’s own materials editor is enough when using textures.

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the materials are pretty weak. I’ve read on a Cinema forum that people have requested SLA for CE and Maxon has said that it isn’t available. But actually it is! SLA for R6.3 is still on Maxon’s Website and is fully compatible with R6 CE, except for the serial number. I’ve installed it and it runs perfectly, but in demo mode. All it would take is a quick tweak to enable it to function properly in CE+. Maybe a word from you might encourage Maxon to release it for CE+? Here’s hoping! Barry Croucher Perry Stacy, CEO of Maxon UK, has sent a reply: “Thank you for upgrading to Cinema 4D CE+, which gives you identical features to Cinema 4D XL6, as previously sold for over £1300. “Smells Like Almonds (SLA) is a fabulous shader system for Cinema 4D, created by third-party developer bhodiNUT. SLA doesn’t come with CE because CE is based on version 6 of

our software, and our deal with bhodiNUT only lets us include SLA with Cinema 4D version 7 upwards. Even XL6 users who paid over £1300 for their app didn’t get SLA included! “The great news is that CE6 has a brilliant material system, offering 13 material channels, including diffusion and displacement. You can load textures into most of these channels to create any type of material you want. There’s also SAT and MIP interpolation of textures for flicker-free animation, plus other interpolation types for when you want really crisp stills (after all, your CE+6 upgrade lets you create pictures as large as 16,000x16,000 pixels). “With the exception of SLA, the CE6 material system is almost the same as the material system in our flagship Cinema 4D R8 software. There are many Cinema 4D R8 users who create top-quality work, without ever having used SLA, even though it’s included with R8.”

GoLive. Here in the States, GoLive is still the new kid on the block, and hasn’t made much of an impact on the public’s attitudes. My gut feeling tells me to go with the Adobe stuff, but my classes in Dreamweaver give me the nagging doubt that I might be missing something if I don’t take that route. Unfortunately, money is an object in the decision. Otherwise, I would buy everything in sight and be happy. Do you think I’ll have as versatile a workflow with GoLive, especially with my art/photography strong points? Has Computer Arts ever run a comparison between the two programs? On Adobe’s Website, there’s a comparison chart showing the advantages of GoLive over Dreamweaver – from Adobe’s viewpoint, clearly. Louis Houk The short answer? Go with what works best for you – try the demos and see what fits in with your workflow. We haven’t done a direct comparison between the two applications, although with GoLive CS on the horizon and Dreamweaver MX 2004 now shipping this could be something you’ll be seeing soon. One thing we would say, since you mention you’re rather adept with Adobe’s tools, is that GoLive CS has many integration features with the likes of InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, and a new, more Adobe-like interface. See page 92 for the preview.

NEXT MONTH COMPUTER ARTS 90 YOUR COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE Free with next issue of Computer Arts: a 24-page in-depth guide to the latest releases of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive, featuring product overviews, beta tester interviews and a complete tutorial on how the whole suite works together.*

WRITE IN AND WIN!

THE FLASH CHOICE

Letter of the month wins a Contech Photoshop Logickeyboard, worth £75 Each issue, the writer of our star letter receives a Photoshop logickeyboard from Contech. Worth £75, the keyboard features colour-coded keys that enable you to edit in Photoshop like a pro. The keyboard helps you to work efficiently in Adobe’s app, providing handy tool references and keyboard shortcuts – you’ll never forget a key command again. Contech also offers

So which one will it be? Macromedia offers more choice to designers and developers with the launch of Flash MX 2004 in both Standard and Professional versions

upgrade keycap sets to transform your Mac Pro keyboard into a fully fledged Photoshop tool. The company currently offers keyboards for Adobe Premiere and Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Avid XPress DV, Pinnacle Edition and more. Mac and PC boards are available – you choose. For more info, go to www.contech.co.uk, [email protected], or call 01438 315 757.

BÜRO DESTRUCT IN PROFILE The fantastically diverse Swiss designers on their work, clients, opinions and brand new book

PIXEL-PUSHING PHOTOSHOP Pixelsurgeon’s own Jason Arber provides more Photoshop insight via the creation of an amazing illustration

THE ASSOCIATION OF ILLUSTRATORS 30 years of supporting and representing the professional illustrator – we speak to existing members of the Association of Illustrators about its expanding role in the creative world

DIGITAL CAMERAS ON TEST We put five of the best mid-range digital cameras from leading manufacturers to the test. But which one will come out on top?

REVIEWED SOON DVD Studio Pro 3ds max 6 BodyPaint 2 Poser 5 for Mac Mimic 2

Photoshop CS Illustrator CS InDesign CS GoLive CS Flash MX 2004

Dreamweaver MX 2004 Fireworks MX 2004 Extensis PXL Smartscale Carrara Studio 3

New Wacom tablets Apple Power Mac G5 Canon EOS 300D ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition

ON SALE 30 OCTOBER *Supplement available to all subscribers and UK newsstand customers only. Subscribe now to ensure you get your copy +44 (0)870 4448455 All contents correct at time of going to press

Computer Arts_November 2003

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NEWS

SEND ALL NEWS, COMMENTS AND LINKS TO MARK PENFOLD AT [email protected]

ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE SOFTWARE Adobe makes sweeping updates to its print and Web tools

CAMERA Canon’s 6-megapixel consumer SLR unveiled p14

MEDIA Mook secures Sunday Times CD-ROM magazine p16

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midst intense industry speculation, Adobe has finally unveiled its much-anticipated Creative Suite. This bundle of EXCLUSIVE predominantly print-orientated TURN TO PAGE 84! apps comes in two versions: Standard and Premium. The Standard version includes new iterations of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, while the Premium edition also adds a new version of Webauthoring app GoLive and Acrobat 6. Better integration and improved workflow seem to be the key concepts behind the new packages – hence the final addition to the suite: Version Cue. This is a kind of workgroup server that operates in the background, providing versioning and file-management. According to Adobe, the program helps to ‘glue’ the other applications together more effectively. Interestingly, all the tools (with The Layer Comps the exception of Acrobat 6 Pro) lose feature of Photoshop enables you to have their version number, so you can say many iterations of one goodbye to Photoshop 8, Illustrator 11 design within a single and InDesign 3. Adobe’s acclaimed PSD document. products now come badged with an

PREVIEWS

HP HARDWARE Eight inks for

black and white prints? p18

ANIMATION C4 makes £1.6m

investment in animation p20

WEEKLY UPDATES

www.computerarts.co.uk

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News

SOFTWARE The latest releases, updates and software news

COMBUSTION 3

MAXON BODYPAINT3D 2 Maxon software has announced the immediate availability of BodyPaint3D 2, the updated 3D paint package for Cinema 4D R8. The update includes new seamless painting modes and the ability to more easily move files between different 3D applications. The full module costs £500. www.maxon.net

Acclaimed compositing package expands its appeal Discreet has announced the arrival of combustion 3, the latest iteration of its compositing and effects package. Due to ship in October alongside 3ds max 6, combustion 3 breaks new ground with its brand new video-editing module. The addition of a non-linear videoediting module in the program is expected to make life significantly easier for artists and editors, previously constrained by the need to shift projects between packages to deliver final cuts. The drive to integrate

workflow continues with improved support for plug-ins for After Effects and Photoshop. Flash output has also been added, expanding the range of output options available and making combustion a suitable tool for Web developers. This addition fits with the price drop that Discreet announced in January this year, making the package feasible for those on a budget. combustion 3 is expected to sell for £1150. A Mac version is scheduled for

release early in 2004. Expect a full preview in the coming months. INFO www.discreet.com

The new Creative Suite box art was created by San Francisco-based MetaDesign. For an in-depth look at the development process, check out the Creative Suite supplement, coming free with next month’s issue of Computer Arts.

easy-to-identity CS suffix – at least for the time being. At 50 quid short of a grand for the Premium edition, you can’t help but think the Creative Suite is good value for money, considering that Photoshop alone costs around £500. An upgrade from any version of Photoshop is also available for £575. The Standard edition of the suite is predicted to cost £775. The reasons for this simultaneous upgrade? Again, it boils down to integration. In this way, Adobe can maintain product compatibility across the board - a solution that’s definitely worked for Macromedia with its MX product line. Of course, each product will still be available to buy individually (with the exception of Version Cue). One of the most exciting new features added to Photoshop is Layer Comps. This introduces a new palette which enables you to save iterations of graphics within one document. For example, you can turn a few layers off and save this iteration, then turn one back on and save again. You can now toggle between the two versions to see

THE CS TOP THREE Tools to look forward to in the Creative Suite Version Cue is deliberately designed to run in the background with minimal user intervention, although it does come with comprehensive management options, so you can set client permissions and so forth.

which one you (or your clients) prefer. Adobe is convinced this will be Photoshop’s new killer feature – and from what we’ve seen, we’re inclined to agree. We won’t go into too much detail about the collection – you’ll find our world-exclusive previews beginning on page 84 – but the release certainly looks like being on a par with Macromedia’s original MX outing, and could change the way you work with Photoshop and Illustrator. Only time will tell, however, if Version Cue has enough ‘stickiness’ to make cross-media design a cinch. INFO www.adobe.com

PHOTOSHOP CS • Layer Comps • Match Colour • Filter Gallery ILLUSTRATOR CS • 3D Effects • Character and Paragraph palettes • Faster performance INDESIGN CS • Separations Palette • Nested Styles • Package for GoLive GOLIVE CS • CSS Editor • PDF support • InDesign integration

PHOTOSHOP SPEED BUMP Adobe has recently announced the immediate availability of a new performance-enhancing update for Photoshop 7. The update is designed to take full advantage of Apple’s new Power Mac G5 product line and is available as a free download from the Adobe Website. www.adobe.com MIRAGE EFFECTS PACKAGE Mirage is a unified environment for creating animated graphics and special effects, integrating real-time video paint, animation and effects into a single product. A pre-release beta is available now to existing NewTek Aura, LightWave and Video Toaster customers; the final version will be available in October 2003. www.bauhaussoftware.com NEWTEK FREE TEXTURE COLLECTION The fourth edition of the Texture Collection includes images in the categories Wood, Metal, Sky, Nature and Stone. All 50 textures are unedited photographic images at 1600x1200 pixels resolution and provided in JPEG format for speedier download times. Note that registration is required before you can access the collection. www.newtek.com/freestuff SILO 3D MODELLER Nevercenter is now shipping its new subdivision surfaces modeller Silo 1.0, which combines high-end 3D modelling tools with a fully customisable and streamlined interface. Best of all, it costs $109. www.nevercenter.com SMOKE ON LINUX Discreet has announced the industry’s first high-end non-linear editing and finishing system for the Linux operating system, smoke 6. Although the main audience for smoke will remain IRIX-based, the addition of Linux workstation support for the system in early 2004 will seriously extend its potential. www.discreet.com

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HARDWARE Stay abreast of the latest art-enhancing technology SONY DSC-F828 Sony’s 8-megapixel digital camera is the first to make use of the company’s new four-colour CCD and improved image processor. These innovations make the F828 capable of reproducing colours more closely akin to those of the human eye than ever before. The DSC-F828 costs £900. www.sony.co.uk CANON POWERSHOT A80 The 4.0-megapixel A80 is Canon’s new flagship camera in its Powershot A-series range. It brings together a newly designed 3x optical zoom with fast f/2.8 aperture, Vari-angle LCD monitor and nine-point AiAF (Artificial intelligence Automatic Focus). A 32MB CompactFlash card is included with the camera, costing £349. www.canon.co.uk AMACOM IODISK Flip2disk manufacturer Amacom has released a new external storage device: a portable hard drive called the IOdisk. Starting at £95 for the 20GB unit, escalating to £295 for 80GB, the device requires no mains power and is Mac and PC compatible. Connectivity and power come via USB 2.0. www.amacom-tech.com iMAC UPDATES Apple has upgraded the spec on its iMac range. The new 15 and 17-inch models come with processors up to 1.25GHz, faster memory, cinematic 3D graphics and high-speed USB 2.0. The 17-inch model has a serious graphics adaptor in the shape of NVIDIA’s 64MB GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. Prices for the 17-inch model start at £1449. www.apple.com PANASONIC CAMERAS Panasonic has released a new range of stylish Lumix digital cameras: the F1, FZ1 and FZ2. All models come equipped with lenses from the definitive photographic manufacturer, Leica. Prices climb to £399 for the FZ1, which promises images clear enough to produce photographic A4 prints. www.panasonic.co.uk OLYMPUS C-5000 Olympus has introduced its Camedia C-5000 Zoom digital camera: a 5megapixel model with a 3x optical zoom lens (38mm-114mm, f2.8-f4.8). Creative features include a 4cm macro, and manual focus, exposure and white balance. The expected US price is $499 when it’s released in the autumn. UK price yet to be confirmed. www.olympus.com

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SOMEWHERE TOTALLY ELSE EVENT London hosts the acclaimed European Design Show

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rom now until 4 January 2004, the Design Museum at London’s South Bank will house the best in European design from the last two years. The exhibition, entitled Somewhere Totally Else – The European Design Show, covers every aspect of design – from Rolls-Royce engines to multimedia and the Web. The show’s curator, Donna Loveday, sums up the event. “The Design Biennial will show how today’s designers are deploying new technologies to create products, concepts and environments that are transforming our lives – and literally taking us somewhere else.” Among the highlights will be a large-scale projection of the latest in animation in Daniel Brown’s Flowers series. Famous for his animation work showcased on www.play-create.com, Brown is joined by the multimedia work of French designers GlobZ and film credits from Kuntzel & Deygas. Head to the Design Museum’s Website for further information. INFO www.designmuseum.org

CANON EOS 300D PHOTOGRAPHY A 6.3-megapixel digital SLR for £1000?

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anon has hit another milestone in photography by introducing the world’s first consumer-level digital SLR. For £1000, you can now own a 6.3megapixel EOS 300D, with a new EF-S 1855mm f/3.5-5.6 lens, 35-zone ‘Through The Lens’ metering and DIGIC processor. Canon is predicting 500 per cent growth in the digital SLR market, and the 300D is its bid to take that market by storm. The idea, of course, is that pro (or semi-pro) photographers who have not yet turned digital will be tempted away

from their 35mm kit by this affordable digital SLR – its £1000 price tag will certainly appeal in a market where similar devices can cost much more. Although the 300D works with any of Canon’s standard EF lenses, a device sure to entice 35mm owners, Canon has also introduced a new digital-specific lens. The EF-S utilises the compact sensor size by employing a ‘Short Back Focus System’ which mounts the unit close to the sensor, making the EF-S a low-weight, short-length lens. So is the Canon’s EOS 300D worth the £1000 asking price? Find out next issue, when we put it to the test. INFO www.canon.co.uk

www.corel.com/mermaid/UK © 2003 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved.

WEBSITES The hottest sites and services on the Web…

THE MONTH

DESIGN BOOM www.designboom.com Packed full of useful design-related information, this rapid, responsive and entertaining site is well worth a visit, if only for its education section. Currently showing is the history of the folding chair, the chaise-longue and the rocking chair. There’s a good variety of interviews and articles, too.

MEDIA Mook lands Sunday Times Entertainment guide

RUSTMONKEY www.rustmonkey.com The world-leading motion and broadcast graphics firm Rustmonkey here showcases its designs for clients VW, Sony and The History Channel, among others, plus its breakthrough game cinematics and first-rate 3D work. So slick it’s a bit like seeing how the other half live. MISPRINTED www.misprintedtype.com Brazilian designer Eduardo Recife’s engaging site sports a profusion of illustrations, photography and typography. Much of his work is from the scratchy hand-made school and features some excellent montages. Probably most fetching is the photography section. SWEAT AND CIGARETTES www.sweatandcigarettes.com Sweat and Cigarettes is the creative repository of Brighton-based artist Matt Pagett. His images often have a wistful quality to them. “Core to the work,” he says, “are concerns for elegant mistakes, gentle oddness and man vs machine vs nature.“ Spin-off products are planned later in the year. IDEAL WORD www.idealword.org A strange one, this; it’s a bit like wandering into someone else’s house. The illustrations are a combination of classical-inspired figure drawings, rendered with a mouse or tablet. These figures somehow interact with a selection of readme.txt files to create some very fetching imagery. MON AMOUR www.m-o-n-a-m-o-u-r.com French artist/designer Mon Amour has packed this promotional site full of lush, colourful images. Clever, sexy stuff, not afraid to be smooth and seductive at a time when ‘cool’ is often seen as being as rudimentary as possible. Favourites include ‘Vegas’ and ‘Kill Death’. It’s all over too soon.

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

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igital design agency Mook has landed the high-profile job of designing a monthly entertainment review on CD-ROM for The Sunday Times. Called The Month, the disc features six distinct editorial sections. According to The Times’ Marketing Director Andrew Mullins, “Mook got

the tone just right, so that readers feel they’re on familiar ground even if they’re new to interactive media.” The project offered the agency the chance to work without the restrictions usually associated with Web-based media – namely the constraints of bandwidth. The major creative challenge of the disc comes in the shape of a monthly feature; this month on David Bowie. “We had full control over the appearance of each page, which enabled us to play with typography, layout and elegant transitions,” explained Tom Evans, Creative Director at Mook. The project is scheduled to run on a monthly basis, with Mook supplying the discs until July 2004. INFO www.mook.co.uk, www.timesonline.co.uk

LEARNING CURVE DESIGN, ILLUSTRATION, 3D, WEB DESIGN AND VIDEO – KEEP YOUR SKILLS UP TO SCRATCH LEARNING IT Glasgow Learning IT offers a range of multimedia courses, run from state-of-the-art studios in Sterling and Glasgow. Flash MX ActionScript 16-17 October, £550 Design techniques with Flash MX 12-13 October, £550 www.learningit.com MEDIA TRAINING London Media Training provides a range of professional software training courses for the design, publishing, internet, print and multimedia industries. Courses are authorised by Macromedia, Quark and Adobe. Adobe After Effects Introduction 27-28 October, £523 Macintosh OSX – Troubleshooting 6 October, £323 www.mediatraining.ltd.uk PARITY TRAINING London, Leeds, Edinburgh Parity runs numerous graphic design and Web software courses at multiple venues throughout the UK. To book, visit the Website.

Adobe Photoshop 7 Advanced Features 30-31 October, £699 Design Techniques with Macromedia Flash MX 20-21 October, £699 www.paritytraining.co.uk RNIB WEB ACCESS SEMINARS Edinburgh, Belfast, York, Manchester, Bristol, London, Reading These Web access seminars provide help and information on Website accessibility issues, and have been developed by the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). Half-day courses throughout October and November, £58.75 per session www.rnib.org.uk/webaccesscentre TRIMAC London Trimac offers hands-on training in a range of programs, covering print, graphics, Web and multimedia. Groups are limited to four people and can be on-site or at the Trimac studio. Photoshop 7 16-17 October, £588 InDesign 30-31 October, £588 www.trimac.co.uk

SHADES OF GREY TECHNOLOGY Hewlett-Packard develops a new

eight-ink system for black and white prints

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P is continuing its advance on the digital imaging market with a new range of digital cameras, printers and scanners. Most interesting to us, though, is a technical innovation that forms part of the range: a new eight-ink printing system for black and white prints. The soon-to-be-released A4 Photosmart 7960 comes complete with this printing system. This printer uses three grey ink cartridges, reducing the reliance on colour mixing to produce good tones in black and white printing. Central to this technology is the No. 59 HP grey cartridge, which contains three new inks: light grey, medium grey, and a new photo black. Monochrome prints aren’t the only images to benefit from the new printing system, though. The new grey cartridge significantly

expands the colour gamut available, putting around 79.2 million colours at your disposal. The Photosmart 7960 costs £249 – head to HP’s site for details of all the new releases. INFO www.hp.com

“ ( ) GUEST FONT

Our font of choice this issue is Headroom, designed by Lee Fasciani. It’s available in four weights from Union fonts, costing £28. Head to www.union-fonts.com for more information, and to view the entire Union collection.

ABCDEFGHI JKLMNOPQRST UVWXYZ 12345 67890

“

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OPINION CASHFLOW SUBJECT Can those involved in the creative industry turn their flagging profits around by gaining tools that all work seamlessly together? Adobe’s John Cunningham seems to think so

Today’s economy has put an immense pressure on the creative industry, and spending and efficiencies are two key areas that companies are having to scrutinise. This has hit the industry hard, especially advertising spending, which in turn affects almost all organisations. Luckily, technology has evolved in recent years, enabling companies to work in a more efficient manner – and with improved communications, this often involves remote sites collaborating on artwork or publications. With these changing trends, it’s vital that individuals or groups are able to meet the ever-decreasing deadlines, and reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes – while still maintaining enough time to visually create and express their ideas with the applications that they use daily. Many of the creative companies that are successfully facing these challenges head on are the ones that are streamlining their workflow – from original concept and design, through to creation and print. These companies are the ones that are investing in each individual, personally developing them in order to expand their skill sets beyond their current capabilities. At the same time, each individual understands the importance of working in a group level to create, share and manage artwork, images, text and so on. As they become more efficient in collaborating across groups, the issue of having the correct current version of a logo or text gets bigger, as does ensuring that the correct resolution for a particular image is being used on a campaign for both print and Web. While Adobe continues to add value to the individual applications for the creative market, we are also working hard to enable more effective collaboration between the applications and their users. Adobe has developed an underlining layer of control between the programs that simplifies the creation and management of artwork across groups – you can quickly search, organise items and check their current status against deadlines. You can share files and information about those files with other team members, and you can use the technology in an efficient way to communicate with clients, managing review and approval cycles and maintain accountability. So with the increasing demands on the creative community, it really is the right time to move and embrace this new technology in order to streamline your workflow. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? INFO www.adobe.co.uk

C4 TO INVEST £1.6 MILLION IN ANIMATION TV Channel 4 is looking for cutting-edge talent

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hannel 4 has announced its commitment to invest £1.6 million in animation over the next three years. Its three key schemes – MESH, AIR and ANIMATE! – are already on the lookout for exciting new talent. ANIMATE! funds risk-taking short films for TV. So daring are the projects that, according to Scheme Producer Dick Arnall, “If pushed, we would have to confess that we no longer really know what animation is!” During its first 12 years, the scheme has commissioned some 60 works, including this year’s Soho Shorts winner Dad’s Dead.

MESH is a digital animation initiative run in partnership with NESTA, by Blackwatch Productions. Scheme Producer Nicola Black explains its remit: “We’re looking for cutting-edge digital animation. It can be 2D or 3D, so long as it’s digital. We also have a strain of interactive films to be deployed over the Web.” “No other television broadcaster has invested so much in developing the raw talent of the UK’s animators,” commented Tim Gardam, Director of Television at Channel 4. “We look forward to seeing more innovative specials over the next three years.”

ILLUSTRATIVE INSIGHT EVENT New AOI event celebrates association’s 30th year

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he Association of Illustrators is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a full day’s seminar, Illustration In The Digital Age, at the Royal College of Art, London. Established in 1973 as an association for traditional illustrators, the AOI will be acknowledging the growing acceptance of digital tools by its artistic community. The seminar will be chaired by Lawrence Zeegen, the illustrator, lecturer and long-standing Computer Arts contributor, who has strong view on the introduction of digital methods within this long-established industry. A range of speakers, including

illustrator Mick Marston and Aardman Animations, will be addressing this change in workflow for illustrators of all methods and styles, and speculating on what the future holds for a new generation of artists. Adobe and iView Media will also be on hand to give out practical advice. Tickets for the event, which takes place on 26 November, cost £35 (or £20 for full-time students). INFO www.theaoi.com

INFO www.channel4.com

be The AOI will discussing the ital impact of dig technology on the at illustration of Art Royal College er. on 26 Novemb

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

OCTOBER

Computer Arts Projects 51 On sale 16 October Computer Arts 90 On sale 28 October Discreet combustion 3 Ready to burn Updated G4 PowerBook Announcements due LiveStage Pro 5 Could be ready to go

NOVEMBER

The Matrix Revolutions The final instalment hits cinemas 5 November Computer Arts 91 On sale 27 November Pinnacle Edition 6 Finally released Timeline Released 26 November, with special effects by ILM plasma Update from Discreet

Animation receives a welcome financial boost from C4: a £1.6-million investment in three schemes over the coming three years. Together, the schemes produce 13 animated shorts every year. MESH’s Killing Time at Home and Glasgowlands, shown here, are two examples.

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DECEMBER

New gaming graphics cards NVIDIA and ATI deliver the goods Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King Set to wow crowds from 17 December Final Cut Pro 4.5 Now optimised for the G5 Computer Arts Projects 53 On sale 9 December Computer Arts 92 On sale 16 December Apple Drops shake for Linux?

JANUARY 2004

G5 laptops Ushering in the new year? Nikon or Olympus Will they introduce an affordable digital SLR? Computer Arts 97 On sale 22 January Canon and Sony New 3CCD broadcast DVcams hit the shops Adobe Elements 3.0 Here’s hoping…

ADOBE FOUR-CITY TOUR Adobe invites you to a four-city showcase of its exciting new Creative Suite

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o celebrate the launch of the Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe is embarking on a four-city tour. To be held in Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin, the events will give you the chance to experience the new Adobe Creative Suite first-hand, and get to grips with the new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive. There’s also a chance to check out Acrobat 6 Professional and Adobe’s new file management and tracking software, Version Cue. Included in the Creative Suite is a brand new version of the de facto standard image-editing tool, Photoshop. Photoshop CS features some fantastic-looking tools that will benefit the digital artist, photographer and illustrator. These include a new Layer Comps feature – enabling you to create many iterations of an illustration and so on in one Photoshop document. Match Colour looks to be another top feature, enabling you to maintain consistent colour and lighting across many different shots. Improvements to the File Browser make it more of an all-round asset management tool, while a new Filter Gallery makes it possible to add many filters at once, and experiment with different stacking orders. You’ll find more on the release on page 85. Also new to the Creative Suite is Illustrator CS. This features a raft of 3D tools, giving you the ability to rotate, revolve and extrude your 2D objects. In addition, you can

22 Computer Arts_November 2003

map symbols to faces for creating textures. Find out more with our preview on page 88. The third new application is InDesign CS. The latest incarnation of Adobe’s print design and layout application features such new tools as a Separation Preview – enabling you to preview CMYK and spot plates at the design stage, and a number of workflow enhancements. Find out all the details on page 90. Then there’s GoLive CS and Acrobat 6 Professional. The former (see page 92 for the preview) adds many integration features to the Web authoring app, enabling you to easily repurpose content from InDesign and work with native Photoshop and Illustrator files. Acrobat 6 Professional gives you all the tools you need to create and edit PDF files. The new tool that links everything together is Version Cue. This versioning and file management software enables workgroups to easily keep track of file iterations – making sure one designer doesn’t override another’s hard work. The events in all four cities give you a chance to be the first to experience the Creative Suite, getting a guided tour of the all the new products and how they integrate with one another from Adobe’s experts. At the time of going to press, final times are to be confirmed, but they’ll soon be available from www.adobe.com/csevents5. INFO www.adobe.com/csevents5

VENUE: MANCHESTER, THE IMAX CINEMA DATE: 23 OCTOBER 2003 VENUE: LONDON, THE BREWERY DATE: 29 OCTOBER 2003 VENUE: EDINBURGH, EICC DATE: 4 NOVEMBER 2003 VENUE: DUBLIN, THE BURLINGTON HOTEL DATE: 11 NOVEMBER 2003

Check out our world-exclusive preview of Adobe’s impressive new suite on page 84.

ILLUSTRATION BY FLATLINER

www.flatlineronline.com

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Tutorial

POSER & PHOTOSHOP

FIGURES IN PHOTOSHOP EXCLUSIVE: On your CD this month, you’ll find the world’s most popular Poser models: Michael and Victoria from DAZ Productions. Use them to create our vibrant cover image in Poser and Photoshop, and discover the processes behind figurative illustration

This month’s cover tutorial combines the strengths of Poser and Photoshop to create an image with a real feel of the 1980s – think of the cover of Duran Duran’s Rio album, mixed with a bit of deconstructive graphic art and a broad stroke of Athena-esque portraiture, and you get the idea. It’s bright and brash, and created using the Poser models Michael and Victoria – which are free on your CD. Victoria is the most widely used female Poser figure, and Michael is top of DAZ’s male model list: this popular pair are an essential addition to any 3D library, and with our in-depth tutorial, they’ll lend a host of possibilities to the way you use figures in both Poser and Photoshop. At the beginning of this month’s tutorial, we’ll produce a number of renders within Poser, which we’ll then use as the basis for a striking Photoshop illustration. Install Michael and Victoria, find the folder named Tutorial\Cover with all the files you’ll need, and you’re ready to get started. INFO Artwork and tutorial by Flatliner. Head to www.flatlineronline.com or www.jasoncook.co.uk, or email [email protected]

ON THE CD You’ll find the Poser models Michael and Victoria on the CD, plus all the files you need to create our cover image in the folder named Tutorial\Cover. Head to www.daz3d.com to find out more about DAZ’s range of 3D models.

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PART 1 A PORTRAIT OF VICTORIA Using Poser and the figures on your CD, we’ll pose and render a portrait of the Victoria model

INSIGHT DAZ MODELS

This tutorial was undertaken in Poser 4, but the Victoria and Michael figures on your CD will work in versions 3, 4 and 5 of Poser. Check out the brand new models at www.daz3d.com, where you can buy them for immediate download.

FACTORY STATE

For this tutorial, we’re working in the Factory State. Choose Edit Menu>General Preferences, then click Enable The Launch To Factory State. If you’re quite experienced with Poser, just follow this tutorial with your own settings. When saving files, save as either a Poser file or .pzz extension.

5

Now we’ll use Rotate in the Editing tool palette to turn her head. You may also want to rotate the Upper Neck to get something similar to the image above. Don’t forget to select the actual figure when moving her body parts. Once you’ve selected the body part, use the Parameter Dials to rotate it by either entering numerical values or sliding the dials.

1

Once you’ve installed the figures, create a new document in Poser, open the Victoria 1 RR figure from the figure’s Libraries palette, and go to the sub-category DAZ People. Here you’ll find Victoria; select her by clicking the appropriate thumbnail, then click on the Create New figure icon located at the bottom of the Library palette.

3

Using the Translate In/Out tool from the Editing tools, drag the figure towards us and also use the Translate/Pull tool to help position the figure, as in the image above. You can do this by placing your cursor over the tool icons or the actual figure itself.

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Make sure the head is selected, scroll down the Parameter Dial Palette to find the Open Lips parameter, then slide the dial so that the numerical value is set to around 0.563 and the mouth is slightly open.

2

Depending on how much memory you have in your computer, switch the Document Display Style to Texture Shaded to give the model a betterrendered look. Go to Figure>Use Inverse kinematics and uncheck the left leg and the right leg. Now go to Display>Ground Shadows and uncheck that, too.

4

Switch Editing tools and select Twist. Select the neck by clicking it; it’s in two parts, so don’t select the Upper Neck, which is directly under the chin – for now, work with the section immediately above the shoulders. Twist Victoria’s head towards the left.

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7

Next, adjust the default light settings and position the three lights as above. You want the left part of her face to be lit, and the right side partly in shadow. Click the circle in the Light Control to select that light, then drag it into position. Now go to Render>Render to check how the face is being illuminated. To change the colour of the lights, click the Colour Dot that appears at the bottom of the Light Control and choose a colour from the palette that appears.

Tutorial

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8

Now we’ll set the document up for rendering. Go to Render>Render Options, select New Window and enter 1200 pixels (the height is set automatically). For surface detail, ensure everything is selected, and that Anti-alias is checked. To render the figure fully, click Render Now.

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Again using the low-res Victoria figure form the DAZ People sub-category, pose the figure using the same technique. Render the image at about 900 pixels high and ensure Anti-alias is switched on. Don’t worry about lighting. Save the image as Vic2.tif.

Using the Elliptical Marquee tool and the Square Marquee tool, delete selections of the gradient so it resembles the image above. Once you’ve done that, create a new layer and call it Gradient 2, then make another gradient shape like the above image. Remember to save your file.

PART 3 GRAPHICS AND BACKGROUNDS Setting up a Photoshop background and adding a few graphic elements

9

Save your render as Vic1.tif and save your Poser file. The render and the Poser file are contained on the CD for your reference. The pose is meant only as a guideline, so experiment before you commit yourself.

15 PART 2 EXTRA RENDERS Learn how to create more figures and renders for use in Photoshop

Create a new layer and call it Circles 1. Now use the Elliptical Marquee tool to create a group of circles on this layer with a colour value of R245, G46 and B47. Set the opacity for this layer to 35 per cent in the Layers palette.

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Create a new document via File>New; set the preset size to Custom, the width to 1500 pixels, height to 1000 pixels and the resolution to 72 pixels/inch. Set the Colour mode to RGB. Don’t worry about contents colour. Now you want to fill the document with the RGB colour values of R233, G190 and B154; set these by clicking the foreground colour icon on the Tool palette. Save the file as Ps_illo1.psd.

16 10

Using the lo-res Michael figure form the DAZ People sub-category, pose the figure as above using the techniques we outlined in the previous sections. Render the image at about 900 pixels high and make sure Anti-alias is checked. Don’t worry too much about lighting, because this render will only serve as an outline shape within the Photoshop illustration. Save the image as mic1.tif.

13

Click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a new layer; change the foreground colour in the Tool palette to R218, G76 and B85. Using the Rectangular Marquee tool, select the bottom two-thirds of the document. Choose the Gradient tool, setting Foreground to Transparency and create a gradient. Call this layer Gradient 1.

Drag the circle layer in the Layers palette to the duplicate layer icon – do this three times. Position each layer so the circles look something like the above image. Use the Move tool to position them on the Tool palette, then go to Edit>Transform>Rotate to rotate the circles so that they don’t look like they’re all pointing the same way. Now link all the circle layers in the Layers palette, and go to Layer>Merge Linked to make them all one layer.

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PART 4 FACIAL DETAIL Using the portrait render of Victoria, we’ll now place her over the background and start to manipulate skin tones

INSIGHT PEN TOOL

The Pen tool is a hugely underestimated tool in Photoshop, enabling you to create clipping paths and shapes just as quickly and efficiently as in FreeHand or Illustrator. The Make Work Path feature is great if you need to make a path of a shape that’s already in your image; just create a selection, then use Make Work Path in the Paths palette to convert your selection to a clipping path.

WORKING FOR PRINT

For this tutorial, we’re working with Photoshop’s bitmap rather than vector tools. However, if your client is unsure what size to work at, it may help to use vectors instead; you can then easily resize at a later date. Resizing bitmaps isn’t a problem when downsizing, but magnifying a bitmap will generate unwanted softening and pixellation.

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Open Vic1.tif and go to Selection> Load Selection. Within the Load Selection dialog box, make sure the source document is vic1.tif, the channel Alpha 1 and the operation New selection, then click OK. Edit>Copy, then Edit>Paste into the background we’ve created. Call the new layer (the one Victoria is in) Vic 1 and position her as above.

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Staying with the Vic1 layer, make a simple lasso selection around the left eye and, using Hue and Saturation, set Hue to -27, Saturation to -21 and Lightness to +11. This helps add a bit of tonal colour range to the face.

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Create a new layer between the Vic1 layer and the Lips layer, and call it White Face. Using the Pen tools, create a clipping path like the shape above around the left part of her face. Turn the path into a selection and fill it with the colour white. Call the path’s layer White Face.

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Rotate Victoria’s head to the right, so she’s looking slightly upwards. Delete part of her neck with the Elliptical Marquee tool, as shown, then open Image>Adjustments>Hue and Saturation, set the Hue to -25 and click OK.

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Create a new layer in the Layers palette and call it Eye1. Create a path in the Paths Layer palette and call it White Eye. Next, create a clipping path around the whites of the left eye. Now fill it with white. Create another paths layer and call it pupil outline. Create a path around the pupil. Now turn it into a selection and stroke the selection: go to Edit>Stroke Selection, 2 pixels thick.

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Using the Pen tool, create a clipping path around Victoria’s lips, then turn the path into a selection. Remember to name your clipping path – call it Lips and then copy and paste it so that the lips are pasted into their own layer. Call the new layer Lips. Adjust the Saturation in the Hue/Saturation dialog box to +46. Now open Image>Adjustment> Colour Balance and OK the mid-tones at +46, 0, +37.

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Going back to the Vic1 layer, draw a circular selection around the right eye and then set the colour balance for the red mid-tone to +82 – this helps suggest the face is being built out of shapes. Make sure you’re still saving your Photoshop document.

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Staying on the Eye1 layer, and creating a new paths layer on the Paths palette, make a clipping path around the eye to simulate eyeliner. Call the path layer Eyeliner1 and then stroke it with the colour black. Using the Lasso tool, loosely draw some eyelashes above and below the eye and fill the selection in with black. You may also want to fill in the iris with a pure black, and strengthen the white highlight by filling it in with white.

Tutorial

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INSIGHT

TRENDS

You must be aware of different styles if you want to be a commercial artist, but never blatantly rip off another illustrator or designer’s work. Look and learn from them, and expand on what they do, but don’t simply copy. After all, to be a successful commercial artist, you really have to keep abreast of what everyone else is doing – surf the Web, look at design and illustration mags, and check out profiles in Computer Arts.

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Now repeat the step above for the right eye – just number the paths layer respectively and create a new layer called Eye 2. With the iris, adjust the Hue and Saturation so it matches the left eye. To do this, you’ll have to go back to the Vic1 layer and set the Hue to -26 and the Lightness to +17.

PART 5 FINISHING TOUCHES Now to complete the face and introduce a few figure elements

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Again, we’ll create a new layer; make it the top layer of the Layer palettes and name it WhiteFringe1, then create a clipping path that looks similar to the above shape.

26

Create a new layer and name it Purple Sweep, then place it above the Lips layer in the Layers palette. Using the Pen tool again, create a shape like the above image above the left eye and call the path layer Purple Sweep as well. Turn the path into a selection. Use the Gradient tool to create a gradient with the colour R182, G44 and B98 to Transparent. Set the opacity for that layer to 71 per cent.

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Create a new top layer in the Layers palette and name the layer HairShape1. Create a paths layer and give it the same name. Then, using the Pen tool, make a shape for the hair, using the image above as your guide. Turn it into a selection and fill the selection with a gradient; use the colours R215, G11 and B125 for the left of the gradient, and R215, G36 and B59 for the other end of the gradient.

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To finish off the face, add a beauty spot and some earrings. Then duplicate the Vic1 layer and use the Transparency layer lock in the Layers palette to lock the original layer. Fill it with a red colour. Set the Blending mode to Overlay and offset the shape. Repeat this and check it against the above image. You may also want to make the layer a bit more transparent by adjusting its opacity to stop it looking saturated.

FINAL STEP

F

inally, open Vic2.tif and Mic1.tif. Using what you’ve learned in the tutorial, copy and paste them into the illustration and create the effect you can see in the above image. Use the Transparency lock to help create a clean gradient within the figures shape, and refer to Ps_illo1.psd on the CD as a guide.

27

Create a new layer at the top of the Layers palette and call it FaceShape1. Using the tools we’ve used already, create a black shape above the left eye, then make another new layer and call it FaceShape2. Create a red shape as above and set the Blending mode for this layer to Overlay in the Layers palette. Save your file.

29

Now duplicate the HairShape layer and move the shape downwards and outwards towards the left, as shown, switching the Blending mode to Overlay. Repeat this process.

Computer Arts_November 2003

29

WOR £200TH 0

WIN THE ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE Your first chance to win one of two Premium Adobe Creative Suites, with six brand new apps!

T

his month, Adobe has kindly donated two copies of the awesome Creative Suite for us to give away. In case you haven’t been paying attention this issue, that means copies of Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS, GoLive CS and Acrobat 6.0 Pro, tools that have defined digital art for over a decade, along with Version Cue – Adobe’s new file-management tool. The Creative Suite aims to deliver a highly integrated production environment, so that creativity flows freely between print, Web and screen – as Adobe’s John Cunningham makes clear in our Opinion column on page 18. From colour management to interface design, the Creative Suite is here to make your life easier. Photoshop CS has new tools for photographers, graphic designers, video and Web professionals. From the exposure correction tools of Photoshop CS to the new Web Content palette in ImageReady, this is an exciting release. For many illustrators, though, the star of the show will be Illustrator CS with its amazing new 3D capabilities, Scribble effect, and revamped approach to type. Combine these two giants with the likes of InDesign CS, GoLive CS and Acrobat Pro and you have an irresistible force in digital art. All you have to do to win these creative applications is answer our simple question. INFO www.adobe.co.uk

30 Computer Arts_November 2003

QUESTION WHAT DOES THE CS AT THE END OF PHOTOSHOP CS STAND FOR? TO ENTER Try the easy way, via our Website at www.computerarts.co.uk/competitions. Click on the Adobe Competition and enter via the link at the bottom of the page. Answer the question, fill in the rest of the form, then click Submit Entry. If you don’t have Web access, you can still enter by sending us your answer on a postcard to: Adobe Competition, Computer Arts, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW. Please include your address and a telephone number, so we can contact you if you win.

RULES Closing date is 6 November 2003. Employees of Adobe, Future Publishing and their agents and families are not permitted to enter. Multiple entries are not accepted. The editor’s decision is final and there are no cash alternatives. No other correspondence will be entered into. If you are entering by post and do not wish any of the companies involved in this competition to contact you with further offers, please indicate this on your entry. We will not pass details on to third parties.

32 Computer Arts_November 2003

finding nemo

Feature

Pixar and Disney unite for the animated smash of the year. We talk to the VFX teams about the time, techniques and talent behind their latest movie

P

ixar’s fifth feature-length 3D animation is also the company’s fifth blockbuster. Finding Nemo’s US release surpassed records set by Disney’s mighty The Lion King and arrives in the UK this month. The film centres on Marlin and Nemo, father and son clown fish separated on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Their efforts to be reunited gave Pixar’s legendary animators and technicians plenty to do as our two heroes swim their way to each other through stunningly complex, water environments. Despite well-publicised cuts in crew and budget since production began back in 2000, Finding Nemo is now being hailed as a technical triumph following Pixar’s titanic advances in water simulation. According to Executive Producer and creative guru John Lasseter (Toy Story, Monsters Inc), “This movie absolutely raises the bar for Pixar and for the art of computer animation.”

A FISHY TALE The story charts the trials of Marlin, a single father, as he searches among the lush environments of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Sydney harbour for his lost son Nemo. Unbeknown to the over-protective Marlin and his comical pal, Dory, Nemo has been captured by divers and transferred to a fish tank in a dentist’s waiting room, overlooking Sydney Harbour. Finding Nemo was conceived, co-written and directed by Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton, who has been credited as co-screenwriter on all four of the company’s previous hits. Stanton put a personal spin on the movie by addressing some of his own concerns as a father in the script. A perfect example of this approach is the opening gambit of the movie: Nemo’s first day at school. A troubling time for both father and son becomes the start of an epic adventure. Past experience led Pixar to concentrate on developing an engaging story, a strong set of characters and atmospheric environments. Lasseter was quick to give the project the green light: “Our goal is always to make things believable, not realistic. By stylising the design of things, adding more geometry and pushing the colours, we were able to create a natural and credible world for our characters.” According to Sharon Calahan, the production designer responsible for the overall look and feel of the movie, “This is the most complex film Pixar has ever taken on. A big part of our job was creating believable underwater environments. That took many forms, because we had clear water, super-murky water and even the water in a fish tank. We had to figure out the common elements so we could tie them together stylistically.” Each of Pixar’s feature-length animations has seen the technical teams take on a phenomenal challenge and come up smelling of roses. In Monsters Inc. it was the problem of generating real-looking fur. In Finding Nemo, the team cracked the even more complex problem of making a sub-marine environment look both believable and enjoyable. Lasseter agrees: “Technically, we’ve pushed things beyond anything Pixar’s done before.”

GOTTA LOVE THE FISH Ralph Eggleston highlighted one of the the film’s major creative hurdles: “Our first priority was to make the fish seem appealing. Fish are slimy, scaly things, but we wanted the audience to love our characters. One way to make them more attractive was to make them more luminous.” Eggleston and his team cracked the character problem in style. “We came up with three types of fish: gummy, velvety and metallic. The gummy variety, which includes Marlin and Nemo, has a density and warmth to it. We used backlighting and rim lights to add appeal and take the focus off their scaly surface quality.” The secret of character animation is expert use of certain tricks of the trade to get the messages across. In Nemo, one or two of these were missing, because fish – unlike humans, monsters and toys – don’t have arms and legs to wave about. Supervising Animator Dylan Brown explains how they overcame this: “We began

Computer Arts_November 2003

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RENDERMAN

A major star of all Pixar productions has been its rendering package, Photorealistic RenderMan. Now in its eleventh incarnation, RenderMan has delivered computer-generated images to eight out of the last ten winners of Visual Effects Oscars. RenderMan’s contribution to the movie business was recognised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2002 when its creators, Rob Cook, Loren Carpenter and Ed Catmull, were awarded a special Oscar for “Significant advancements to the field of motion picture rendering as exemplified in Pixar’s RenderMan.” Despite its popularity and undoubted quality, RenderMan has always been considered difficult to use and, until its latest release, didn’t even support raytracing. The software began life while Pixar was still computer animation studio at LucasFilm. Unsurprisingly, developments are driven by the requirements of Pixar’s huge team of artist and animators. The latest release for the package sees the introduction of a raytracing subsystem which introduces reflections, refractions and caustics; all used to brilliant effect in Finding Nemo.

A fine example of Pixar’s commitment to technical excellence is its Academy Award-winning renderer: Photorealistic RenderMan. Finding Nemo makes extensive use of the program’s raytracing and caustics, which only appeared in the latest version.

“THIS MOVIE ABSOLUTELY RAISES THE BAR FOR PIXAR AND FOR COMPUTER ANIMATION… TECHNICALLY, WE’VE PUSHED THINGS BEYOND ANYTHING PIXAR’S DONE BEFORE”

analysing what was appealing in terms of posing fish. A lot of work went into getting the facial articulation just right.” To ensure that the fishy characters maintained the requisite range of expressions, the lead animators hooked up with modellers and riggers from Pixar’s character department and continued to work as animation buddies. This method ensured a free flow of ideas between the various departments. This led to the development of improved tools and controls which enabled a freer and more efficient character performance at the animation stage.

TRANSBLURRENCY?

Surfer dude turtle Crush was voiced by Finding Nemo’s writer and director Andrew Stanton after a long search failed to turn up anyone better able to imitate the turtle’s amusingly laid-back drawl. Perhaps Keanu Reeves was too busy…

34 Computer Arts_November 2003

Pixar is renowned for its practice of efficiently dividing labour between specialised departments. For Nemo, that process evolved under the aegis of Supervising Technical Director Oren Jacobs. Jacobs led six technical teams, each detailed to work on a specific aspect of the film – Ocean, Reef, Sharks/Sydney, Tank, Schooling/Flocking and Characters. Each team was then responsible for delivering the technical know-how for which Pixar is justifiably famous. All this in an arena long held to be one of the most difficult for convincing computer simulation: water. The Ocean unit, led by Lisa Forsell and Danielle Feinburg, was responsible for scenes that featured a shoal of Moon fish which form into various shapes, such as an arrow, an octopus and a boat. Their most challenging and ultimately rewarding scene was the jellyfish forest, which involved animating several thousand jellyfish. “We built the model for a single jellyfish, putting a lot of work into the build up of jellyfish density by modelling their group behaviour,” explains Forsell. The body texture took special measures: “David Batte wrote a whole RenderMan shading system we called ‘transblurrency’. Transblurrency is something like bathroom glass; you can see through it, but it’s distorted.” Meanwhile, Steve May headed up the Sharks/Sydney unit. One of his biggest challenges was the simulation of

Feature

Water has never been successfully animated on computer – until now. Pixar used complex algorithms to reflect the motion of the seas, and devised special lighting to ensure the characters and environment looked attractive.

THE PIXAR STABLE So with five feature-length animations behind it, what’s next for Pixar? While each of its successes has so far been in conjunction with Disney, in 2005 the original production and distribution deal it had with the company will end. Once The Incredibles and Cars have finally been delivered, Pixar can finally begin work on its first fully independent feature. Pixar Animation Studios, formerly Lucasfilm’s lossmaking computer animation division, was established in 1986. It was broadly backed by the brains of Ed Catmull and the cash of Steve Jobs. $10 million from the then ex-boss of Apple Computer eventually spawned the most successful animation company in the world. Shares now cost $60 each. Ed Catmull, supported by Jobs and Lasseter, is behind the daily running of the company – and responsible for instigating the unique corporate culture that has made Pixar such a success. With around 700 employees, the company has almost doubled in size since 1998 to keep pace with the increased production schedule. That Pixar continues to amaze audiences is a tribute to the fact its artists and technicians are always pushing the boundaries of computer animation. As Production Designer Ralph Eggleston tellingly recalls: “I was the third person to begin work on this movie, so I’ve been part of the technical process from the beginning. I still found myself sitting in the theatre thinking, ‘How did they do this?’” Pixar’s next release, The Incredibles, is currently in production and scheduled for release in late 2004. INFO Finding Nemo is on general release from 10 October (www.findingnemo.com)

“A BIG PART OF OUR JOB WAS CREATING BELIEVABLE UNDERWATER ENVIRONMENTS. THAT TOOK MANY FORMS…”

THE END OF 2D?

splashing water during the scene which finds Marlin and Dory caught in the belly of a blue whale. “Lighting that scene was probably the hardest thing we’ve ever had to light, because the entire set was moving, organic and filled with splashing water. We had to develop software and new techniques to compute the motion of water in 3D.” Finally, Jesse Hollander led the team who created Nemo’s fish tank scenes – battling to overcome the problems of refraction and reflection. “Our starting point was the actual physics of what happens to light when it enters not just water, but a glass box filled with water,” explains Hollander. “This meant computing for glass, then water, then glass into water.” The solution was to use camera offsets but, “At certain angles inside the tank, there’s something called total internal reflection; this turns the glass into a perfect mirror. This proved a useful storytelling trick.”

While Finding Nemo has thrived at the US box office, Disney has suffered a string of disappointments for its traditional 2D animation romps, culminating in Treasure Planet and, more recently, Sinbad. Some have speculated that this is a sign that 2D animation has now been surpassed by its 3D, computergenerated offspring. Hand-painted epics such as Bambi or Pinocchio may well be a thing of the past, but can the current popularity of 3D features really be the death of 2D? The box office certainly reflects this, particularly when we contrast the success of movies like Shrek or Finding Nemo with that of traditional 2D flicks such as Sinbad. However, of the five 2002 Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature, only one was 3D – while a 2D feature, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, snapped up the top prize. This suggests 2D animation still has what it takes to withstand the impact of 3D on the industry.

Traditional 2D work, such as Disney’s Sinbad, must adapt – and quickly – if it’s to survive the digital age.

Computer Arts_November 2003

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Quick Tutorial Q&A

SHORTCUTS

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DREAMWEAVER Tables are one of the staple elements of Web design. This month, we consider a few hints on designing effective layout tables, and find out how to provide the right structural tags for data tables.

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sing tables for layout isn’t in itself bad for accessibility, contrary to common belief, provided that the content makes sense when the content in the table cells is linearised. When you’re building tables for layout, it’s usually best to design the page in horizontal bands, making each band a separate table instead of making the whole page using one single table. This approach speeds up the display of the page as it loads, because each table is drawn individually. With one giant table, the browser has to wait until it reaches the end before it can display anything. Within each main table, it’s a good idea to use a series of simple nested tables (or CSS properties like padding and borders) instead of making each table very complex. Nested table design does sometimes slow down older browsers as they render the page, but so does making them fight through many complicated cell spans by trying to make a single table do the same work. Dreamweaver offers a Layout Table mode, which can make it easier to position elements such as images precisely. However, it’s best to use Dreamweaver’s Layout Tables sparingly, both for the reasons just mentioned and because the table code that’s generated may be much bulkier than its hand-created equivalent. Now onto data tables – tables that are used to display rows and columns of tabular information. These require a different approach from layout tables. In the HTML 4.0 recommendation from the W3C, they state that layout tables should only use the tags TABLE, TR and TD, and not contain any other structural markup. Data tables, on the other hand, were given an overwhelming number of additional structural tags to make their meaning clearer (to everyone except Web designers, it seems). This is necessary, because in a data table the meaning of any one entry in the table is not intrinsic; it derives its meaning

from its position in the table, and in particular from its column and row headings. This is fine for sighted people, but to make pages more accessible to disabled visitors – and software tools – HTML provides a variety of additional structural markup you should use. Although the wide range of tags available to mark up a table by the W3C is overwhelming, there’s a bare minimum

TO MAKE PAGES MORE ACCESSIBLE TO DISABLED VISITORS – AND SOFTWARE TOOLS – HTML PROVIDES A VARIETY OF ADDITIONAL STRUCTURE MARKUP YOU SHOULD USE

you can use for all but the most complex of tables, so that you can make the meaning clear without requiring a degree in rocket science to build the table. The main things are to explain what the table is about, and to indicate the row and column headers for a given item of information, so that assistive technology, such as screen readers, can provide the context for each item of data if required. Dreamweaver provides some additional interface options for creating accessible tables, as shown in the steps below, but be sure to turn them off again if you’re not making data tables. ■ Expertise supplied by Ian Anderson of zStudio, [email protected], www.zstudio.co.uk

MARKING UP DATA TABLES

1

Get more help for data tables – turn on the extra accessibility options. Choose Edit>Preferences, then in the Accessibility category turn on the option for Show Attributes When Inserting: Tables.

2

Enter some more detailed summary text that will be of assistance to disabled users. Use the Header menu to specify whether headings are in the top row, left column, or both. This prompts Dreamweaver to use TH tags with appropriate SCOPE attributes, instead of TD tags.

4

3

When you insert a table, Dreamweaver gives you an additional dialog box containing further options. Provide a CAPTION element to provide a brief explanation of the table’s purpose that will be visible to all. Position the caption using your menu options or format it with CSS.

If the row headings are items of data in their own right under a heading in the top row, this markup will be incorrect; the row headers should be TD tags in this case. To change from TD to TH or vice versa, use the Header checkbox in the Properties palette when the relevant cells are highlighted.

Computer Arts_November 2003

37

ILLUSTRATION BY ROB LINDSTRÖM

www.designchapel.com

38 Computer Arts_November 2003

Tutorial

PHOTOSHOP & FLASH

DESIGN CHAPEL Swedish illustrator Robert Lindström takes us through the making of his world-famous ‘nun’ desktop wallpaper, using Photoshop for line work and Flash for colouring Regular readers of Computer Arts will remember the name Robert Lindström from issue 82 in April of this year, when we ran a showcase of his superb illustrative work as our lead profile. In that profile, we featured several of the ‘nun illustrations’ that have adorned hundreds of desktops – including those in the CA office. Have a look at DesignChapel, his online portfolio site, at www.designchapel.com to refresh your memory. In this tutorial, Lindström has created an original illustration for Computer Arts which will form part of this ‘nun series’ – we follow him through the processes behind it, using a photograph, Photoshop and Flash. The photograph this tutorial is based on was taken outside a chapel in Bonnstan, Skellefteå – which Lindström refers to as a “300-year-old churchtown in the north of Sweden.” The model is Charlotta Lundqvist ([email protected]), who runs the design firm Chalet Design and has also made the clothing worn by models in the series. “The concept behind them is ‘nuns’ inspired by fashion and design,” says Lindström. “Some of the ‘nuns’ are good but most of them are quite bad because of their sexy style, therefore they are rejected by the local priests – like the one in this image – The Rejected Nun.” He continues: “With this tutorial, I will show how easy it is to make great illustrations based on photos using the fast and easy-to-use Pen tool in Photoshop, and how to colour successfully in Flash. I have received hundreds of emails from people who have asked me how these illustrations are made, and my response is always that it’s a very simple process. The technique is perfect if you want to use good-looking illustrations on the Web too, because you have maximum control over the size of your images – the nun images at www.designchapel.com are all around 30KB.” According to Lindström, how good the illustration will be depends on how much time you can spend on it. “The most challenging part will be in Flash, when you need to set the different tones so it looks good. The details are very, very important. I recommend using a Wacom tablet for this tutorial, if you have one.”

This is one of Robert Lindström’s well-known ‘nun’ illustrations, which can be downloaded as desktop wallpaper from his portfolio site, www.designchapel.com. Learn how to create an image like this one by turning the page…

ON THE CD Your coverdisc has all the text and images you need to follow this tutorial. Look inside the folder called Tutorial\InDesign to begin. All images are for personal use and are not to be reproduced elsewhere.

INFO Tutorial and artwork by Robert Lindström, [email protected], www.designchapel.com

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^

PART 1 THE REJECTED NUN

INSIGHT KEEP THE NODES DOWN

If your illustrations are made for the Web, avoid using too many nodes or it will result in a large file size. It’s also important to plan your drawing in advance; decide which elements of your illustration will be more detailed than other elements – which areas are likely to demand the most work? The background will not need as many nodes as the face and body, for instance.

Over the next 25 steps, we show you how to create one of Robert Lindström’s renowned illustrations

4 1

Be sure that you are happy with your photo, because how smooth your illustration will be depends on how well you can see the details in the picture. Make a high-resolution scan of your negatives, giving you good material to work with. For this illustration we’re using a 5000x3800-pixel photo.

Before you start drawing you’ll see that you don’t have any layers under paths, but as soon as you start drawing you’ll get a layer called Work Path. Double-click on that layer and call it ‘The nun’. When your path layer is activated – which happens when you click on the layer and it turns blue – you will see all the layers you draw as white lines. If you don’t want to see your drawn lines, simply click on the grey area underneath.

7

When you are starting to draw more obvious objects like the model’s bag (which we want to have a colour, and not be in the background), start drawing around the objects as much you can in the original photograph – no curves or other layers should be on. We need to produce a clean drawing.

5 2

Our first task is to make different adjustment layers on top of the illustration, so we can see all different combinations of shadows and lights. We do a couple of layers with curves; two lighter (100/150, and one layer with 50/150) and one dark curve layer (150/100). We will use the lighter ones on all dark parts of the illustration, so we can see the lines, and the darker ones on the bright areas, just to achieve all the different shadows we are looking for.

Start to draw the backgrounds to get a sense of what shadows you are planning to use, and also to get used to Pen tool. You will soon get a feeling for drawing techniques in Photoshop, and how much detail you want to show. Use the Pen tool quickly, and use as little nodes as possible to get a smooth illustration. Be sure to close all paths you are drawing; later on, when you come to put colour into the image, it is very important that every single part is closed so you can easily fill it with colour.

8

After you have drawn around the bag, start drawing paths over light and dark elements on the bag. Draw any areas of detail that you think would make a difference to the picture – all visible shadows and light areas. Again, no adjustment layers should be on.

6 3

Now we make a couple more adjustment layers on top of the photo; one with Brightness/Contrast (bringing a different tone and making the shadows even clearer), and three different Posterize layers (see steps 4, 8 and 12). Underneath the Posterize layer we also add a Hue/Saturation layer to take away all colour. This combination will be used on plain parts of the image. Don’t use the Posterize layer too much – yes, it’s easy to trace the image from here, but if you do this you won’t get the right look to your image.

40 Computer Arts_November 2003

When you draw hard shadows and clear lines in the wood, change between the different curve adjustment layers to find the shadow version of your preference. All paths you’ll draw will now be collected to ‘The nun’ path layer. Use the Posterized layer to get a hint of where there are differences in the image that you might not be able to see that easily. A combination of these two techniques should prove successful. If you work in the Posterize layer, put a clear red coloured layer with the Blending mode Multiply, and you’ll easily see your Pen tool icon while drawing.

9

When you have finished drawing over the original picture, turn on some of the adjustment layers: Curves, Contrast/Brightness and the Posterized layer, together with the Hue/Saturation to get it black and white. Which combination you use depends on what effect you’re looking for and where you are drawing. It’s up to you as an artist to decide how much detail you want to include.

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT PRESCRIPTION TABLETS

If you spend a lot of time drawing on screen, then a graphics tablet could be a useful investment. Wacom (www.wacom.com) is the biggest manufacturer of tablets, with a range of sizes and models to meet the needs of the professional or enthusiast. Other manufacturers include Nisis (www.nisis.com), Trust (www.trust.com) and Kye Systems (www.kye.co.uk).

10

When the background is complete, you are ready for the ‘nun’. Use the same procedure here as on the background. The more work you do in Photoshop, the less you need to do in Flash later on.

17

When you start colouring, you’ll use the Colour Mixer. First, change from RGB to HSB, because you will be making very small changes in the colours when you work. When you have two areas next to each other, and you want to create a delicate change in tone, just vary the per cent of blue – use the ‘B’ setting in the Colour Mixer (0 is the darkest and 100 is the lightest). Using small differences in tone will help us create a smooth illustration.

14 11

When we are done with the lines, we’ll export our vector lines so we begin the colouring process. Choose File>Export>Path To Illustrator. Be sure that you’ve chosen ‘The nun’ layer, then export it as an AI file.

Make your lines as simple as possible. The stripes on her legs, for example, are made with very few nodes, and most of them with only two or three anchors. The mix of highly detailed areas with simple, clean elements is a strong combination.

18

Start colouring the background. We want a clean but highly detailed background, which leads us to use a greyscale. The darkest grey is quite bright – H:20, S:7, B:30 – as we also want brightness in the details.

15 12

To get a feeling for the tones and shadows on her braids, we are using the Contrast/ Brightness adjustment layer. The hair is a very difficult part of the drawing due to its variations, but for now we’ll just keep going with the paths.

Note that you cannot import an AI file directly into Flash – you have to import the file into FreeHand (or Illustrator) first. Open a new file in Flash, around 1280x1024, then copy the graphic from FreeHand into Flash. Go to Edit>Select All and then break it apart (Ctrl+B) many times until you are just left with the lines. Choose Hairline under Properties, then change the Alpha value of the lines to around 40, so you have the lines as guides when you start colouring.

19

The colouring technique is very simple. Start to fill different areas with the colours of your choice. Make small changes in the Colour Mixer (B) to get different levels of colour.

13

The most detailed area is her face. This part is very important; it needs to be as smooth as possible. Here you need to try as many combinations of the adjustment layers as you can to find the perfect lines that we’re after. At this stage, you won’t know if you’ve succeeded yet; you’ll find this out when you start adding colour.

16

Paste the image (not the hi-res one – use a reduced version so you don’t get large file size) in a new layer under the layer with your illustration. This new layer will help you choose which colours to fill areas with.

Computer Arts_November 2003

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^

INSIGHT THE PHOTOSHOOT

It pays to spend time planning the photography before you arrive at your shoot, however informal. Think about the background you want and other details such as clothes, props and hair. Always treat it as a ‘real’ photo session.

24

20

On the spots, you want a particularly smooth result – group that element (Ctrl+G) and double-click on it, so you only have your chosen element to work with. Take the Lasso tool (L) and draw a selection where you want the graphic to be lighter or darker, changing the B setting in the Colour Mixer by 1 per cent up or down.

23

When all areas are filled with colour, start going through all the elements you have created. Do the lips need more light? Does the bag seem too yellow? Would you like to have shadow on the stripes on her legs? How does the hair look? It‘s at this stage that you begin stamping your own style on the illustration – it’s the last creative touch.

21

Keep working with different tones until you’re happy with the result. Try to view your work as an illustration, rather than copying a photo – this is the only way to get the finish you are looking for. Try to find new solutions on small details, which will help create an original piece of work.

22

Check how your illustration looks from a distance – do this several times so that you don’t waste time on areas that people won’t see. To get rid of the lines, just select all (Ctrl+A) and change the Alpha value of the lines to 0 in the Colour Mixer.

42 Computer Arts_November 2003

To get the finished image ready for print or publishing on the Web, Lindström has his own special technique. Put the screen resolution up as high as possible, zoom in on certain areas, take screenshots of these areas of the image in Flash and bring them into Photoshop for compositing together like a puzzle. Alternatively, you can export your image from Flash as an EPS, but be aware that this may affect the colour tones you have worked on previously. Try both techniques until you achieve the desired effect.

FINAL STEP

B

ack in Photoshop, all that’s left are a couple of small colour treatments, such as reducing the colour using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. To complete the illustration, Robert Lindström scanned in some scratches from a broken CD cover, and used these to add a touch more detail. The result is a professional illo that’s undoubtedly in Lindström’s trademark style, both visually and in terms of content: it has strong use of colours and a strong theme, as you’ll see when you compare it to the full series of ‘nun’ illustrations at www.designchapel.com. Experiment with the techniques, use a mix of original photography and textures, and vary the colour schemes and combinations to generate imagery in your own style.

Quick Tutorial Q&A

SHORTCUTS

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FREEHAND Macromedia FreeHand offers a huge degree of flexibility with most of its pre-packed tools, but creating illustrations or graphics using custom or textured fills takes a little extra know-how – especially when it comes to viewing your work on-screen. We explain all…

A

nyone who uses FreeHand on a daily basis will know that there are a couple of tools that rarely get used, just as there are in most apps. Custom and textured fills could easily fall into this category, but they just manage to save themselves when used well – and for a specific purpose. Here, we show you one such purpose: a real-life illustration job by Lawrence Zeegen. The editorial project called for a set of three images, which Zeegen produced to illustrate a feature about how some men fail to ‘listen’ to their partners. His response, was that it called for images of bricks. The concept behind the illustrations was simple: the idea was that some men ‘brick up’ their own feelings and hide behind a ‘wall of silence’. Bricks were the best visual solution. Drawing a wall of bricks is a pretty simple exercise in a vector-based

THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE BRICK WALL ILLUSTRATIONS WAS SIMPLE: THE IDEA WAS THAT SOME MEN ‘BRICK UP’ THEIR OWN FEELINGS AND HIDE BENEATH A ‘WALL OF SILENCE’

application, but it’s an exercise that’s not particularly creative, and one best avoided if you are keen to save your eyesight and mental stability. So how are these and other custom and textured fills achieved? The process itself is very straightforward, but the problems start to occur when trying to view what you have created either on-screen or on any non-PostScript printer – just like the kind that most home users and small studios are equipped with. So here’s how it is done. Create the shape that you would like to fill: here we have drawn a simple rectangle with a reasonably bold black line around it, and placed it on a nondescript background for ease of viewing.

Next, highlight the object to be filled and go to the Inspectors Panel>Fill>Custom, then click on Bricks from the pull-down menubar. Set the colour of the bricks and mortar to that of your choosing, but remember that you’ll have to mix any new

colours before this stage. Set the width and height to a chosen size, too. If you know about bricks, you’ll know that modern bricks are longer and flatter than older bricks, so choose your architectural period wisely! The angle is another crucial setting. For flat-on, straightforward, nononsense brickwork, choose a setting of 0 degrees. Experiment with this at a later stage, if you like. By this point you’ll be aware that your chosen settings are not being reflected on screen. Panic not! We can resolve this in the next stage.

Having created the brick pattern, it’s now time to set about viewing the final image. FreeHand will produce a screen display of repeated Cs, which isn’t a great aid if you want to be sure that you have created the desired effect. This is obviously true for other custom fills too, such as Black and White Noise (great name), Random Grass (even better name) and Tiger Teeth (takes the biscuit!). The secret to viewing goes like this: export your document as an EPS, go into Photoshop and open your EPS from within the application. When prompted, set the resolution to 300 pixels per inch, which is ideal for print within a publication such as the one you are holding in your hands right now. Click OK and wait whilst the image is rastorised, or put the kettle on if your kit is old! The image will then open, and your brick wall will have been built. ■ Expertise supplied by Lawrence Zeegen, www.zeegen.com

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1

1. Airside designed both the 2003 prospectus and the new Website for The Royal College of Art (www.rca.ac.uk).

A

lex Maclean’s opening comment is distinctly Airside. The idea that a cult 70s TV show like The Clangers could be a driving force behind their prolific output begins to make sense once you look at their work. They’re the sort of company who can feature a sober illustration for the Royal College of Art prospectus in their 2003 calendar, then caption it: “Right, bulldoze this lot and start building my new jacuzzi immediately.” Airside appears to have conquered the design world without even trying particularly hard. As Alex Maclean comments, “We describe ourselves as a design company in a very broad sense.” Very broad indeed – Website and print, stings, idents, music videos, WAP and digital TV interfaces, record covers and club layouts, brands and identities, T-shirts, postcards, bags, screenprints and toys. Real toys, hand-knitted ones, just like the Clangers. The company began in 1998 (or 1997, depending on who you believe), the brainchild of directors Maclean, Nat Hunter and Fred Deakin. “I didn’t know Fred before we started, but I

knew Nat,” explains Maclean. “It was the right time in our careers and we all wanted to be working in a more nourishing environment, where we could bounce ideas off other people. We’d all worked freelance by ourselves and we’d been at the bottom of the food chain for some time.” Although the three worked in broadly different areas of design, they shared a common interest in “the user experience”. Maclean himself trained in commercial interior design, and studied architecture at the Royal College of Art, before moving on to the virtual architecture of the Internet. Nat Hunter studied human-computer interface psychology and took the country’s first MA in Interactive Multimedia. Fred Deakin, meanwhile, “used to run clubs, where people came into the club and were faced by quite bizarre things. They were forced to interact with people they didn’t know.” So, like a rather more believable version of Charlie’s Angels, Airside was formed. The three haven’t looked back since. “I guess it was timing, and the people, and a degree of luck,” says Maclean. “As it turns out, our skills are extremely

“Influenc e The Clan s?” muses Airside gers. Oliv er Postga ’s Alex Maclean. “ the direct T te n very real…ess of the way he , he’s a strong inf hat’s a tough one.. lu e . that not b You know, all tho ngaged people is ence. Something Ah yes, se knitted a eing on th sort of a h bout o e compu ter screen creatures. There’s ly grail. And som that we fin d absolut ething about ely magic al.”

AIRSIDE 46 Computer Arts_November 2003

Profile 2 2. Screens from www.lemonjelly.ky. “This site aimed to provide some mini-videos to accompany each track, scrumptious downloads and a cute wee chat room,” explains Airside cofounder Alex Maclean.

3

4

3. Metro Ta Distribut rtan ion need ed some ‘str eet-level publicity ’ fo Japanese r cult go Battle Roy re-flick ale. Airsid resultant , uh, tast e’s eful T-shirt de signs ende up being d featured in The Face magazin e.

4. The br ief Originals for Clarks W (www.cla ebsite rk om) cent soriginals.c red on th e campaig n straplin e ‘Doing O ur Thing.’ Th Own e site features eccentric groups fr om arou nd the world , such as people w ho race lawnmow ers.

Computer Arts_November 2003

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1

2

complementary. That helped in the early days before we started working with other people.”

THE PROCESS Five years on, Airside employs around 12 people including freelancers, runs two businesses, and has a distinctive style. It’s not just the designs themselves, it’s also in the decidedly down-to-earth way the company presents itself. In short, they like a laugh. “It was always a dream that it would take off and have some success, but it was the way we defined that success that was important,” explains Maclean. “It wasn’t about just being big or making lots of money. One of our principal aims is to have fun…” He continues in his ever-so-faintly Edinburgh tones: “We like a challenge, too, and the challenge comes from the client. We think of our solutions as being the Airside process, which is working with the client to create the right solution for them. We don’t go into meetings thinking, ‘Oh, we do Websites’ or ‘We do annual reports’. We can do those things, but we like to think it goes beyond that. “We try to think of how they communicate with the outside world. We think about the experience of the visitor, or the person reading that report, or looking at the postcard, or holding the toys in their hands. Usually, what we’re helping our clients do is communicate their ideas or their product, and we just find ways of doing that.” Airside’s production process is almost entirely Mac-based, aside from a few PCs and a Linux server, and employs just about every creative software package in existence. “I can’t think of anything we don’t use,” Maclean says. “I must have 70 icons in my application folder. I suppose we don’t do as much in Shockwave, because Flash has replaced a lot of that. It depends on people’s skills, as well. When it comes to Websites, my skills are somewhat old-fashioned – I still use BBEdit. One or two of our developers will still write everything in that, actually.”

THE JELLY If there’s an Airside visual style, it originates from Fred Deakin’s flyer designs for the clubs he used to run. These were created in a similar way to screenprints, run off on a

48 Computer Arts_November 2003

Profile

3

“AIRSIDE ABOUT BE ISN’T OR MAKIN ING BIG MONEY… G LOTS OF O PRINCIPA NE OF OUR LA TO HAVE IMS IS FUN!”

1. This album cover for Lemon Jelly’s Lost Horizons features a triple gatefold scene from city to beach. It was designed and produced with Sam Burford from Transient. 2. Poster illustration for VWRadio, Volkswagen’s Internet radio station: “What a lovely job to do,” recalls Maclean. “Pick a theme for the illustration that in some way conjures up the music and enjoy!” 3. Proof that Airside can indeed design annual reports if you really want them to – in this case, for Selfridges.

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1. Stills and the CD sleeve design from Lemon Jelly’s Nice Weather For Ducks video, produced with Tandem Films. “There are more creatures than on Life of Mammals, but these are better because they know how to disco dance.”

3. One of four sleeves in the Another Late Night series of CDs for Azuli records, based around the idea of coming home far too late. The milkman’s on his rounds, people are walking their dogs… Collect the four and make your own panorama of London at dawn.

2. Airside handles all the visual identity for Lemon Jelly, including this cover for the first album, ky.

1

2

50 Computer Arts_November 2003

four-colour printer. “That was 15 years ago. So it’s that, with Illustrator and the vector-based style,” Maclean says. “We do try to get clients to move on, rather than say, ‘I saw that drawing, I want something like that.’ We try to reinvent the wheel every time. We could probably sit here all day mimicking Fred Deakin’s illustration style, but that would get boring. We still do a lot of press illos like that, especially the ones for Lemon Jelly.” Ah yes, Lemon Jelly – the largely instrumental band which revels in bouncy, peculiarly British post-pop pop with a distinctly jolly feel – or “garden-party psychedelia,” as Q magazine puts it. It’s not wholly surprising to learn that Fred Deakin is one half of the group, together with Nick Franglen. If you could listen to Airside’s design work, it’d sound like Lemon Jelly. “Fred Deakin is Creative Director for the visual identity of Lemon Jelly,” explains Maclean. “We work on everything they do, visually – everything from press, PR, Flash, Website, album and single covers, all that stuff. It’s a client in itself, which again is quite good, because we get to do stuff that we like.” The group led to Airside’s first longer-form animation, a promo for the track Ducks. Never having created animation longer than 30 seconds, Airside found this “a baptism of fire,” according to Maclean. “When it comes to three-and-a-half

minutes of animation, it’s a different way of thinking. We tortured ourselves about how to go about it, whether to use stop-frame animation or whatever. Eventually, we nailed down the storyboard and, after casting around for weeks looking for someone to produce the animation, stumbled across the fact that our next-door neighbours, Tandem Films, is a big animation company. So we literally knocked on their door. It was about six weeks’ production time in the end. We drew the artwork and Tandem produced it.”

THE GOODS Like an increasing number of design companies, Airside has also turned its hand to creating and selling its own mechandise. The Airside Shop features T-shirts, bags, postcards, calendars and the aforementioned toys, all designed and sold entirely through the company. Figures such as the Dot Com Refugees are even now available in, of all places, Selfridges. So weren’t they already busy enough? “We just did it because we could,” says Maclean, simply. “I guess the motivation must be what our original one was, which is that it’s fun. It’s where we can be our own client… It’s very selfindulgent, but it’s also quite rewarding, because we get to make stuff for the sake of it. Coincidentally, it just happens to make money, which we didn’t really plan on.” One of the biggest success stories is the T-Shirt Club, which has been running for five years. Members can buy exclusive, limited-run designs from the likes of Fred Deakin, Pete Fowler (of Monsterism fame) and Rian Hughes. “The idea that someone would spend 80 quid for four T-shirts, in advance, without knowing what they’re going to look like, seemed to me like a crazy idea,” Maclean reckons. “But it’s so popular now. It’s for people who are enthusiastic about design, and some of them have actually ended up

Profile

how to explain that better? Yeah, sorry, that was crap, wasn’t it? I can’t really pin anyone down. There’s a lot of creativity in the UK in general. It’s good to see that’s still alive… just.” And next for Airside as a whole? “I think a bit more digital television is on the horizon. We’re happy with the broad number of media we work with. We’ve been asked to do some more real-world things, even down to doing shops and exhibitions, which I hope come off. In a way, it’s quite difficult for people to understand what we do, because we’re almost too broad. When we talk to clients, we tend to concentrate on specific aspects. It’s hard to get your head round the whole overview. “Roz, what’s next for the shop?” More murmurings. “Ah, more work. I see. But what’s the big goal?” Murmur. “World domination. Okay.” He pauses, trying to sum it all up. “Your goals have to be job satisfaction and not lying awake at night worrying. Oh, and more knitted toys. That’ll do you.”

3

INFO Contact Airside at www.airside.co.uk and www.airsideshop.com, ring the guys on 020 7354 9912, or mail them at [email protected] with the subject “Hello, my lovelies.” (Seriously.)

THE T N E V N I O RE “WE TRY T Y TIME. WE COULD G ER WHEEL EV ALL DAY MIMICKIN SIT HERE AKIN’S STYLE, BUT FRED DE LD GET BORING” THAT WOU being our clients just through the club. It’s also a way of getting a bit of a community.” Fortunately, Airside wasn’t so naive to think that the offshoot would just run itself; it’s now staffed by two full-time employees. “It requires a lot of attention to keep it all going. We’ve learned how to become retailers, which is handy as well for talking to clients. We’ve had to learn a lot about marketing and promotion doing it.” But Maclean warns against taking on such ventures lightly. “I can’t imagine many design companies are making money from it. It sounds great in the abstract: you design a T-shirt, you have it printed up, you sell it on the Website and somebody buys it. But, of course, that doesn’t take into account the time you spend designing and building the site, setting up the e-commerce and administering those orders. Then people send stuff back, want to change the size… It’s amazing how much work there is just running the thing.”

THE FUTURE Still, they must be doing something right; at the time of writing, all of Airside’s endearingly scrappy little knitted toys were out of stock. Aside from Mr Postgate, Maclean is clearly stumped when it comes to other influences. Time to consult with his advisor in the background: “I suppose the language of screenprint is a good one. Modern architecture… Hmm,

You have been watching… 1

2

6 1. Roz Davies Administrative Assistant. Went to art school, can make dresses, attended Central St Martins for an MA. Likes boys, bags, dresses and the colour pink. 2. Alex Maclean Founder and Director. 3. Fred Deakin Founder and Director. Ran various clubs (Thunderball, Misery) while studying at Edinburgh Uni, where he met Nat Hunter. Produced flyers and other visual effects. Set up his own design company and produced underground music mag Gear. Became tutor at St Martins School of Art

3

7

4

8 and ran more clubs (Cheese, Impotent Fury). Half of Lemon Jelly, with Nick Franglen. 4. Anne Brassier Studio Manager. Can’t draw, but has a degree in Computer Programming. 5. Kerin Cosford Web Developer. Failed to graduate from Stirling University and worked at a succession of failed dot coms. Likes smoking. 6. Nat Hunter Founder and Director. Graduated from Edinburgh University after studying HumanComputer Interface Design. Worked as a graphic designer in the

5

9 music industry and moved to London, where she studied at the Royal College of Art. Was involved with numerous other projects before founding Airside. 7. Mark Swift Designer. Studied a degree in MediaLab Arts at the University of Plymouth. 8. Ian Stevenson Designer. Studied Graphic Design at Camberwell College of Arts. Fond of animals. 9. Henki Leung Designer. Studied Design: Typography at Plymouth University. Once came fifth in an obstacle race.

Computer Arts_November 2003

51

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ILLUSTRATION BY RICHARD MAY

www.richard-may.com

54 Computer Arts_November 2003

Tutorial

ADVANCED FLASH

FLASH MX Get your artwork out of Photoshop and into Flash: rounding off our in-depth Flash MX series, we look at Flash’s bitmap import features, and use Photoshop to create the interface for a project Vector animation is the killer feature that Flash was founded on. It enabled savvy Web builders to create movies that were small enough to download over a dial-up connection, yet every bit as rich as traditional video clips; indeed, in most cases, quality was far superior. However, there are still some things you can’t realistically do with vectors. Photorealism is out, subtle shadowing doesn’t work and texturing is flat, for instance. It’s fortunate, then, that Flash supports bitmap import. What’s more, it enables you to do almost as much with bitmaps as vectors. They can be animated, scripted and included in symbols. They can have simple actions applied to them, be scaled, rotated and distorted. All that’s required is a little know-how, which is where we come in… Unfortunately for those more used to cranking out bitmap images than vector illustrations, Photoshop and Flash currently don’t play well together. Flash can directly import Photoshop files from versions 2.5 and 3. Its support for the Illustrator EPS or AI files is similarly patchy, making the direct import of paths from Photoshop even more of a challenge. There are solutions, though – and the majority of our tutorial looks at two tested methods for importing your Photoshop work into Flash. Vector packages are catered for more effectively by Macromedia’s app. Adobe’s Illustrator 10 has extensive support for Flash file formats – so one route for Photoshop 7 owners is to export files to Illustrator 10, then out to Flash MX. Alternatively, Macromedia FreeHand produces Flash files, and Flash can import native FreeHand files. While Flash excels in just about every other department, Adobe’s neglected LiveMotion Web animation tool has more integrated bitmap features. It supports Photoshop more effectively and includes live effects that are converted to bitmap elements on export. However, some argue

that the whole point of Flash is that it animates vectors. LiveMotion does this, too – but to the detriment of some features that Flash users take for granted. Certainly, when incorporating bitmap files into the app, it’s important to strike a balance. Flash sports its own compression tools and knowing where they are and how to use them will guarantee that you don’t sacrifice quality for file size, or vice versa. It’s not just a case of making everything as small as possible. Flash enables you to tweak individual settings for all elements. In our project, we create a slideshow with a Photoshop-generated interface. As we work our way through, we’ll demonstrate two distinct methods of getting your artwork from Photoshop into Flash. The steps are less tricky than you might think. We wrap things up by taking a look at how Flash handles bitmaps in general. The project needs bitmap images of the highest possible quality to display within a Flash movie, and we discuss techniques that will help you reproduce our results in your own work.

INFO Words and Flash expertise supplied by Karl Hodge, [email protected]

ON THE CD Look for the Tutorial\Flash folder on your CD for the files you’ll need to complete this tutorial.

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^

PART 1 SPLITTING PHOTOSHOP LAYERS Open interface1.psd from the Tutorial/ Flash folder on the CD in Photoshop 7

INSIGHT NEGATIVE IMAGE

Although the technique we’ve described in some ways produces the best possible results, it would soon become cumbersome when working with files containing lots of layers. Some interfaces will inevitably include more components. One workaround is to use ImageReady’s slicing tools instead of placing objects on layers. This way you’d build the interface much as you’d build a Web page – but assemble the images in Flash instead.

7

Return to the Layer palette menu and choose Flatten Image. Go to File>Save As and save the file in BMP format as traceimage.bmp. Now quit Photoshop and start up Flash.

1

We begin by creating a simple interface for our project in Photoshop, bearing in mind a couple of key points. First, ensure each distinct element in the interface is placed on its own layer.

4

Hit Ctrl+C (or Command+C on the Mac) to copy the layer, then Ctrl+N (Command+N) to create a brand new document. Choose Transparent from the Contents options and click OK. Paste the layer into the new document. Go to File>Save As and choose PNG as the format.

8

Create four layers in Flash – naming them ‘bigbutton’, ‘smallbuttons’, ‘screen’ and ‘traceimage’. Go to File>Import to Library and import all the PNG images we exported from Photoshop. Go to File>Window>Library to make sure it’s visible.

2

By doing this, we make it easier to divide up components in the next step. It also ensures that when we import the Photoshop file into other apps, we can manipulate those components individually.

5

Name the file smallbuttons.png, then return to the interface document and repeat the process with the next layer, saving it as the same layer name as your file name. Save all layers except the background.

9

Select the traceimage layer in Flash and drag a copy of traceimage.png from the library to the stage. Drag the remaining files to their corresponding layers – from top to bottom. Use the trace image to line up all the elements, as shown.

3

Flash doesn’t support the direct import of Photoshop 7 files – it only supports version 2.5 and 3. To overcome this, save each layer individually. Select the top layer ‘small buttons’ and press Ctrl+A (or Command+A on the Mac) to select the layer.

6

You should now have independently saved the ‘smallbuttons’, ‘bigbuttons’ and ‘screen’ layers. Hide the background layer and choose Merge Visible from the Layer palette menu to flatten the three main layers. Set the merged layers’ opacity to 50 per cent.

56 Computer Arts_November 2003

^

PART 2 FIREWORKS CONVERSION Here’s another way to achieve a similar result, this time in Fireworks

Tutorial

INSIGHT PNG VS PNG

You’ll notice that when applying the first method, we saved files in PNG format from Photoshop – so why were we unable to save layers? The Fireworks PNG format is an augmented version. It has the same compression and multiple resolution qualities, but it also has built-in layer support, Web layer information and vector information that’s above and beyond the default specifications for the format.

16

You can now delete the original Fireworks PNG layer and Layer 1, if you wish. Rename the distributed layers as ‘smallbuttons’, ‘bigbutton’ and ‘screen’ to identify their corresponding objects.

10

Again, we start with the file interface1.psd. It’s the same file as before, with each interface element allocated to its own individual layer.

13

Open a new document in Flash MX. Go to File>Import and browse for interface1.png. In the dialog that now appears, choose Import Into New Layer In Current Scene, leaving the other settings at their default values.

17

Select the bigbutton layer and the object on the stage, then hit F8 to convert it into a symbol. Choose Button from the dialog and name it ‘nextbutton’. With the button selected, open the Actions Editor (hit F9).

11

Start up Macromedia Fireworks MX and go to File>Open – browse for interface1.psd. Once the file has loaded, look carefully at the Layers palette. Instead of distributing each element to its own Fireworks layer, each object is a discrete, selectable element on a single layer.

14

The interface is now imported to the stage, with the individual elements intact. Hit Ctrl+G (or Command+G on the Mac) to group them together, and then use the Align panel to centre the interface on the Flash stage. Afterwards, ungroup the elements.

18

With the Actions Editor in Normal mode, choose goto from the Movie Control section of the Actions list. Select Next Frame from the Type dropdown menu and close the Actions Editor.

12

You can now discard the background – click on the background element in the Layers palette and delete it. Go to File>Save As and simply save the file as interface1.png.

15

Select everything on stage using the marquee, Ctrl+A (or Command+A on the Mac) or go to Edit>Select All. Next, choose Modify>Distribute To Layers. This places each element on a layer of its own.

Computer Arts_November 2003

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^

PART 3 COMPRESSION SETTINGS How to control the size of your work

INSIGHT BITMAP TRACING

Flash enables you to trace bitmap images to convert them to vectors. This is useful in some circumstances, but its application is mostly cosmetic. If you want to have an image that resembles a complex bitmap to begin with, the resulting vectorised version would take more file space than the original JPEG compressed bitmap.

23

Alternatively, you can set individual settings for each file. Go to the library and select ‘apple.bmp’. Click the Properties icon at the bottom of the panel. In the dialog that appears, untick Use Document Default Quality. You’re now able to specify local JPEG settings to your heart’s content.

21 19

When using bitmaps in Flash, there are two approaches to controlling the quality of the image and the eventual size of the file. The first approach is to optimise all images into GIF or JPEG format before importing them into Flash.

Although you can resize bitmap images in Flash itself easily enough, the package rescales rather than resamples the original image. The bitmap files you’ve just imported are completely uncompressed – we’ll let Flash handle that.

24

Flash can also save bitmaps as PNGs/GIFs. To take advantage of this facility (and to avoid Flash compressing images in this format any further), load images in the ready-optimised 8-bit PNG or GIF format. Set the properties for these files individually.

22

Go to File>Publish Settings and click the Flash tab. By default, Flash compresses all bitmaps as standard JPEGs. You can alter the compression ratio here. The higher the number, the better the quality – but the trade-off is a larger file size.

20

The second approach is preferable. In this method, you deliberately size your bitmap image so that it won’t require any scaling in Flash. We’ve done this with some example files. You can import them into the project in progress by going to File>Import To Library and importing the BMP files ‘apple’, ‘sun’, ‘swim’ and ‘tardis’.

58 Computer Arts_November 2003

FINAL STEP

W

e now finish off our project by masking off the ‘viewing’ area with a rounded rectangle, and adding keyframes containing our bitmap images to the stage, each with a stop action. The finished file, slideshow.fla, is located in the tutorial folder.

✁

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60 Computer Arts_November 2003

Feature

From business incubation to free vol-au-vents, development agencies may be just what you need to lift your creative career

Helping hand T

here’s a feeling that the government’s no good to Web designers, or any other digital creatives for that manner. After all, interactive designers wear cool T-shirts and understand ActionScript and 3ds max. They draw. They snowboard. Politicians blow hot air, wear suits, debate war and are driven around in Jags – two sometimes. But the politics of the day can be of use to your creative needs. The key is the current government’s programme of devolution kicked off when it came into office in 1997. Blair, Brown and the like may not understand email all that well, but they’ve set aside a resource that can be plenty valuable to students, freelancers and small agencies. It’s called the Regional Development Agency (RDA).

D:REAM A LITTLE DREAM The nation seemed to celebrate when Labour emerged victorious from the 1997 general election. They even made it acceptable to like D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better. One of their promises was the devolution of power from Whitehall to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. While this was swiftly delivered, it was noted that England itself was looking a little rusty. The response was to draft a bit of legislation for St George’s manor based on the devolution mantra. Thus, as 1998 drew to a close, the government introduced the Regional Development Agencies Act. It called for the provision of Regional Development Agencies. In the act, their purpose is as follows: “(a) to further the economic development and the regeneration of its area, (b) to promote business efficiency, investment and competitiveness in its area, (c) to promote employment in its area, (d) to enhance the development and application of skills relevant to employment in its area, and (e) to

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TAKING ROOT Cardiff’s Root Media has found resources of Welsh development agency invaluable Root Media is a small Web design agency based in Cardiff Bay, Wales. The company is based in the Cymric Buildings on West Bute Street. The building itself is run by @t Wales, the digital media wing of the Welsh Development Agency, as an incubator project that provides facilities to new companies. “We formed as a company back in January of this year, but we’ve only been trading since April time, which is when we came in to the incubator here,” says Paul Robbins, Root’s Marketing Director. “Since then, we’ve been starting to get a name for ourselves around the Cardiff/South Wales area, with the help of the @t Wales and the WDA, purely because of the synergy between the companies within the incubator. So it’s all been working out very well for us.” The founders came upon the limitedplaces incubator scheme after completing Dimension 10, a course dedicated to digital media run by Cyfle, a training provider for entry into the broadcast and interactive industries in Wales. It meant going through a gruelling acceptance process. Competition was tough: eight spaces – recently increased to 25 – available for companies to establish themselves within the building for 12 to 18 months. Root made the cut after providing proof that it was a worthwhile investment. On offer is desk space, computers, telephone services, as well as use of the server facilities. “I can certainly recommend it,” says Robbins, referring to Development Agency support. “If you’re trying to set up on your own, it is much harder without it. Come in and talk; they’re very open. They can go and talk about what their idea is, and they can give you advice freely anyway, just to see if it’s worthwhile. Once you go through the process, you get a business plan together to apply. So you’re actually going along the right road whether you do come in here or not. You’re getting something out of it.” INFO www.rootmedia.co.uk, www.atwales.com

62 Computer Arts_November 2003

“BASICALLY, OUR JOB IS TO REALLY GROW THE REGIONS’ PROSPERITY AND WEALTH”

contribute to the achievement of sustainable development in the United Kingdom where it is relevant to its area to do so.” “Basically, our job is to really grow the regions’ prosperity and wealth,” explains Keith Crane of RDA Yorkshire Forward. “Get new jobs in, create new businesses, support existing businesses, look after the environment, make houses buildings and cities places where people want to live and work.” Currently, there are 12 Regional Development Agencies doing all of the above for the entire Union. They emphasise regeneration, and many are keen on digital industries with this goal in mind. The numbers back them up. For instance, in Yorkshire, the digital industries output nearly £2.3 billion in 2002, and over the next ten years that’s expected to grow by a none-too-insubstantial 52 per cent. Mind you, this also includes telecommunications and hardware manufacturers like set-top-box makers Pace. Despite this, freelancers, students and small studios are vital for the programmes’ success.

BIG BUSINESS’S SMALL NEEDS Make no mistake; the big money here comes from telecommunications and technology manufacturing. These create the most jobs in a region, skilled and unskilled. No matter how successful, a digital creative agency can’t compete head to head with a BT or NTL. That’s the big fish for an RDA. And don’t forget that international investment is important here, with RDAs globe-trotting in where necessary. However, big firms are likely to be drawn to areas with a good reputation for technology, with strong clusters of both creative and technical digital expertise. This helps demonstrates that a region is “switched on”; that there’s infrastructure, leased lines and so on. However, it also means there will be plenty of suppliers to design Websites and write software. Plus, it means skilled labour to carry out, say, marketing and communications functions. That’s why RDAs need to make sure freelancers, students and small agencies in the digital creative field thrive.

To this end, many work with universities both to encourage effective R&D and to make sure that students and staff on courses, including those based on creativity, can develop their learned expertise into business plans and businesses. For instance, Interactive Tayside, which is part of Scottish Enterprise Tayside’s digital media and creative industries strategy, runs a centre in conjunction with Scottish Enterprise Tayside and the University of Abertay Dundee that opened in 2002. It offers start-up companies fully furnished units with flexible leases and low rent in the city centre. It is currently fully subscribed, with both companies started up by the University’s graduates, as well as more established new media companies. Interactive Tayside is also associated with Springfield Incubator, which is a joint development between University of Dundee (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design) and Scottish Enterprise Tayside. It seeks to let out office units for digital media companies started by the University’s graduates and staff. Opening just as we go to press, all units are fully let. “We look at property issues that are affecting the potential success of both existing companies in the region in terms of setting them up, their expansion and so on, or the opportunity of inward investors from outside our region coming in and investing in Yorkshire and Humberside,” says Jim Farmery, General Manager of Yorkshire Forward’s digital cluster. “So we have a range of different property projects that we’re working on, in places like Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and York, as well as towns such as Huddersfield and Barnsley that have quite a thriving digital community already. We’re looking to expand upon what’s taken place so far.” In some cases, this can see the RDA investing in completely new premises for both regional regeneration and to accommodate the needs of its digital creative sector. Advantage West Midlands is investing around £29 million in technology centres that will have space set aside for designer and creatives, for instance. Even in London, the London Development Agency has provided £3.7 million to the Rich Mix Centre in Bethnal Green. In conjunction

Feature

Brighton’s BabelMedia is a specialist in the creation, porting and localisation of computer games. Its client list includes Atari, Vodafone and Eidos. According to Communications Director Paul Munford, assistance from Wired Sussex was instrumental in its growth during the company’s formative years.

with the local authority Tower Hamlets, the complex will feature office space for 30 small businesses, cinema space, a digital archive and an art gallery, among other things.

KNOWLEDGE AND NETWORKS There’s another facet to this ecosystem, however. It’s the independent and semi-independent networks that enable RDAs and other funding bodies to do their best for the creative sector. Without these, the RDAs’ commitment to the digital creative sector would be seriously handicapped. It is small, often private but not-for-profit companies that can take the credit for ensuring the regions have strong clusters of digital creative businesses. They’re funded independently, often by tenders from big public funding bodies including RDAs. Examples are Game Republic, recently launched in Humber and Yorkshire. Also, there’s the Creative Industries Development Agency, or CIDA, in the same region. There’s the South East Media Network, which includes Wired Kent, Wired Hampshire, Oxfordshire’s Oxmedia Network and Wired Sussex. In London, there’s New Media Knowledge (NMK), affiliated with the University of Westminster. Using these companies as examples, their purpose can be summarised quite broadly. “Our primary remit is to grow media companies, and also the cluster, within Sussex,” explains Cheryl Clemons, Wired Sussex’s Acting Executive Director. “We work on a number of skills development programmes and we organise training events within the sort of skills realm – to develop sales and marketing skills, for example.” “We try to empower people to develop their creative skills,” adds CIDA General Manager Keith Evans. “People, individuals, businesses,

the like. We feel that they should have access to information, opportunities to increase their skills, opportunities to hear about ways to grow their businesses. Grants are available, you name it – all the key sort of attributes that help people develop either their creative talent, or, if that means their business, then their business.” Perhaps their most important function, however, is to bolster the local area’s cluster of digital creative houses. In short, they encourage networking. It may sound like an excuse for a piss-up, but on a weekly or monthly basis, remember it is networking that will make the difference to your business or portfolio. That’s how you’ll meet potential clients or employers, where you’ll hear about what’s new in the industry, and where development agencies can inform you of how to get hold of the facilities you need to make your designs stand out from the crowd. “They were very useful to us in the beginning,” says Paul Munford, Babel Media Director of Communications, about Wired Sussex. “At Milia [the world’s biggest show for those involved in digital and interactive content] they used to hire a yacht next to the event centre. They put on parties and networking opportunities, which were invaluable as we started to grow.” Despite Babel growing considerably over the past few years, the company still relies on Wired Sussex. “We’re using their services today because we need some extra office space,” Munford adds. “Many businesses view the funding Scottish Enterprise Tayside provide as their most important contribution, but I disagree,” says Colin Anderson, head of digital toy company Denki. “While it’s unquestionably important, I’ve found the research, networking and general advice services they offer to be every bit as useful to the longterm development of the company. I have no doubt that the quality and breadth of assistance offered by Scottish Enterprise Tayside has contributed significantly to the rise of Tayside as a centre of excellence for digital media.” “I have used NMK,” contributes Recollective’s Jane Austin. “I attended seminars in writing proposals and how to pitch, as these were two areas Recollective had the least expertise. This is because we’re all designers or coders, rather than new business people. The NMK courses were really helpful.”

MAKING THE MOST

REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES No matter where you are, there’s a regional development body out there for you Regional Development Agencies get a lot of money from the government, but they have to make it go a long way. It’s got to be divided between environmental, manufacturing and marketing functions, just to name a few. If you’d like to contact yours online, head to the site and look for their clusters section. You’ll likely find a section dedicated to ICT, creativity or digital. Depending on how they’ve defined it, any of these could be useful to you. Follow their links, and good luck.

UK LISTING Advantage West Midlands www.advantagewm.co.uk East of England Development Agency www.eeda.org.uk East Midlands Development Agency www.emda.org.uk Industrial Development Board for Northern Ireland www.idbni.co.uk London Development Agency www.lda.gov.uk North West Development Agency www.nwda.co.uk One NorthEast www.onenortheast.co.uk Scottish Council for Development and Industry www.scdi.org.uk South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) www.seeda.co.uk South West of England Regional Development Agency www.southwestengland.co.uk Welsh Development Agency www.wda.co.uk Yorkshire Forward www.yorkshire-forward.com

So far, so good – although no-one is claiming the system is perfect. Regional Development Agencies have to deliver

“WE TRY TO EMPOWER PEOPLE TO DEVELOP THEIR CREATIVE SKILLS”

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EUROPE’S POT London’s Recollective was founded by former Deepend employers, and includes the Design Museum on its client list. It also runs the Untold project, which explores issues of gender in design. According to founder Jane Austin, training from New Media Knowledge was vital in getting the agency started.

tangible proof to the government that they’re developing jobs and prospects to their regions. They’re bean counters. Creatives are the “fluffy people”. It’s difficult for one group to understand the other. And as Regional Development Agencies are government-sponsored, you can expect a few metres of red tape. There are controversial goings on, too. Software agency Lshift runs a series of peer-training sessions privately, and when boss Mike Rowlands went looking for funding help, he got short shrift. “I approached Business Link to look into the possibly of getting some help with the costs we incur when we run these,” he recounts. “They asked the ethnic origin of our management team and when I told them we were all white, they said there was unlikely to be anything available.”

So are they worth your while? Well, on balance, the answer has to be a resounding yes. Despite funding shortages, potential red tape or otherwise, development agencies are worth it for your business, whether you’re a student, a freelancer or an independent agency. The least they can do is provide you with networking opportunities. However, the training they make available at low cost is invaluable for new business. They’ll do the same for you if you’re learning about new aspects of your old job: accessibility or usability in design, for example. They can save you hassle when it comes to finding office space, too. They’ve got muscle at international trade shows, and they can help you with business plans. The trick is to use local-level Development Agencies like Wired Sussex or NMK. If they feel you’re better served by going to one of the 12 big agencies, they’ll point you in the right direction. At this point, we’d encourage you by quoting that old D:Ream song, but then that would probably annoy you, wouldn’t it? INFO Words by Graeme Aymer, [email protected].

RDAS ARE GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED, SO EXPECT A FEW METRES OF RED TAPE

There’s development funding available from abroad, too. After all, we are members of the EU The UK government is not alone in its grand vision of RDAs. Other European governments certainly run schemes of their own. However, of more relevance to the UK is pan-European funding. Perhaps the best example of this is the European Regional Development Fund. It was set up in 1975 to assist regeneration of regions within the European Community. It is a major contributor to many of the regeneration schemes underpinned by Britain’s current RDAs. It has around £3.4 billion available for UK regional regeneration. Essentially, it’s there to assist with community or public sector growth, rather than to help profit-driven private companies, but it will help SMEs occasionally. In general, the emphasis is on projects that can prove they promote competitiveness, grow skills, contribute to economic development and regeneration, and that also contribute to sustainable development. It won’t contribute over 50 per cent of your funding in most cases, and it provides assistance on a matched funding basis. However, if you think you have an idea that could stand a bit of EU funding, do get in touch with your RDA. THANKS TO: www.cida.org www.creativeportal.org www.interactivetayside.com www.babelmedia.com www.denki.co.uk www.recollective.co.uk

64 Computer Arts_November 2003

Quick Tutorial

SHORTCUTS

www.studio-output.com

FINAL CUT EXPRESS When you need to make 40 or 50 rapid cuts to create a flashing effect, it can take up a lot of time. Here, using Apple’s DV editor Final Cut Express, we show you how you can save yourself hours through clever use of the program’s handy Blink filter. Locate the files on your CD in the Tutorial\ShortcutFCE folder before you begin.

In many productions, especially music videos, you need to make a series of rapid cuts. Sometimes these cuts are only a frame or two in length. When you make 40 or so cuts like this, the result is a rapid blur of images which helps to add interest and impact. Watch the FlashCuts.mov clip (on the CD) to see how it works. Although this is a popular effect, it’s time-consuming to load each clip, select an In and Out point for just two frames, drag the clip into place and then repeat 40 times. If you need to do this for several seconds of footage, three or four times in a project, expect many hours of laborious

BLINK AND IT’S DONE

1

Create a new sequence in Final Cut Express and import the three clips (Slide.mov, Car.mov and Walk.mov). Drag them into the timeline, one on top the other.

2

Apply the Blink filter to the middle clip, ensuring that you double-click the clip to make its filter settings appear in the Viewer. Now set On Duration to 4 and Off duration to 2. Render and watch through.

4

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Double-click the highest clip, and choose Effects>Video Filters>Video>Blink. In the Filters tab (located in the Viewer), set On Duration to 2 and Off Duration to 4.

For a flashier effect, with the images layered over each other as they cut, apply the Blink filter to the lower clip, setting On to 4 and Off to 1. Set Modify>Composite Mode>Add for the upper two clips before rendering.

work. However, with the following shortcut you can recreate the same effect in about two minutes. It works by applying the Blink filter to several layers. This filter inserts empty frames into your footage; when your footage is arranged in layers, each blank space reveals the layer beneath, creating the startling illusion of rapidly cutting between shots. Import the three movie files (Slide. mov, Car.mov and Walk.mov) from the CD into Final Cut Express, then place them on the timeline in that order, so the Walk.mov clip is the highest one. Apply the Blink filter to Walk.mov. Now double-click it, so that the filter settings appear in the Viewer. If they’re not visible, click the Filter tab. Set the On Duration to 2, and the Off Duration to 4. If you render this and play through, you’ll see that the top two clips now appear to be intercut. To bring all three clips into play, apply the Blink filter to the second layer. This time, set the On Duration to 4 and the Off Duration to 2. Render again and you’ll see that all three clips intercut rapidly. You will notice, however, that there’s a certain feeling of flow to these clips which may be undesirable. If you want the clips to look truly random, you can repeat the process with several more layers, changing the on and off values randomly for each. You can also randomly cut your clips with the Razorblade tool and shift them around. In many cases, though, this basic technique works perfectly well, and there’s no need to do anything else. For a more pulsing, glowing effect, double-click the Slide clip and apply the Blink filter, setting On to 4 and Off to 1. Choose Modify>Composite Mode>Add for the upper two layers. Render this and your results should look like the FlashAdd.mov. If you want one clip to show up quite strongly, apply the Strobe filter with a setting of about 6. This makes the frozen images appear much more striking. As with most flashy effects, this technique is best used in moderation, and although frame cuts are now easily within your reach, too many can make your work feel too frantic. This may well be the result you’re after, of course, but cuts of a couple of frames generally give the best sensation of rushing images. INFO Expertise supplied by Chris Kenworthy, [email protected]

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ILLUSTRATION BY SIMON DANAHER [email protected]

66 Computer Arts_November 2003

Tutorial

3D ILLUSTRATION WORLD IVE EXCLUS

CINEMA 4D EXCLUSIVE If you didn’t catch the phenomenal full version of Cinema 4D CE 6 last issue, it’s not too late – it’s on our CD for one more month, so install it now! Last issue, we showed you how to use the application for illustration – now we turn to animation Animation is a big subject, and covers a huge range of situations. This month, we’ll be looking at several different animation techniques, including path, point and deformer animation, to get you moving with your free copy of Cinema 4D CE 6. By following this tutorial, you’ll master a wide variety of animation methods, without getting bogged down in the details of a particular animation project that may use only one or two techniques. You can then expand on these techniques and methods to create more elaborate animations yourself. As with most 3D animation packages, Cinema 4D relies on keyframing. This is a simple animation method that enables you to make complicated and lengthy animated sequences without specifying the animated values for every single frame. In traditional Cel animation, that’s exactly what has to be done. The Key Animator draws the main poses of a character, then a lesser animator fills in the frames in between. This is where the term ‘keyframe’ originates. Cinema 4D enables you to animate virtually everything, offering a fine level of control over timing and speed through the use of Time and Space curves. These are graphs that display the way animated values are interpolated between the keyframes. You can get to these in the Timeline menu by choosing Window>Space Curves/Time Curves. Here, we’ll look at how to set up models for animation, and at setting keyframes using the timeline to create a great-quality animation. INFO Artwork and words by Simon Danaher, [email protected]

ON THE CD The full program Cinema 4D CE 6 is on your CD, along with the scene files you need to follow this tutorial – you’ll find these in the Tutorial\C4D folder.

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PART 1 LAYOUTS IN CINEMA

PART 2 BASIC KEYFRAMING

Install Cinema 4D CE 6 and get acquainted with the interface

Keyframing is quite simple in Cinema 4D, as we’ll show you

7

To keyframe an object’s position over time, simply move the Time slider to the desired time, move the object and click Record. Here, we’ve recorded keys for the cube’s position at frame 0, 30, and 60, moving the cube in X and Y.

1

Before we start animating, we need to look at the environment in Cinema 4D. The default setup isn’t too animation-friendly, so we need to change that.

4

Unlike other 3D apps, keyframes are not automatically created when you move an object in Cinema 4D. However, you can enable this behaviour. The Time Manager at the bottom of the screen contains the Time slider, VCR controls and Record buttons, as well as some other options.

8

The timeline displays bars on the sequence for each keyframe we recorded. You can move these to alter the timing of the animation, but you cannot move them past the end of the sequence or the total project length – in this case, 90 frames.

2

You can access the timeline from the Windows main menu, where the panel opens as a floating window. You can dock it anywhere by dragging the pin icon at its top-left to parts of the interface. A thick grey line shows you where it will be positioned once you release the mouse button.

5

To create a key for yourself, click on the red Record button in the Time Manager. Add a cube and press Record at frame 0. Notice that keys are created for multiple sequences at once.

9

By double-clicking the sequence (not the keys), you can access a panel in which you can set a new length for the sequence. Here, we’ve changed it to 300 frames. Note that the total project length also adjusts to accommodate the longer sequence.

3

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6

The sequence tracks created are Position, Scale, Rotation and Parameter. If you only want to animate the position, you won’t want to have all these other sequences added as well. To only record position keys, turn off the Record options for the tracks you don’t want – the buttons are located at the right of the Time Manager strip.

^

Here we’ve placed it below the main view, and moved the Material Manager into the tabbed panel group at the bottom-right. Save your layout by choosing Windows>Layouts>Save Layout As… and navigate to the Prefs folder of the C4D installation.

INSIGHT LAYOUTS

When you save a layout (.l4d file) in the Cinema folder, it appears in a list at the bottom of the Layouts menu, where you can recall it at any time. Create multiple layouts in this way.

Tutorial

10

Double-clicking a keyframe opens a panel displaying all the animated data stored within it. Position keys can store the position in world space, plus the tangent values of the Bézier handles associated with its animation path. You can edit the animation path, or the values directly in Cinema 4D.

13

First, we need a spline that the car can travel along. A Helix spline is added from the main menu, and set up as above. The spline is parametric, but you can convert it into a plain spline curve by simply pressing the C key (Convert).

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In the 3D view, you can now see the result. The Helix has conformed to the shape of the terrain. We can now select the car object and choose Objects> Spline to Position Track… from the timeline menu, entering ‘Helix’ in the dialog that appears.

STEP 3 ANIMATING ALONG A PATH Before you start this section, find the Tutorial\C4D folder on the CD

In the Top view, select the Helix. Switching to Point Editing mode (the button on the left of the interface), select Structure>Subdivide from the main menu and enter a value of 2. This adds more points to the spline.

11

As we’ve seen, creating position keyframes automatically creates a path in the view port. You can even convert this path into a spline for modelling, using the Objects>Position Track To Spline command in the timeline’s menu. Open the file Ride.c4d (on your CD in Tutorial\C4D).

Note that the car doesn’t turn around the corners, and its pivot point isn’t set properly. To fix this, we need to zoom up to the car and, using the Edit Axes mode (the button at the far left of the interface), move its pivot to the centre of the car, level with the bottom of the wheels. See the file Ride2.c4d for reference.

PART 4 TARGETS Using Target expressions to turn your animated objects

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Next, from the Structure>Edit Spline menu, choose the Project command and use the Use View option, making sure that the car object is out of the way first. This projects the points onto whatever is directly under the spline.

^

INSIGHT ZOOMING IN

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If you create a path first, you can also use this to animate your object. Here’s a fun little project that makes use of this feature. We’re going to create two objects: a vehicle and some terrain, over which we’re going to animate the vehicle.

In Cinema 4D, you can zoom into any selected object by clicking in each view panel’s menubar and pressing the O key. If you click in the main view, you can then deselect the object. The H key zooms you out to the perimeter of the scene, so you can see all lights and cameras.

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To fix the turning problem, add a Null object, fix it to the centre of the spiral and rename it Target. Now select the car and choose File>New Expression>Target Expression from the Object Manager menu. Enter Target into the dialog that opens. The car’s Z axis now always points to the Null, ensuring the vehicle turns along the path.

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^

PART 6 BONES How to use bones and PLA to animate a realistic pair of lips

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Of course, this technique won’t work if the path turns in different directions, but there is a simple alternative. Open the file Ride3.c4d from the CD. This file has a random path projected onto the terrain. The Null object is animated along it, too, but its position sequence has been selected and dragged backwards by one frame in the timeline.

20

The car now follows the Null along the path, because the Null is always in front by one frame. To point the car in the right direction, you simply select the car and, with the Edit Axes tool, rotate the car’s pivot point in Y (green handle). See the file Ride4.c4d. This technique also has the benefit of tilting the car over the undulations of the terrain. Try attaching a camera to it and viewing the scene as the car navigates up and down the hills and vales.

22

The fingers are actually instances of a single master finger named ‘FINGERS’ in the Object Manager. If you open this up, you’ll see that there are three Bend Deformers. Select Bend2, activate the Z and Y axes locks, then drag the orange handle in the Perspective view to see how the fingers flex.

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Bones are another kind of deformer, and they have special features. They can be built into jointed hierarchies and make use of Inverse Kinematics (IK). However, you don’t have to use them with IK, as we’ll see. Open the file Mouth1.c4d.

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Because the other fingers are instances, they all bend too. Try setting a pose for the hand by bending the Bend deformers and recording a Parameter keyframe for each. Note that the Parameter keyframe recording option is the large P button in the Time Manager – turn off the others.

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This is a model of a mouth built using HyperNURBS. We’ll set it up for animation using bones and PLA (Point Level Animation). First, we create a PLA sequence in the timeline by selecting the Mouthpoly object and choosing New Track>Special Effects>PLA from the timeline’s menu.

PART 5 DEFORMERS Get to grips with animated deformations in Cinema 4D

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Carry on recording different keys for the fingers at different times. You’ll find that to get a natural motion you won’t necessarily have the keyframe for each deformer at the same frame. See the file HandPoses.c4d on the cover CD.

21

In this section, we’ll explain how to use animated deformations to control a cartoon robot hand. Open the file Hand.c4d on the cover CD. This is a simple, non-hierarchical animated model that uses only primitives and deformers.

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First, we need to record a ‘rest’ keyframe for the mouth at frame 0 by Ctrl-clicking on the sequence. Then, with the Magnet tool (Structure>Magnet) set to a large 200+ radius in Poly or Point Edit mode, we can drag the points to make a pursed lip shape. Record another key.

Tutorial

^

INSIGHT

LIP-SYNCHING

We’ve used a basic lip-synching technique for this tutorial, but it still illustrates well what you need to do. For more accurate results, save a PLA key for each phoneme (for vowels, ff, th, ss, and so forth), then drag these into position where necessary, bolstering the PLA animation with individual bone rotations.

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Return the Time slider to frame 0, so that the lips return to their original position. Add a Bone Deformer (Objects>Deformations>Bone). Ctrl-drag the bone in the Object Manager to make a duplicate, then position it using Top and Side views at the corner of the mouth and pointing up the top lip.

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Repeat the procedure for the lower lip. Create a Null object and drop the two Bone hierarchies and the mouth HyperNURBS into it.

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We can do this by dragging the orange tip of the bone. Two further bones are created by Ctrl-dragging the tip and positioning it to follow the lip. Note that they’re automatically parented to the bone from which they have been dragged.

To make the bones deform the mesh, you must fix them. Select each main bone and choose Object>Fix Bones from the Object Manager menu. Click OK to include sub-objects (all child bones). We’ve also changed the function of the bones to ^6, which gives a sharper deformation. Rotate the main bones only in X to move the lips.

Now it’s possible to keyframe the rotation of each bone to animate the lips talking. Note that you really only need to keyframe them open and closed once, then you can Ctrl-drag the keyframes and copy them to different frames in the sequence.

FINAL STEP

A

dding in the PLA animation by Ctrl-dragging keys creates variation in the mouth shapes to simulate different word shapes. The result is fairly good for non-critical lip synching, and demonstrates that you don’t always need IK with bones. See MouthAnim.c4d on the CD.

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Move the original bone to the thick end, line it up with the corners of the mouth and rotate it upwards; this will be our pivot point. Now drag and drop the lip bones into this bone in the Object Manager. Rename the main bone Upper.

^

INSIGHT DEFORMERS

All deformers in Cinema 4D, bones included, deform objects on the same hierarchical level as them. To deform multiple objects, place all your objects together with the deformer inside a Null (they now all occupy the same level).

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SAVE £1300 ON THE ORIGINAL RRP OF CINEMA 4D XL6!

UPGRADE AND SAVE Upgrade your free copy of Cinema 4D CE to the new CE+ edition for just £79, and unlock all the functionality of Cinema 4D XL6 – as originally sold for over £1395! On its release in 2000, Cinema 4D XL6 was immediately hailed as a breakthrough in 3D software. In issue 45 of Computer Arts, we described it as ‘rock solid’ and ‘packing one hell of a punch’, before going on to award it a review score of five out of five. Three years on, the appeal of XL6 is still exceptionally strong, and now comes in the form of CE+. The app has a massive range of modelling tools, including HyperNURBS, Splines, MetaSplines, MetaBalls and Parametric Primitives, a full animation toolset (including a powerful particle system), and a 256-bit SuperScalar motion renderer. Whether you want to create special effects, broadcast titles, technical visualisations or character animation, you can do it with Cinema 4D. Better still, CE+ offers Cinema 4D users a completely customisable interface, including the power to build icon palettes from text or pictures, complete with folded palettes, to dock windows together as tabs, define custom keyboard shortcuts and even change the

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menu structure. Throw in features like a non-linear construction history, motion sequencing, and a toon-shaded rendering mode, and you’ve got yourself an application that can still easily hold its own with the best of them. On its release, Cinema 4D XL6 was sold for £1395 – but, thanks to our special reader offer, you can now unlock all that functionality for under £100! On this month’s cover CD, you’ll find a free copy of Cinema 4D CE 6 – a cut-down version of XL6 with an output resolution of 600x400 pixels. By now you’ll have tested it out using the tutorial on the previous six pages. For just £79 (plus postage and packing), you can upgrade that copy to the new Cinema 4D CE+ edition, which has a whopping maximum resolution of 16,000x16,000 pixels: ideal for high-quality illustration or animation work, and identical to XL6 in all but name. The offer runs until 30 November 2003. To upgrade to Cinema 4D CE+, just follow the ordering instructions to the right.

HOW TO ORDER BY PHONE Call +44 (0) 1525 718181 (UK only) ONLINE Visit www.cinema4d .co.uk/ce (UK) Visit www.cinema4d .com/ce (Rest of World) OFFER ENDS 30 November 2003 Offer price includes VAT, but excludes postage and packaging. Postage will be charged at £7 within the UK; charges for the rest of the world vary.

PROFILE

LARS REHNBERG EMAIL [email protected] WEBSITE www.artmarketillustration.com

Lars Rehnberg is one of a group of freelance illustrators who have set up under the umbrella of Stockholm Illustration. The Swedish illustrator moved to Stockholm in 1991 to study at one of the capital’s design schools. His career began at an ad agency, and it wasn’t until 1997 that he set up on his own as an illustrator with a passion for accentuated lines with bold shapes and colours. As well as advertising agencies, he also works for newspapers and magazines. Working mainly with Adobe Illustrator with some Photoshop, this illustrator is never far from a sketchpad and pencil, and according to Rehnberg, sketching is the most fun part of all. What image is on your desktop?

The image my Mac was delivered with – some greyish, plastic-looking wave. I kind of like it. Which website do you visit most?

I like J Otto Seibold’s Website, www.jotto.com. Name one brilliant illustrator/designer

Olle Eksell. What are you working on now?

I am working with two of my colleagues at the studio on an animation project. A Swedish manufacturer has asked us to make an animated music video to promote a new electric wheelchair aimed at younger people. The video will be shown with a specially written rap track at various fairs. We’ve created all the characters and the settings, and someone has written a script. We deliver the static drawings as Illustrator files and another guy does the animation work in After Effects. It has been really nice to work with other people, since I usually work on my own. What is your strangest client experience?

I was doing an illustration for a feature in a magazine for headmasters and teachers. The client called me at home late one night. She wasn’t happy with the rough I had made. She was quite upset and seemed to think I needed some serious advice on how to make illustrations in general. So she started to tell me how to make drawings, and I eventually found myself taking notes. We have never worked together again. What do you read in bed?

Mostly crime novels. What is your ultimate ambition?

It would be great to make an animated movie.

1

3

Favourite city?

New York or Barcelona. How do you celebrate completing a project?

By writing the invoice and having a nice cup of black coffee. Best album to work to?

Right now it’s Lambchop’s Is a Woman. If you weren’t busy being a designer, what would you be doing now?

It would have been nice to have tried acting or something, where you have more direct contact with the audience than you have as an illustrator. 2

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Profile

1 & 6. People and Health are two of Swedish illustrator Lars Rehnberg’s recent images, and they demonstrate his liking for bold colours and images built from strong shapes. They were part of a brochure illustrating the medical service in Stockholm.

4

2 & 3. These two illustrations, generated in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, are called Whales and Oil Drilling. They both featured as covers for brochures promoting a Norwegian oil organisation.

4. Rehnberg’s Recycling image is typical of his clean and bright vector style. This editorial piece was created to illustrate a magazine article about recycling waste and bins. 5. Dinner is served in this image, which aimed to be evocative of the pleasures of food and drink. Entitled Restaurant, it successfully illustrated the invitation to a gastronomic fair in Stockholm this year.

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5

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ILLUSTRATION BY MAGICTORCH

www.magictorch.com

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Tutorial

LAYOUT AND DESIGN

ADOBE INDESIGN 2 In part two of our series on using InDesign 2 to create a brochure, we focus on how the application’s sophisticated features and integration with Photoshop can give you the creative edge with your layouts In the first part of this tutorial last issue, we looked at some different ways that InDesign can help you maintain consistency throughout a brochure, while making global changes quickly, accurately and efficiently. Some of the groundwork we prepared will now come in useful – in particular, the use of Section Names to change the season of the gardening brochure. We’ll now take a closer look at ways you can use type in a document – both as a graphical effect on a path and pulled out of a background image – while maintaining legibility. And we’ll have a good look at integration with Photoshop. The real eye-opener here is the ability to work with soft-edged layer masks for your cut-outs, adjusting masked images in the layout until you’re satisfied with their position. We’ll be adding effects such as Layer Styles and filters to immediately see their effect on layout and to introduce the radical potential of InDesign. In essence, this tutorial aims to demonstrate how you can produce more complex layouts faster. Finally, we’ll be looking at various considerations for output. Clearly, these requirements vary from case to case, but you should find the tips helpful wherever your document may be output. INFO Expertise from InDesign training specialist Chris Gregory. Contact him on 07967 372 699 or via [email protected]

ON THE CD Look in the Tutorial\InDesign folder for the Garden Layout file to begin. All the files you need are on the CD, plus the PDF of part 1 of this tutorial.

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^

PART 1 PHOTOSHOP INTEGRATION

PART 2 TYPE ON A PATH

Setting up different paths in Photoshop enables you to make better creative choices in InDesign

Use InDesign’s elegant drawing and transformation tools to create exciting textual effects

INSIGHT SPEEDING UP

If you find your machine slows down when manipulating paths, open up View>Optimised Display and ‘greek’ all the images in the layout. This should speed things up. To change an individual image’s display, select, Ctrl-click and choose a Display Performance option.

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Place Flowers_cut.eps and Watering_can.eps (on the CD) on page 4 of the brochure. Scale and move the images into position, as shown, cropping the watering can’s picture frame to a manageable size. Use the Transform palette to rotate the spout to something akin to the angle shown.

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Use the Line Tool to drag a diagonal line from the spout to just underneath the flower. Select the Type on a Path Tool and click at the top of the path. Choose File>Place, locate the Referrals folder and open Ref_01.doc. Now select the Pen tool and add an anchor point to the path’s central section.

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Now use the Transformation tools to fine-tune the paths. Use the Free Transform tool to both rotate (curved pointer) and scale (diagonal pointer), based on the selection’s centre-point. Use the Rotate and Scale Tools to transform to a specific point of origin (to the top lefthand corner, for example).

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Choose Object>Clipping Path and ensure that Photoshop Path is selected from the Type dropdown menu and that Preview is clicked on. Choose Path 1, 2 or 3 to see the options provided by paths previously created and saved in Photoshop .

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To curve the path, select the Convert Direction Point tool, then press and drag from the new point to create direction points, as shown. Use the Command key to access the Direct Selection Pointer, move the anchor point to the right and fine-tune the direction points.

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To remove the paths, select and change the Stroke to [None]. With all the testimonials selected, experiment with different colours from the Swatches palette (ensure the Type Fill option is selected). If the screen doesn’t update immediately, try using the Shift-F5 Redraw Screen shortcut.

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Click OK to choose your preferred version. Now we’ll apply Transparency to the flower – such as Multiply with 80 per cent opacity – to help keep the text legible over the image. It will also be helpful to lock the image by choosing Object>Lock Position.

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Using the Selection tool, Alt-drag the path to duplicate and create more testimonials ‘raining down’. Now go to the Links palette and select the second Ref_01.doc in the list. Click the Relink button and link to Ref_02.doc. After relinking the remaining referrals, select and format with the Character palette.

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Now change the orientation of the path type. Choose Type>Type on a Path>Options and click the Preview button on. Feel free to experiment with different Effect options from the dropdown menu.

Tutorial

PART 3 THE MAIN SPREAD

PART 4 LOCAL AND GLOBAL CHANGES

InDesign makes light work of ‘black on’ and ‘white out’ text on lightened or darkened images, with no need to make the usual foray into Photoshop

Changing a few select items on the master page can instantly transform the look of your document

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Click in one of the windows and double-click A-Master in the Pages palette. You’ll now be able to immediately see how changing a master page item affects the document itself. Try changing the master page’s banner colour, for example. Close the ‘master’ window when done.

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Place the images Before.jpg on page 5 and After.jpg on page 6, as shown. Scale and position them so that detail is visible in the top third of the image. This provides contrast for the next stage.

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In the Pages palette, double-click on page 1 to go to the beginning of the document. From the Pages palette menu, choose Numbering and Section Options. Ensure the Start Section option is on and, in the Section Marker Field, type ‘SUMMER’. Click OK to see the banner repeating across the spreads.

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In the document page, select and override master page items by Command+Shiftclicking with the Selection tool. Try this out on two or more of the triangles, noting that they now move to the top of the stacking order for their layer. Use Object>Arrange options to re-order as necessary.

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Create background panels for the text with the Rectangle tool and change their Stroke to None. Use the Swatches palette to fill the lefthand panel with 100 per cent [Black] and the right-hand panel with [Paper]. Adjust the Transparency to reveal the underlying images – Multiply at 80 per cent and Screen at 75 per cent, for example.

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If the text is ‘scrunched’, go to the master pages and remove section markers until it fits. As shown above, we could now quickly and easily update the gardening brochure for each season by just changing the section marker text as required.

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A small but perfectly formed feature within InDesign is the ability to selectively return overridden items to master page items, without having to apply a master page to an entire page (or spread, for that matter). To do this, select the item in question and choose Remove Selected Local Override from the Pages palette menu.

^

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On the Text layer, put Before.doc and After.doc in different text frames. Format with Paragraph Style 02_Sub Heading. Change the Before text colour to [Paper] and fine-tune the panels’ opacities and Blending modes to maximise the text’s legibility.

INSIGHT MISSING LINK

15

Now we’ll change another master page item to globally change the document’s appearance. First, though, choose Window>New Window to create a second view of the document. Now choose Window>Tile, followed by View>Fit Spread in Window for both windows.

The Links palette shows you the status of your linked files. A yellow warning triangle indicates that the original item has been modified – use Update Link to change in the document. A red circle indicates a broken link – use Relink to remedy the situation. Be wary of accidentally ‘updating’ text links when opening a moved document and removing local formatting (using the Embed Files option from the Links palette menu is a good safeguard).

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^

INSIGHT ON THE LEVELS

PART 5 BACK TO PHOTOSHOP

You can repeatedly use the technique shown here with Levels and filters to keep adjusting a layer mask. To feather a mask, apply a Gaussian Blur. To give a harder edge, use the Levels Midtones slider – drag to the right to ‘choke’ and to the left to ‘spread’ the mask.

Compromising over how images integrate within your layout is now a thing of the past

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The fringe has been removed, but now the flower has a harder edge akin to a clipping path. Again, choose Edit Original to return to the Photoshop document and click on the layer mask thumbnail. Choose Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur to subtly feather the edge. Once you’re happy with the results, save the document to update as before.

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Place the image Flower_masked.psd on page 6. Alt-drag with the Pointer tool to create a montage. For a less regular ‘bunch’, use the Free Transform tool to rotate, scale and shear the blooms.

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Immediately choose Edit>Fade Spatter and Multiply by 30 per cent. Try out different combinations of opacity and Blending modes, taking snapshots of different states. In the History palette, double-click on each snapshot to name appropriately.

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As there’s a distinct fringe to our flowers, we’ll go back into Photoshop to tweak the mask and close it up to the image (another method would be to adjust the alpha channel’s Tolerance settings under Object>Clipping Path). Select an image and click the Edit Original button in the Links palette.

For ‘non-destructive’ effects, we can use Layer Effects and Styles. Select a flower and open in Photoshop. Click the Layer thumbnail, click the Layer Style button and choose Bevel and Emboss>Texture. Once more, save to see the changes in the layout.

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Click on a Snapshot option, then save and return to the layout as before. As long as the Photoshop document remains open, you can move between the image and the layout, trying out different combinations of filters to see exactly how they’ll appear in the InDesign document.

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In the Layers palette, click the layer mask thumbnail. Choose Image>Adjustments> Levels and click Preview on. Drag the Input Midtones slider to the right to ‘choke’ the mask and remove the fringe. Click OK and Save. Click in the InDesign window to see the updated image. (You may need to update links with the Links palette.)

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You can also use the History palette to apply ‘destructive’ filters ‘non-destructively’. In Photoshop, click the Create New Snapshot button in the History palette to preserve the current state. Apply a Filter such as Brush Strokes>Spatter and take another Snapshot, as shown.

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If you need to keep the different ‘states’ after closing the Photoshop document, use the History palette’s Create Document From Current State button. In InDesign, use the Link palette’s Relink button to update the image in precisely the same position, with all transformations applied.

Tutorial

PART 6 PREPARING TO PRINT We’ll now make some final adjustments to ensure that the document prints correctly

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When working with Transparency, it’s a good idea to ensure that all the text is on its own topmost layer. Alt-click the text layer in the Layers palette to show just that layer and check its content. Alt-click again to show all the layers. Move all missing text frames to the correct layer.

To supply native InDesign documents, fonts and images, choose File>Package, which offers a Preflight check as part of the process. Although InDesign’s preflighting abilities aren’t as powerful as, say, FlightCheck or PitStop, they will at least catch some gremlins.

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To ensure we’ve allocated enough bleed to all edges of our brochure (typically 3mm), we’ll create guides for each edge of the first spread, using the Transform palette to ensure they’re positioned correctly, adjusting images and text accordingly.

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Shift-click the guides with the Selection tool, choose Edit>Copy and go to the second spread. Choose Edit>Paste In Place to precisely place them in the same position (this invaluable feature also works for guides). You might also consider adding them to the library you created in the first part of the tutorial, as shown.

To output as PDFs, go to File>Export and Save. Select Style [Press] and click Spreads on. Under Marks and Bleeds, turn on Crop, Bleed, Registration Marks and Page Information. Also enter a bleed value for each edge. To reuse this setup, choose Save Style and create a named PDF export style. Click Export to create the PDF.

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If any problems are detected, go back to the original files and amend them before using Package again. Even if the printer/repro house prefers to work with native InDesign documents, it’s still often a good plan to include a PDF for reference purposes.

FINAL STEP

H

ere’s the second spread of the brochure exported as a PDF with all printer’s marks included. Clearly, InDesign can give you an edge in such brochure work, through its sophisticated feature-set and integration with Photoshop and Illustrator. And by taking the time to set up elements such as paragraph styles, master page items, swatches and libraries, you’ll also be able to amend and update the document quickly and accurately.

^

INSIGHT TRANSPARENCY

It can’t be stated too often: take care with output of areas of transparency (feathering, dropshadows, opacity) in your document – in particular, where they interact with text. It’s good working practice to place your text on its own separate topmost layer to keep it separate from the flattening process.

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REVIEWS

★★★★★

SOFTWARE

OUR FIVE-STAR RATING EXPLAINED

Adobe Creative Suite p84 Photoshop CS p85

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

Illustrator CS p88 InDesign CS p90 GoLive CS p92 ParticleIllusion 3.0 p93 Michael 3 p94 HARDWARE

FireLite 80GB HD p96 PURE Rendering Card p96 Canon PowerShot G5 p97 Creative Stuff p98 GROUP TEST

EXTERNAL DVD BURNERS p102

Sony DRX-50UL Amacom Baby DVD-RW Plextor PX-504UF HP 300E LaCie DVD-RW

In successive months, we’ve seen two of the largest software companies releasing the world’s most popular creative applications. Last month came Studio MX 2004 from Macromedia, and now we see the announcement of Adobe’s Creative Suite. All-new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive are featured in the software bundle, for an attractive price. Of course, the one we’ve been waiting for is Photoshop, and you won’t be disappointed. It brings a number of new tools, including a Layer Comps feature that will blow artists and illustrators away. The latest release of Illustrator looks similarly impressive, with brand new 3D tools. Turn the page to explore the entirety of the Creative Suite in our previews. If that wasn’t enough, we have the latest release of ParticleIllusion on test, as well as DAZ’s Michael 3 – our review of the latter going into all sorts of physiological detail. Hardware-wise we have the eagerly awaited Canon PowerShot G5, a nifty 80GB pocket hard drive and ART’s PURE Rendering Card. Enjoy. Cheers, Rob Carney Reviews Editor [email protected]

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PREVIEW

ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE

PC AND MAC

NEW Computer Arts brings you a sneak preview of Adobe’s newest creative software collection PRICING £949 (Premium) £775 (Standard) £565 (Upgrade from Photoshop – any version)

CONTACT Adobe Buy online www.adobe.co.uk

FEATURES • Photoshop CS • Illustrator CS • InDesign CS • GoLive CS (Premium edition only) • Acrobat 6 Professional (Premium edition only)

SYSTEM PC: Pentium III or 4 • 192MB RAM • 1.55GB HD • Win 2000/XP MAC: G3 or G4 • 192MB RAM • 1.775GB HD • OS X 10.2.4

W

e didn’t expect it, and neither did anyone else. While rumours of the next version of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive have been circulating the Web for a long time, no-one got it right… For a start, version numbers are out the window. Now each product will be superseded by its CS (standing for Creative Suite) successor. So even if you buy apps individually, you’ll now be looking to put Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS and GoLive CS on your list. It’s certainly an interesting move, and one that Macromedia has already taken with its MX product line. Adobe tells us one of the reasons is to align product releases – versioning goes away, and therefore so does product incompatibility. One installer and one serial number will install all of the apps in the suite – and gives you the choice of installing all or part of the Creative Suite at one time. The Creative Suite will be available in two versions: Premium and Standard. The Standard edition will feature Photoshop (including ImageReady), Illustrator, InDesign and Version Cue (more on this in a bit), while the Premium edition adds GoLive and Acrobat 6 Professional. The Suite is only available for OS X 10.2.4 and Win XP. The whole collection is, and we quote, “glued” together by one new Adobe application – Version Cue. This is basically a file-tracking and management app that works seamlessly behind all the programs in the Suite, enabling

you to easily track file versions when working as part of a collaborative team, without overriding a colleague’s precious work. The application is accessed from the Open/Save dialogs of the applications in the suite, and keeps track of changes and iterations of files – aiming to end file-naming conventions. You can preview images as thumbnails, and search metadata across images. You can also roll back to previous versions of the file, of course. If you open up a document from Version Cue, after the file name in the main window, the app will let you know if the file is in use, and who’s using it. This is a vital indicator when you don’t want to accidentally ‘correct’ a change that a colleague has just made. Version Cue runs mainly in the background – but if you need to alter client permissions and so on, you can do so by paying a visit to the System Preferences pane of OS X, or Control Panel in WinXP. This is a tool that is meant to sit in the background, with not much interference from the Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign user. It looks to be a valuable addition to the Creative Suite, and one that ties together the products nicely. Over the following eight pages, we have the in-depth previews of the most anticipated releases of the year – Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive – whatever creative sector you’re involved in, you can’t afford to miss them. Look out for the full verdicts coming soon in a future issue of Computer Arts.

WORLD

EXCLUSIVE

UPGRADE PATHS Can you upgrade from Photoshop 7? The Creative Suite is a turning point for the Adobe product line – bringing simultaneous releases of all Adobe’s key products. But will those who’ve bought Photoshop 7, InDesign 2 or Illustrator 10 be able to upgrade at a special price? Well, yes and no. Owners of any version of Photoshop can upgrade to the full Creative Suite for just £565 – definitely a good deal. But those with Illustrator or InDesign without a Photoshop licence will have to pay

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the full £949. Likewise, those who currently own Acrobat 6 will be unable to upgrade to the Creative Suite Premium edition. The reason? Adobe tells us that over 90 per cent of Adobe customers are Photoshop users, and therefore it makes sense to have one upgrade price from one application. We suspect, however, that most of you will own Photoshop – so you’ll be able to snap up the Adobe’s entire portfolio of creative print and Web tools for £565.

Review

PREVIEW

PHOTOSHOP CS

PC AND MAC $649 (upgrade $169)

IMAGE EDITING Adobe’s new version brings us the features we’ve all been waiting for CONTACT Adobe Buy online www.adobe.co.uk

SYSTEM PC Pentium III or 4 • 192MB RAM • 280MB HD • Win 2000 SP3/Win XP MAC G3/G4/G5 • 192MB RAM • 320MB HD • OS X 10.2.4

VERDICT Photoshop CS looks like having something for everyone, with improvements across the board set to make it a more versatile tool than ever. Look out for the full, in-depth review soon in Computer Arts.

P

hotoshop has been in existence for 13 impressive years, and has developed into an image-editing tool that the industry simply can’t live without, providing photographers, illustrators, graphic designers and Web designers with an essential set of tools for almost any purpose. But now we witness a turning point in the application’s history…

HISTORY IN THE MAKING For the first time, Photoshop has lost its version number, and has simultaneously gained an impressive number of new tools – the kind we’ve come to expect from a Photoshop upgrade. It’s obvious that Adobe is in tune with the program’s uses in professional environments, and the CS upgrade introduces new tools for designers across the digital art spectrum. We’ll start with the most impressive, because Adobe has added a new feature to this latest version that is truly magnificent. It will make a massive difference to the working practice of every single Photoshop user – everyone who uses layers, that is. Layers are an essential part of any illustrator or designer’s working practice, and most of the time, you’ll have many variations of an image in one document – each one being defined by turning on and switching off various layers. Photoshop CS brings you Layer Comps, which will

save you the process of switching various layers on and off to show a client these different variations. Effectively, this feature enables you to save the state of your image with layers turned on or off – giving you multiple variations on an image within one document. Think of it like a ‘Layer History’ palette – you can name the variations, store them in the Layer Comps palette and then jump to them at any time. This is almost certainly the most important addition to Photoshop CS. Another new feature, and one that we never thought we’d see in Photoshop, is text on a path. That’s right: possibly the most requested feature over the years has finally made it into the application. Photoshop shares its text engine with Illustrator, and you can export editable type on paths, in shapes and in paragraphs – and actually putting text on a path is as simple as it is in Illustrator. Nested Layer Sets give you the ability to create layer folders up to five levels deep, and new document size

WORLD

EXCLUSIVE

The Layer Comps feature enables you to hold a number of variations of an image within the same document – making it easy to show a client different versions of your images.

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Use the Shadow/Highlight tool to quickly correct over and underexposed images while maintaining the overall balance of your image.

The File Browser has been considerably tweaked, and now feels more like an asset management tool than a browsing tool.

capabilities mean you can create documents up to 300,000x300,000 pixels in size.

raw data in most pro digital cameras. New colour calibration tools enable you to create customised profiles for specific cameras and correct colour shifts. You can adjust and apply Camera Raw settings to multiple images in the File Browser, too. A list of supported cameras should be available right about now from www.adobe.com. 16-bit image support has also been strengthened, with the core features of Photoshop – such as layers, painting, text and shapes – now working with this kind of image. Live Histograms (in a new Histogram palette) are another interesting addition, enabling you to monitor the changes in your image as you make them – you can choose to simultaneously display composite and individual channels, as well as before and after histograms.

COLOUR TOOLS With the increasing popularity of digital photography, Adobe has specifically introduced tools to benefit the photographer (although, of course, designers and illustrators will take advantage of these tools as well). The most obvious new addition for this sector is the Match Colour feature. This new tool enables you to quickly take the colour values from one image and apply them to a different one. This is handy if your light has changed during a day/evening shoot. From first impressions, the tool works extremely well, and Adobe considers it to be one of the ‘killer’ features of Photoshop CS. It basically helps the photographer gain consistency across shots – and frees up the time usually spent laboriously finetweaking lighting and colour balance. Possibly the second most important addition in Photoshop CS for photographers is the inclusion of the Camera Raw plug-in (version 2). Previously a retail plug-in (£99) from Adobe, this gives you direct manipulation of the

The revamped New Document dialog provides a number of presets for standard video-sized documents. Photoshop CS also enables you to review your nonsquare pixel docs as you work.

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NEW FILTERS For the first time in many, many releases, Adobe also introduces several exciting new filters to Photoshop. First up is Lens Blur. This filter aims to simulate the realworld visual blurring, where highlights take on the shape of the camera lens aperture. The filter can be applied (as usual) to an entire image or selection, or saved as an alpha channel for use as a depth map. The other new filters offer similar functionality, enabling you to simulate the effect of different photographic lens filters. New to Photoshop CS is the Filter Gallery. This gives you access to all of Photoshop’s filters in a single dialog. You can now apply multiple filters at once, and rearrange them in a layer-esque stacking order as you go – with a Live preview. Great for experimenting with filters without continuously applying and undoing effects. Another brilliant feature is Photomerge, which enables you to quickly build panoramas from multiple images – we’re surprised it hasn’t been included in the application sooner because it looks a real time-saver. Advanced options enable you to keep your combined images on separate layers, so you can blend them further by hand afterwards. The inclusion of Crop and Straighten makes it easy to automatically crop and straighten images when you have, say, many being scanned into one document. This feature places each individual scanned photo into a new document, and it’s a neat tool for avoiding unnecessary donkey-work. The same goes for Shadow/Highlight; you’ll find this excellent addition in Image>Adjustments, and it enables you to improve the contrast of an under or over-exposed image, while preserving the overall balance of the image. Similarly, the Colour Replacement tool (a new addition to the Tool palette) enables you to easily change the colour of just one part of an image, without affecting texture and shading. Tweaks to the

Review

Picture Package feature round off an impressive set of new tools aimed at photographers. Another area in which Adobe has beefed up Photoshop is in its tools for video professionals. Photoshop CS adds, as rumours predicted, support for non-square pixels. You can now create non-square pixel documents – with the New Document dialog giving a number of presets for standard video-sized documents, and advanced settings offering fine control over aspect ratio. Backing this up are automatic action-safe and title-safe guides. Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction enables you to display your images in the correct proportion on-screen.

FLASH EXPORT Since version 5.5, Photoshop has shipped with its Websavvy companion, ImageReady. The dedicated Web graphics tool makes an appearance with the CS version of Photoshop, and has again been suitably enhanced. The main difference is what Adobe calls a new ‘Web-focused’ interface. This basically makes the tool more versatile when comping together Web layouts; you can now copy multiple objects on the canvas, execute layer commands over multiple layers, and use smart guides to help you quickly align objects when dragging. Smoother integration with Photoshop CS is a given, but one real surprise is the addition of direct Flash export. This enables you to quickly export layered documents to Flash – ImageReady layers automatically become Flash layers. This is an enormous workflow addition to anyone working between the two apps on a regular basis, and the export tool is smart enough to preserve vector shapes while optimising bitmaps – you can, of course, adjust the optimisation and rasterisation settings. Similarly, new export functionality enables you to save individual layers or layer sets as separate files – you can choose to export each layer as a separate SWF file, for example. A new Web Content palette gives you finer control over slices, rollovers and buttons within a single document. Enhanced support for variables and data sets is a welcome addition, as are Conditional Actions. These are similar to regular actions in premise, but they enable you to insert conditional logic. This means you can alter an action (using the Insert Step command) to only work on images of a certain aspect ratio, file size and so on. The action will scan the image for this info and if it doesn’t match up, it won’t run.

FILE BROWSING PROCESS The second incarnation of the File Browser brings a host of searching enhancements The File Browser, introduced in Photoshop 7, enabled you to search and preview files from your HD or other drives. While this provided an adequate solution, it still lacked certain features – such as the ability to search for individual images. With Photoshop CS, the File Browser has been significantly spruced-up. Flags, keywords and editable metadata turns the feature into more of an image and asset management tool than a browser. Flags enable you to mark an image in the File Browser, a new Keywords panel gives you the option to apply keywords to one or more

images at once. Being able to search for images via filenames, metadata and/or keywords is certainly a welcome addition. You can also rearrange the thumbnails in the File Browser to your liking simply by dragging and dropping. You can now even perform batch operations on images from the File Browser, without having to open up the images in Photoshop. High-quality previews are also made available, and you can adjust the size of the thumbnail accordingly. Overall, it looks like being a much healthier browsing and imagemanagement companion.

FEATURES • Image-editing, Web-design toolset • Match Colour tool • Histogram palette • Layer Comps • Shadow/Highlight tool • Filter gallery • 16-bit support • Non-square pixel support • Text on a path • New Lens Blur filter • Integrated Camera Raw plug-in • Flash export

The File Browser is now a much more competent tool, with searchable keywords, batch operations, high-quality previews and the ability to flag images up for editing.

SHOULD YOU UPGRADE? Finally, let’s look at the minor updates to Photoshop itself. These include an enhanced File Browser (see ‘File browsing prowess’, right) and customisable keyboard shortcuts – the latter enabling you to create sets of shortcuts and print them out for reference (handy, too, for sharing with work colleagues). A customisable file info dialog is a neat touch, as is the ability to bind multiple files into a single, multi-page PDF file. New Web photo album templates are here, plus an external History log, helping you keep track of editing decisions. Other minor enhancements include ‘Welcome to’ dialogs, a customisable Help menu and enhanced scripting – giving you the ability to output multiple layers as individual files or save Layer Comps as separate pages, among many other useful functions. As you can see, Photoshop CS and ImageReady CS have a stack of impressive new features between them, and in our opinion, both look like being fantastic upgrades at a highly attractive price. Look out for the full review coming soon in Computer Arts, and a plethora of tutorials exploring all the new features.

No more eyes! The allnew box artwork for Adobe Photoshop CS.

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PREVIEW

ILLUSTRATOR CS

PC AND MAC $499 (upgrade $169)

VECTOR GRAPHICS Illustrator gains 3D functionality, better type tools – and a performance boost CONTACT Adobe Buy online www.adobe.co.uk

SYSTEM PC Pentium III or 4 • 192MB RAM • 470MB HD • Win 2000 SP3/XP MAC G3/G4/G5 • 192MB RAM • 470MB HD • OS X 10.2.4

VERDICT Not a massive upgrade, but one that improves Illustrator across the board. The pick of the tools? Definitely the intuitive 3D options. Look out for an in-depth Computer Arts review coming soon.

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eing one of the industry-standard vector illustration apps, Illustrator gains a plethora of new features with each and every release. Illustrator 10, though, saw intuitive tools like the Symbolism feature-set handicapped by sluggish operation, especially on the Mac OS X platform. The CS release of Illustrator aims to rectify such issues, as well as continue the tradition of adding creative and workflow-orientated tools.

3D TOOLSET Creatively speaking, the most impressive addition to the Illustrator toolset is the new 3D functionality. The tools on offer bring the program up-to-date with FreeHand, and even surpass the tools found there. Located in the Effects menu, the 3D effect opens up a separate dialog with many options for defining your work. The dialog introduces similar tools to those found in Adobe Dimensions, and features a Cube that represents the angle of your 3D object. As you rotate the cube (as long as the Preview option is checked), your object rotates. You now have the choice of either extruding, rotating or revolving your 2D objects or paths in order to create 3D counterparts. Because the effect remains live, it’s possible to adjust the 3D shape at any time. If this was it, Illustrator’s 3D tools would suffice. However, it gets better – in the shape of illumination and surface control features. You can add as many lights as you wish to

The new Print dialog in Illustrator CS gives you control over tiling, separations, printers marks, bleed and much more.

shine on your 3D object, control the intensity of the lights individually, and select a shadow colour that’s used for all lights. This offers a high degree of control over 3D objects – as does the ability to change the surface type of your object. The default surface is plastic, but you can choose to render your object in wireframe or via Diffuse Shading. Each surface type has options for fine-tuning appearance.

The new 3D options within Illustrator CS look to be a fantastic, with a range of tools to revolve, rotate and extrude your 3D artwork, as well as map symbols to faces. Innovative illumination and surface control features ensure you’ll have even more control over the look of your designs.

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OTHER ENHANCEMENTS Some of the small-scale improvements made to Illustrator CS Illustrator CS brings many small enhancements to the vector-drawing application, along with some training material included in the box. A 90-minute Total Training video is included, hosted by the almost omnipresent Deke McClelland, and a new Welcome to Illustrator startup screen, which gives access to other tutorials and interesting extras. There are many more brushes included with this release, and they’re accessible for the first time

from the Brush palette. SVG support is here, although its uses are still proving limited, and a Lock button on the Transform palette enables you to scale objects proportionally. You can now also specify a sample size in pixels for the Eyedropper tool, and optimise and export content for wireless devices. There’s also a Save For Microsoft Office feature (pictured), which enables you to quickly export Illustratorcreated graphics to Excel, Powerpoint or Word.

More impressive, though, is the ability to map Symbols onto the faces of 3D objects. The mapping tools enable you to quickly cycle through the faces and position symbols accordingly. This will definitely be a boon for packaging designers and the like, who may need to generate labels with the correct perspective. Meanwhile, Flash users will be pleased to see that they can create a blend between 3D objects and export it as an SWF – providing an easy way to create 3D animations directly in Illustrator. On the subject of effects, Adobe has added the Scribble Effect to the Illustrator toolset. Similar to the tool added to After Effects 6 earlier this year, the Scribble effect enables

Whether these templates will really be an incentive to upgrade is something we’ll have to look at in the full review – do professional illustrators and artists really want these? Handy, we suppose, but by no means essential. Back to the type additions. Finally, Illustrator carries font previews in the Font Menu – eliminating the guesswork when choosing fonts for a particular job. OpenType Font support also rears its head. This standard, developed jointly by Adobe and Microsoft, expands the number of glyphs possible in a font and eliminates cross-platform compatibility issues. Automatic ligatures and smart quotes add to the DTP-esque slant to this upgrade, as does Optical kerning and the inclusion of a Glyphs palette – the latter giving easy access to alternate glyphs. In CREATE A BLEND BETWEEN 3D OBJECTS addition, Illustrator incorporates InDesign’s EveryAND EXPORT AS AN SWF – AN EASY WAY TO Line composer, for composing blocks of text without creating line-breaks by hand. Other CREATE 3D ANIMATIONS IN ILLUSTRATOR additions include on-screen highlighting of missing fonts, enhanced hyphenation and justification you to create images that look hand-drawn. It’s a pretty controls, improved text-linking and text-flow warnings. decent effect, and the dialog gives you the opportunity to Rather unsurprisingly, Adobe has well and truly beefed adjust such parameters as Path Overlap and Spacing. up PDF support and functionality in Illustrator CS. Of course, compatibility with Acrobat 6 is here, as is a feature TYPOGRAPHIC BOOST borrowed from InDesign (yes, another one), namely PDF After the new effects, the biggest addition to Illustrator Styles. These enable you to set up PDF export options for a centres on type and typography. Illustrator has inherited variety of different outputs – ie print, Web, pre-press and so some of those features found in InDesign, most notably on. Illustrator CS can create layered PDF files, and a number Paragraph and Character styles. The ability to assign this of security options enable you to encrypt files with ease. kind of style sheet in Illustrator may seem a little strange The Print dialog has been completely revamped, with considering the progress of Adobe’s dedicated layout tool, Page Setup and Separations dialogs now merged into one. but for those dealing with a large amounts of text in AI, it An interactive Print preview is here, as are tiling controls, should prove very useful indeed. independent bleed settings and control over printing As in InDesign, you assign formatting to a particular individual layers. Tiling controls are provided, enabling style, such as font, size, leading, kerning and tracking. Then, you to print large graphics over multiple sheaves of paper. using the new Character Styles and Paragraph Styles It’s surprising that Adobe hasn’t turned Illustrator into a palettes, you can switch formatting in an instant. Illustrator multi-page application; if you want to design anything CS features an all-new template file format – making it easy longer than a page, you’ll need to flick to InDesign. to create similar-looking docs more quickly. Paragraph and As we’ve mentioned, faster performance was high on Character styles can be included in the templates, as can the list of Adobe’s priorities with this release, and Illustrator symbols, guides, swatches and other elements. should prove to be much faster across the board. There Similarly, Illustrator now comes bundled with a host of doesn’t appear to be a great deal to this upgrade, but the ‘professionally-designed’ templates, enabling you to bash new features that are here will strengthen the package as out say, a CD label or postcard, in double-quick time. a whole. Look out for the full review in CA soon.

FEATURES • Vector drawing • 3D toolset that includes Rotate, Revolve, Bevel and Extrude • New Scribble effect • PDF export • OpenType support • Character and Paragraph Styles • Glyph palette • New Print dialog

Type additions to Illustrator CS are extensive, with notable features being the support for OpenType fonts, a new Glyph palette and Character and Paragraph Styles.

PDF support has been ramped up in Illustrator CS. The app now supports PDF 1.5 and offers PDF Styles and numerous enhanced security options.

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PREVIEW

INDESIGN CS

PC AND MAC $699 (upgrade $169)

DTP We test-run the third incarnation of Adobe’s supreme layout and design application CONTACT Adobe Buy online www.adobe.co.uk

SYSTEM PC Pentium III or 4 • 128MB RAM • 185MB HD • Win 2000 SP2/Win XP MAC G3/G4 • 128MB RAM • 185MB HD • OS X 10.2.4

VERDICT InDesign’s quest to become the industry-standard print design tool is well underway, with CS bringing a host of workflow-orientated tools to an established creative toolset.

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dobe InDesign is slowly conquering the layout and design market, and with InDesign CS Adobe obviously hopes to gain momentum and persuade QuarkXPress users to switch tools. InDesign 2 has already persuaded a few publishing houses, but as we write this, the industry still prefers XPress for its day-to-day publishing jobs. But enough of the XPress vs InDesign debate – there’ll be plenty of that when InDesign CS hits the shelves. For now, let’s focus on the features appearing in the new release.

NEW PALETTES Since its launch, InDesign has been praised for the way its tools focus on the creative aspect of layout and design, being the first DTP tool to introduce native transparency, dropshadows and interactive clipping paths. However, with this release you get the feeling Adobe wants to bring it up to scratch in other areas – concentrating on workflow tools that print designers need, rather than like, using. The most prominent new addition in this area is the new Separations Preview palette and feature. These enable you to preview and evaluate spot and process colour separations on screen. This handy new palette displays spot and process plates, using either the default ink characteristics or custom ones specified within the Ink Manager. You choose

a plate in the palette, and overprinting information, as well as ink aliasing (and more) are displayed on screen. You can even run your cursor over the preview and get dynamic readouts of the ink coverage in different areas. This looks to be a useful tool for print-based designers, and is further backed up by the fact the InDesign document remains editable when the Separations preview is active. Think of it as like the Channels feature in Photoshop. Similarly, InDesign now sports a Flatter Preview palette. This is an extremely important addition that comes into play when using the program’s native transparency tools. The Flattener Preview palette is used for three main tasks: first, to apply different transparency presets; second, to preview the effect of the transparency flattener on different areas of a document to control different types of interaction (to determine whether a setting will rasterise text, for example); and, third, to apply the final transparency settings before you print. In the same way as the Separations preview, you see the effects within the document window. Note that Transparency Flattening is only applied when you print the document, and doesn’t alter it in any way. The Document Setup dialog has been amended, now enabling you to set up and display bleed and slug areas (the latter being areas used to display info such as the client

The Separations Preview in InDesign CS works very much like the Photoshop Channels palette, and enables you to view separate CMYK or spot plates within the InDesign document window. This saves you having to check printed separations by hand.

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more real-estate for working on designs, and the ability to customise the vertical size of the pasteboard. Borrowed from Illustrator comes a Pathfinder palette. This enables you to quickly build complex compound objects. There’s also a number of minor enhancements and shortcuts added – such as real-time text frame resizing and the ability to scale text interactively. The Table tools in InDesign CS have also been tweaked, and naturally you can import Microsoft Excel and Word tables. This version introduces running headers and footers, so you can assign said elements, and then if the table runs across multiple frames, InDesign automatically adds the header and/or footer to the new frame. Enhanced text wrap settings are here, too, as is a Stroke Style editor, giving you a lot more control over the appearance of The Document setup dialog gives you the ability to add bleed and slug strokes. Mixed Ink support is a boon, as is the ability to add settings – cutting out hard work at a later date. multiple new colour swatches to the Swatches palette without having to open and close the New Swatch dialog. InDesign CS also enables you to create interactive PDF files, with such elements as INDESIGN CS ENABLES YOU TO CREATE bookmarks, rollovers, and buttons, along with INTERACTIVE PDF FILES, WITH SUCH video, audio and animation files. New tools include ELEMENTS AS BOOKMARKS, ROLLOVERS, a Bookmarks palette, Button tool and the ability to import QuickTime, Flash and other multimedia file AND BUTTONS, ALONG WITH VIDEO, formats. Naturally, standard PDF support is AUDIO AND ANIMATION FILES upgraded to version 1.5 (Acrobat 6). name, job name, date and so on). The ability to specify this kind of element at an early stage within the design process is a great addition, as are Document Presets. The latter, similar to those found in Photoshop (although a little more specific) enable you to create the same type of document over and over again without entering the settings manually. You can specify document settings to be used as a preset – saving the size, columns and so on for use at a later date.

TYPE TOOLS Text and typography is at the heart of layout and design, and InDesign CS caters for it well. While the introduction of Style Sheets moons ago simplified the process of formatting text, the app aims to take this way of working further with Nested Styles. Nested Styles aim to speed up complicated text formatting. Effectively combining paragraph and character styles, they enable you to nest one or more character styles into a paragraph style. This means you can quickly apply blocks of text with dropcaps and so on without individually applying character styles. The new Info Palette in InDesign CS looks and feels similar to those found in Photoshop and Illustrator, and gives you feedback on text and images. When you add text to a frame, the info displays how many words, characters, lines and paragraphs are in that frame, as well as telling you if any other text frames are linked (handy for sub editors). Similarly, for images, the Info Palette displays resolution, colour space and stroke and fill (if any) of the picture box. The Measure tool is another new addition, enabling you to calculate the distance between two objects on a page. As well as adding tools for print designers, Adobe has changed the way InDesign looks and feels. One addition that will please those migrating from XPress is a Control Palette. This context-sensitive floating palette is similar to XPress’ Measurements palette, and gives quick and easy access to options relating to the tool selected. If you select the Text tool, for example, you get font options; select a text frame and you get stroke options. Other enhancements include named workspaces, giving you options to show and hide different palettes and so on when working on different kinds of documents, collapsible palettes, which dock to the edge of the screen, giving you

STRONG UPGRADE So what’s left? Well, the Package for GoLive command adds integration with the new release of Adobe’s Web authoring app (see page 92), enabling you to export the components of your print layout for repurposing in GoLive. InDesign pages aren’t automatically converted into HTML pages – Adobe has taken the stance that designers don’t want this kind of feature. What Adobe thinks we want is an option that enables us to drag and drop elements (such as graphics, logos and so on) from an InDesign layout (a special PDF viewer in GoLive) into GoLive – building a site manually rather than automatically creating one. Integration with Adobe’s writing and editing app, InCopy, is here, too, plus additional enhancements to master page functionality, keyboard shortcuts and general workflow. InDesign CS certainly look like a strong release. Wait for the in-depth Computer Arts review for the full verdict.

THE STORY EDITOR

FEATURES • Layout and design tool • Separations preview • Story Editor • Customisable interface • Running headers and footers for tables • Stroke Style editor • New document presets • Enhanced integration with GoLive

Running headers and footers make it possible to quickly format a table – you add the headers to one table and other tables linked will automatically apply the header.

The new Stroke Style dialog improves the degree of control you have over stroking text and picture frames – from dots to dashes, there’s a huge variety of stroke styles on offer.

A new, PageMaker-style feature The Story Editor in InDesign CS is designed to act like a word processor, built into the application. It provides an easy way to edit text that runs across several text frames or multiple pages. Open up a story in the Story Editor and you can add, edit or delete text, just as you would in a program such as Word or Nisus. As you update the copy in the Story Editor, the copy updates in the text frames

– making it easy to fit text correctly. You can view character and paragraph styles, and the Story Editor is customisable, giving you the ability to change the appearance of the text cursor, display fonts and font sizes (like a traditional word-processing app) and even add a theme – although why you’d want to give your wordprocessor a chrome overhaul is beyond us…

The new Flattener preview enables you to preview how transparency will look when printed – and uses the same kind of technology found in Illustrator and Acrobat.

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PREVIEW

GOLIVE CS

PC AND MAC $399 (UPGRADE $169)

WEB DESIGN Adobe’s second-place Web authoring app is back, with a heavy focus on integration CONTACT Adobe Buy online www.adobe.co.uk

FEATURES • Web authoring application • InDesign CS integration • PDF integration • Smart Objects • Revamped CSS tools • New Adobe-like interface

SYSTEM PC Pentium III+ • 128MB RAM • 1.2GB HD • Win 2000 SP2/Win XP MAC G3/G4/G5 • 128MB RAM • 1.4GB HD • OS X 10.2.4

VERDICT

★★★★ GoLive CS looks to be a competent Web authoring tool. Adobe has obviously concentrated on refining the look and feel of the app, as well as making it easy for print designers to repurpose content for the Web.

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oLive has always been a decent Web design tool, but over the past few years it’s been eclipsed by Macromedia’s Dreamweaver. So is there anything in this latest version of GoLive to tempt users to convert? Well, yes, actually, and most of it centres on integration with the rest of the Creative Suite. As we mentioned in the InDesign CS preview (see page 90), InDesign now has a Package for GoLive command, which enables you to easily transfer assets from page layout to Web layout. A preview of the InDesign doc opens up in GoLive and you can drag and drop elements from the doc into a GoLive HTML page. The Pick Whip tool is also handy, enabling you to convert an embedded CMYK image file from an InDesign package into a Smart Object, and then optimise it accordingly. Paragraph, character and in-line style mapping mean that you can preserve text formatting when transforming ID layouts into HTML. The Adobe Colour Engine is shared across all apps in the suite, including GoLive. Further integration with Photoshop includes the ability to import PS swatches. The interface has undergone a massive overhaul, too. A new vertical toolbox, updated Objects palette, grouped palettes and an InDesign-like way of palette-docking makes it look and feel much more like a typical Adobe app. Smart Objects – which enable you to drag a native graphic from Photoshop or Illustrator into GoLive, with the app updating any changes to the optimised original on startup – have also been considerably enhanced. Smart Object cropping means you can crop objects within the layout window, and the ability to import layered PSD files is an excellent update. Photoshop CS Rollover integration means you can assign rollover data to native PSD files, and ImageReady CS integration brings support for all rollover states and the ability to recognise links within rollovers. CSS support has been well and truly revamped, with the CSS 2 standard being implemented into GoLive. A CSS

PDF OPTIONS GoLive CS introduces new PDF tools In line with the integration theme running through the Creative Suite, GoLive CS features a host of PDForientated features. The main addition is the Adobe PDF Viewer. This enables you to view PDF files directly in GoLive – without opening up Acrobat Reader or

Preview. As well as this, you can now create and edit PDF links and bookmarks from within GoLive – so you can rectify a mistake in a PDF document without going back to the original document. The PDF Preview feature enables you to quickly convert layout and design ideas to send to clients for approval – you can add notes explaining certain features. The PDF Inspector tool complements this, letting you specify orientation, height, and so on.

Editor enables you to create styles, adding classes, elements, IDs and so on. GoLive CS also offers tools for selecting and applying CSS styles while in Layout mode – so you can check styles quickly before applying them. GoLive CS by itself looks to be a substantial upgrade. Within the Suite, however, we expect it will become invaluable, especially for InDesign users who aren’t fully Web-savvy. Expect a full review in CA very soon.

The ability to package up InDesign documents and use them to repurpose content for GoLive HTML pages will clearly benefit less Web-savvy users.

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Review

PARTICLEILLUSION 3.0

PC $399 (£253)

SPECIAL FX Create smoke, fire, sparks and other impressive particle effects in real time CONTACT Wondertouch Buy online www.wondertouch.com

FEATURES • Hundreds of preset effects • Instant feedback for changes • OpenGL rendering • Particle deflectors • Particles can produce other particles

SYSTEM PC 500MHz processor • 128MB RAM • Win 98/ME/ NT/2000/XP

FOR • Generally very fast • Easy to get to grips with • Lots of power

AGAINST • Sprite-based (2D only) • Motion-tracking facilities would’ve been useful • Synchronizing animation isn’t particularly easy

VERDICT

★★★★ This extremely flexible piece of software creates instant and highly controllable effects, but it’s a pity they’re not 3D. The app could do with motion-tracking facilities and a few other compositing tools, too. That said, results are consistently good.

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articleIllusion is probably one of the most instantly beautiful packages on the market. As soon as you load it up, you’re presented with a pink, whirling sparkler that you can drag around the preview window. Simply click on a different particle preset and your sparkler changes to a smoke trail, an explosion, a firestorm, a waterfall or (inexplicably) a cartoon mouse. In fact, so appealing is the act of bringing up the hundreds of preset effects (750 of them, actually) one by one and dragging them around the screen, that it’s quite possible to waste most of the day doing it. Once you finally get bored with making patterns with light, you realise that ParticleIllusion isn’t just a pretty face. By simply opening up each preset, you can adjust every aspect of it: the number of particles created, their weight, spin and speed. You can also edit the shape of the actual particles themselves – either picking them from a pretty comprehensive list or loading in your own. You can import stills, or animated sequences, too; so, for example, you could use an animation of a flying bird to create a flock, or a single puff of smoke to build a plume. Many of the alterable functions of the particle system can be animated. Simply click on the appropriate function and you can quickly keyframe it with a rubberband graph, then watch the results of your work in real time as you alter the effect. Most of the presets are made up of multiple emitters, and you can time and control each one separately. You can also download hundreds more presets from the Wondertouch website, or create and submit your own. Real-time playback of your effects via OpenGL is very good (depending on the power of your graphics card), and you can enjoy a great view of most effects. Admittedly, complex combinations involving many large particles can be slow, but then the results are nowhere near as slow as similar effects generated in a 3D package. Rendering is done in exactly the same way as the realtime playback, so it’s very fast, and what you see is what you get. As a comparison, a volumetric explosion using LightWave or 3ds max often takes hours to render, whereas a similar look can be created in ParticleIllusion in minutes. This comparison is slightly unfair, because ParticleIllusion doesn’t deal with actual 3D objects, and your smoke or flame won’t create light and shadow on either itself or on other objects. But as a cheat the results are superb. New to version 3 are some neat features. The most important of these is the ability to create Super Emitters,

You can configure Emitter Properties to create a range of spectacular effects. Despite being restricted to 2D, the results can be integrated effectively with 3D work – and are certainly quicker to generate.

Star Trail 2 delivers a sparkling cloud of glowing embers – and is just one of the 750 mesmerising presets included with ParticleIllusion.

which don’t create particles directly – they create other emitters. This enables you to produce multi-layered explosion effects, or add levels of complexity and detail to simple particles. Also new is the Get Colour From Layer option, which, if you load in a background image or movie, makes the particles act as a kind of distortion effect, producing heat hazes, water effects, and particle transitions, as well as Matrix-style bullet wake effects. V3 introduces forces (such as wind) which can direct your particles, and Area Emitters which enable your particles to be produced from any shape (see boxout). Once you’ve designed the look of your particle system, you can add it to the main project window. Here, you can add it to a background image, and you can animate its position and rotation. The compositing isn’t up to the standard of After Effects, but if you want to, you can always render the particles with an alpha channel and do your final composite elsewhere. It’s not 3D and it lacks motion-tracking facilities, but this app remains a must-have for anyone in the effects industry looking for an affordable quick-fix solution.

AREA EMITTERS Turn any object into an emitter Emitting particles from a single point is one thing, but ParticleIllusion now gives you the ability to emit them from whole areas. What’s more, you can define said areas by a bitmap which can be either still or moving. In other words, you can now create a flaming logo, or even a moving figure made from particles. In fact, by just creating a moving mask (which you can do in any compositor),

you can make any on-screen object into a particle emitter. This is just one way in which Wondertouch has improved the way ParticleIllusion integrates with other compositing packages. A smart move, because almost anything you do with the package needs to be composited. The improvement in the program’s ability to create alpha channels has also streamlined this work.

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MICHAEL 3

PC AND MAC $40 (£25)

POSER Now Victoria 3 has a partner worthy of her. After a long wait, Michael 3 is here CONTACT DAZ Productions 001 801 495 1777 www.daz3d.com

FEATURES • Entirely new high-resolution mesh (74,510 polygons) • Ultra-versatile and realistic facial expression morphs • Body and head morphs available separately • Morphs to change body shapes injected individually • Includes muscular and out-of-shape morphs • Michael 2-compatible version included as standard • High-resolution teeth and gums, with individual tooth textures • Far better joint blend zones for more natural bends

SYSTEM PC/MAC Poser 4+

FOR • Improved expressions • Smoother bending • Lots more morphs

AGAINST • In reality, not 100 per cent compatible with Michael 2 • Based on female geometry • Morphs and textures are sold as extras

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n Poser’s early days, the default figure models were rather elementary, prompting DAZ Productions to release a series of more realistic human figures, collectively dubbed ‘The Millennium Family’. Head and shoulders above anything else available, these models have now spawned an entire industry of morphs, add-on clothes, textures and so on. The most well-known is Victoria, who is closely followed by Michael in the popularity stakes – his third iteration now joins Victoria 3, released earlier this year. By far the best improvement v3 is the subtlety of facial morphs. There’s a vast range of expression dials; some control small individual facial elements, such as the eyelids, while others tweak characteristics simultaneously – when he smiles, for instance. But what makes this figure stand out is the way everything fits together so precisely: eyelids shut properly, lips meet neatly, expressions look natural and he sports a full set of teeth, each with its own textures. When you go to load Michael, you may notice that his genitals are a separate object, listed before his body in the parts hierarchy. His privates have more morphs than his predecessor’s, but more importantly, Michael is based on what DAZ calls a Unimesh. This is the base mesh for Victoria 3, who, of course, requires no such ‘additions’. This means you can use Victoria 3 male textures on Michael 3. Because Michael 3 is based on a much higher resolution mesh than v2, virtually no morphs have been added to the base figure as standard (as with Victoria 3). Instead, you can add or remove all the morphs individually or in groups using Injection technology. While this hinders the creative process, especially on the face, where you need to plan in advance what you’re doing, it ensures Michael remains usable on lowly computers. We tend to use the Inject All button, then subtract any morphs we don’t need at the end. None of Michael 2’s conforming clothing fits Michael 3, which is why DAZ has included a version that places the

VERDICT

★★★★ Michael 3 is a big step forwards from Michael 2, and his new facial expressions will be a huge relief to anyone who’s ever been frustrated by the limitations of Michael 2. He’s not perfect by any means, but he’s the best you can get.

ON THE CD Free on this month’s CD: Michael 1.

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Michael 3 boasts 398 morphs and a new high-resolution texture.

IMPROVED TEXTURES One of the advantages of the Unimesh design in Michael 3 is superior texture mapping. Because of redesigned maps, there are fewer seams, so textures look smoother and are easier to design. Even better, by using DAZ’s commercial texture conversion program, you can convert your Michael 2 textures to Michael 3 at the click of a button. A high-resolution texture is available for Michael 3, but DAZ’s design decisions for it are

rather strange. The texture has cracked, dirty fingernails with overlarge cuticles. It also sports a bad shaving rash. Opting for a spotty, hairy character with less-thanperfect skin as your rudimentary design is rather odd, given that it’s easier to add hair and imperfections than remove them. You could call it ‘characterful’, but seasoned animators may well expect base textures to be more universal and less individual.

new head on the old Michael 2 body. You get all the old body morphs and the new face material, and you can still use your v1 and 2 clothes. You do need to resize hats, though. Tragedy. Joint bending is much improved, too, with skin folding more realistically. His inner elbows bend a little strangely, though, and his hands still don’t properly mimic realistic movement, but overall, he’s a significant advance on either Michael 2 or Don (the high-res model included in Poser 5), especially if you do a lot of expression or lip-sync work.

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electronics show MICROSOFT INTERVIEW The Media Center and beyond

FIRELITE FIREWIRE 80GB

PC AND MAC £300

HARD DRIVE This efficient and attractive portable may be a tad pricey, but it’s worth it CONTACT SmartDisk 01252 530 960 www.smartdisk.co.uk

SYSTEM PC 600MHz Pentium III • 128MB RAM • 190MB HD pace • Windows 98/2000/XP MAC 500MHz G3 • 128MB RAM • 130MB HD space • OS X 10.2.6

VERDICT

★★★★★ A good-looking, easily portable, high-speed drive, the FireLite offers a huge portable space in an eminently desirable package. A little expensive, but not enough to worry G4 owners.

T

he FireLite 80GB portable hard drive is a speedy, easy-to-install and relatively robust solution to the file transportation blues which set in once you regularly have more than 1GB to shift. The drive is compatible with both Mac and PC and runs on phantom power derived through its FireWire connection. Transporting large files, particularly video, is a regular problem for busy creatives: CDs lack the space, while burning to DVD consumes valuable time; not much use when a deadline is pressing. Your only solution in such cases is a removable drive. Speed, size and reliability will be your main considerations – and on all three counts, SmarkDisk’s drive impresses. Weighing in at 180g, it’s small enough to tuck into your shirt pocket without raising eyebrows, while the 400Mbps data transfer rates made possible by the FireWire connectivity ensures a sustained transfer rate of around 1GB per minute. Remarkably quick. You’ll need a 6-pin FireWire port if you want to run the drive without additional power, but a 4-pin will do the trick if you have an adaptor handy (although none is included with the drive). Software for systems not running OS X is easy to install and uninstall and works like clockwork. The only possible wrinkle may occur if you’re using a PC – you’ll need to format the drive before it becomes available. Still,

PURE RENDERING CARD

this is a relatively simple task and fully covered in the manual. Fortunately, OS X automates the whole process. At £300, the 80GB FireLite disk isn’t exactly cheap, but if your budget is restricted, smaller models in the range, providing 20GB, 30GB or 60GB capacities, are also available. Design-wise, the devices are certainly a good choice for those with Mac portables. If back-up is your sole concern, however, you may want to consider other less expensive alternatives.

PC £2231

GRAPHICS CARD Boost rendering performance with this add-on board from ART VPS CONTACT ART VPS Buy online www.artvps.com

SYSTEM PC: 600MHz Pentium III • 128MB RAM • 190MB HD space • Win 98/2000/XP MAC: 500MHz G3 • 128MB RAM • 130MB HD space • OS X 10.2.6

VERDICT

★★★★ The PURE card rips through raytraced rendering jobs, but is of less benefit to traditional animation and modelling pipelines, where the rendering process is more varied.

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he PURE rendering card is a hardware raytracing solution capable of producing stunning images, and at speeds which certainly make it commercially viable. Using a RenderMan-compliant rendering engine to generate scenes, the card comes configured for three major apps – 3ds max, Maya and Viz – and is thus tailor-made for environments where shiny, refracted and reflected environments are commonplace; in practice, that means product or architectural visualisation. Surprisingly, given its size, the card fits in a standard PCI slot and requires no extra power to run its eight dedicated processors. Physical installation is therefore relatively painless. We found installing the software slightly more problematic, though – thankfully, an alternative installation method worked without a hitch. A major qualifier of the effectiveness of the PURE card is the strength of the host system. The card’s processing power means it needs plenty of RAM and fast processors to feed it with enough data to keep the chips working at full capacity. Anything less that 512MB of RAM will seriously affect performance, which rather defeats the object of having the card in the first place. While the PURE card itself has just come down in price from £2936 to £2231, remember that for an annual software subscription cost of £250, you also get access to, among other things, a library of RenderMan shaders and assistance in developing custom shaders. The world which a PURE card produces looks beautifully

crisp and free of imperfection; in fact, just the type of world you’d want your fabulous new products to inhabit. If you’re looking for a way to speed up your rendering process without dropping below the raytraced standard, then ART VPS’s PURE card is certainly an attractive proposition. For regular animators and modellers, however, the argument to upgrade is considerably less compelling.

Review

CANON POWERSHOT G5

PC AND MAC

£699

DIGITAL CAMERA The acclaimed G3 enjoys a megapixel boost – but at what cost? CONTACT Canon 08705 143 723 www.canon.co.uk

FEATURES • Solid construction • 5-megapixel CCD • DIGIC processor • Supplementary lenses • Classic styling • Long-life battery • CompactFlash storage • 4x f2.0 optical zoom • Multi-shooting modes • Twistable LCD

FOR • Long-lasting battery • Looks very good • Fast, wide lens

AGAINST • Disappointing and noisy images • Expensive • Sluggish and unresponsive

VERDICT

★★★★ This ought to be the crowning glory of Canon’s PowerShot range, but paying £200 for one extra megapixel isn’t worth it. If you like the feel of the G5 and want to buy one, opt for the G3 instead. It’s exactly the same camera except for that one expensive extra megapixel.

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hen Canon extended its PowerShot range with a camera for photographers wanting professional results without the bulk of a digital SLR, the result was the PowerShot G3. In feel and style, it was strongly reminiscent of a Konica Hexar or Leica M6, both popular models for serious film photographers, and proved an enormous success. Buoyed up by its success, Canon has now unveiled the G5 – a 5-megapixel version, with a stylish black body that’s as much a piece of jewellery as it is a camera. But is it as good as its 4-megapixel predecessor? Well, oddly enough, no. In fact, the £200 price hike brings into sharper focus some of the original design’s niggling shortcomings. Although the G5 is quick to start up and certainly sports an impressive lens, there’s a sluggishness about it that shouldn’t be present in a camera at this price. Both the shutter release and the refresh rate on the LCD screen are disappointing – and, surprisingly, the extra megapixel doesn’t seem to add any extra sharpness at all. Using the G5 is straightforward enough, although the menu system and controls can be confusing. There are simply too many buttons, some of which are poorly positioned. Changing everyday settings – flash, for instance – requires the dexterity of a double-jointed acrobat. Another irksome point is the positioning of the flash unit at the top-left of the camera. It’s far too easy to cover with your fingers when shooting. As to the lens, it’s sharp – and you can even snap on supplementary wide and telephoto adaptors – but the 4x zoom seems lacking for such a big camera. Smaller offerings, such as the Pentax Optio 550, are cheaper and offer better-specified lenses. If you don’t want to rely on the G5’s optical viewfinder, you can always use the LCD screen at the back. You can either fold this away so the screen

DIGIC PROCESSOR A single chip does all the hard work for you Japanese camera manufacturers are great ones for acronyms and logos. The G5’s box is emblazoned with them, including the term DIGIC. What does it mean? All digital cameras rely on a chip to process the signal that comes from the camera’s CCD. Unlike your regular chip, however, Canon’s DIGIC Imaging Processor is designed to handle the rest of the camera’s functions, too. Instead of having the camera controlled by separate components, Canon’s proprietary device

does all the processing by itself. The payoff with this approach is that a single chip handles functions like JPEG compression and the tweaking of images, and can therefore do it faster and more efficiently than cameras relying on off-the-shelf chips. Because Canon manufactures its own chips and CCDs, it’s likely to be in a better position to fine-tune the performance of its cameras than companies relying on components sourced externally.

faces into the camera to avoid scratches, or pull it out, twist it around and snap it back into place for shooting. It’s useful, but we noticed distracting red flashes and streaks each time we depressed the shutter button in readiness for a shot. Storage on the G5 is provided by a CompactFlash and MicroDrive slot, which should please advocates of Flash memory. But the 16MB card that comes with the camera is a joke… At this price, Canon ought to throw in 128MB.

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CREATIVE STUFF ESSENTIAL KIT FOR THE MODERN DESIGNER

1 2 3

4 6

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5

Review

CANON I70 PRINTER

HANDYCAM DCR-IP1

USB PHONE CHARGER

PRICE £210 COMPANY Canon WEBSITE www.dabs.com

PRICE £TBC COMPANY Sony WEBSITE www.sony.co.uk

PRICE £4.99 COMPANY Nisis WEBSITE www.dabs.com

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Portable printing has come a long way in recent times – and the Canon i70 is a prime example of where the market is heading. This stylish and very neatly designed model prints around 13 pages-per-minute mono and produces a borderless 4x6 photo in around a minute. Incorporating MicroFine Droplet Technology, the i70 is capable of resolutions of up to 4800dpi, and has 384 colour and 320 black nozzles. It’ll print A4, 4x6, and 5x7 borderless prints and connects either by USB or IrDA. It’ll also print directly from your digital camera. Best of all, once you’re done printing, you can fold it up and put it in your bag.

2

Claimed to be the world’s smallest camcorder (at the time of writing, that is), the Handycam DCR-IP1 is a mini DV cam that truly will fit in your shirt pocket. Thankfully, the downsizing hasn’t led to any compromises in build quality; the cam sports a Carl Zeiss lens (10x optical zoom and 120x digital zoom), 1-megapixel CCD, Memory Stick Duo slot and a touch-screen interface for easily navigating through menus and operating playback. While the MicroMV format that the IP1 records to hasn’t caught on as Sony would’ve liked just yet, the sheer tininess of this camcorder makes it worth a look. As well as great styling, the camcorder also features FireWire, AV and S-Video connectivity, and comes complete with a dock for easily downloading movies and stills.

3

Picture the scene: You’re on your way to an all-important client meeting, but you forgot one thing – to charge your phone. And you’ve left your charger back home. Now you may be able to get away with it, but what if you need to call the office to get further clarification on a design or product? Well, now help is at hand, courtesy of the Nisis USB Phone Charger. These bargain devices draw power from your laptop and top up your phone with enough energy to make that essential call. Currently compatible with Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson and Motorola mobiles, they could well be pitch-saving (assuming you remember to charge your laptop up first).

WI-FI FINDER

CYBER-SHOT DSC U50

PANASONIC SVAV20

PRICE $29.95 COMPANY Kensington WEBSITE www.kensington.com

PRICE $250 COMPANY Sony WEBSITE www.sony-cp.com

PRICE £299 COMPANY Panasonic WEBSITE www.panasonic.co.uk

4

No, this small Wi-Fi Finder isn’t a wallchalker’s aide. Rather, it’s a nifty device for seeing if a wireless network is in range without booting up your laptop. Why do this? Well, it’s simply a device for saving the battery of your laptop. Unless the wireless network you find is unencrypted, then you’ll not be able to access it. At just $29.95, the Wi-Fi Finder is relatively cheap, as it should be, and gives you the opportunity to see if you’re in range before wasting valuable battery life powering up. By no means essential, but a keyring novelty nonetheless.

5

Another month, another Cyber-Shot U. But we couldn’t resist including this mighty fine model in this issue’s Creative Stuff. It should be hitting the shelves around about now, and unlike previous models provides a Nikon-like 180-degree swivelling lens and the ability to record MPEG movies with sound. The camera also has a quick startup time, a 2-megapixel CCD, pre-flash metering, rechargeable batteries, support for Memory Stick PRO Duo and Memory Stick Duo and is available in black, silver and metallic orange. Time to upgrade. Again.

6

Branded a ‘Compact Digital multi recorder’ by Panasonic, this nifty device enables you shoot in MPEG4 format, capture JPEG images at 640x480, play back AAC and MP3 files and enable you to record short voice messages. If you’re after a relatively cheap device that gives you the ability to do almost everything (albeit in a limited way), then this model, featured in the latest Tomb Raider movie, looks like a decent enough gadget. Don’t expect high-res recording, but it is portable enough to fit in your pocket. The device records onto SD cards (up to 512MB) and is only compatible with Windows at present.

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BOOKS

CINEMATIC GRANDEUR AUTHOR Adam Watkins PRICE £28.15 PUBLISHER River Media ISBN 1854502169

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his book sets out to cover everything required to master the core elements of Cinema 4D R8. There are one or two omissions, notably particles and BodyPaint, but most users are unlikely to have these modules in their toolsets anyway. If you’re looking for a comprehensive introduction to the app that will leave you well-equipped to produce good-looking models and animations, you could do worse than The Cinema 4D R8 Handbook. However, if you’re looking for a quick way to get up to speed with the app’s latest additions, you might be disappointed; it’s not made clear what’s new and what isn’t. Chapters cover the new customisable interface, modelling (including hyperNURBS), texturing, lighting,

character animation and MOCCA, character setup, rendering and Xpresso. Some chapters have been written by contributors, but the core modelling elements come from Adam Watkins and the animation from ‘Naam’. The text is easy to follow in most places, although the accompanying illos aren’t great. Most new features are well covered. Xpresso, which according to the book “can change Cinema 4D from a general 3D package to a tool that is custom tailored to the way you want to work” has its own chapter, which is good news. The combination of demonstration and tutorial may confuse some, but the tone is conversational throughout and all topics are covered pretty comprehensively. In the adoption of a modular approach, enabling users to expand the toolset according to their needs, the nature of the average user’s experience has changed. The handbook provides answers to questions that even fairly advanced users may have, yet remains fine for neophytes, too. Head to www.charlesriver.com for more info.

MODEL BEHAVIOURS

DIGITAL WOMEN

AUTHOR Bill Dwelly et al PRICE £45.99 PUBLISHER Alias & Sybex ISBN 1894893417

AUTHOR Michael Burns PRICE £19.95 PUBLISHER Ilex ISBN 1904705022

or its latest batch of excellent learning tools, Alias has teamed up with Sybex to produce an excellent introduction to the daunting field of character animation in Maya 5, its acclaimed 3D modelling app. There’s

F

F

100 Computer Arts_November 2003

still no index, but Learning Maya 5: Character Rigging and Animation is well organised, and will be invaluable to anyone wanting to establish a clean rigging and supersmooth animation workflow using the program. The book gradually builds up to animating a walk cycle from an explanation of skeleton setup, IK, shoulder configuration and the Spline Solver. Then Hands are considered in depth, followed by skinning methods, muscle simulation, editing set membership, Flexors and Blend Shapes. The chapters are tutorial-based, but come with a bonus DVD containing chapter overview movies, rounding up the most important or technical points. The bonus DVD also runs through some of the new and improved features in the Maya 5 UI, Modelling and Animation modules.

emme Digitale comes with the tagline ‘Crafting the female form on your computer’, and immediately you think of one application: Poser. While it’s not true to say this book, by regular CA contributor Michael Burns, deals exclusively with Curious Labs’ application, a fair old chunk of the text does. Still, at least it takes a little time out to cover Photoshop and Maya techniques, with everything from modelling skills to hair painting and composition explained and explored in reasonable depth. What you come to expect from this type of book, though, is a certain amount of flesh. While Femme Digitale isn’t on a par with Digital Beauties in terms of flesh-per-page, it certainly has enough breasts and bottoms to keep the female-fancying Poser artist ‘entertained’ for days. If you look past this, you do get some insightful tips into modelling

humanoid characters in Poser, and then refining them in a paint app. It won’t float everyone’s boat, but it makes for an interesting read.

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DVD-WRITERS You can store seven times as much data on a DVD-R as you can on a CD, and they cost under £1 each. So what are you waiting for? Here are five great DVD- writers, tried and tested It’s incredible how quickly the aspirational becomes the everyday. Only a few years ago, CD-writers cost upwards of £1000 and required special hard drives; today you can buy robust DVD-writers for around £100 – and blank DVDs for under a quid each. Although commercial dual-layer DVDs have a capacity of 9GB per side, remember that you can only create single-layer discs on a home computer. Still, this gives you a capacity of 4.7GB per disc, equivalent to about seven 650MB CDs, which is fine enough for most storage needs. Discs come in two formats: DVD-R, which enables you to write data to disc only once, and DVD-RW, which enables you to rewrite data to disc as many times as you want. The only drawback with DVD-RW is that it usually takes twice as long to save data to the disc. Still, the format is ideal for testing your DVD video projects or archiving data. To complicate matters, there are two major DVD writing formats to consider: DVD-R and DVD+R. In terms of storage capacity, both are identical. The two formats came about because hardware manufacturers couldn’t agree upon a

single universal format. The DVD Consortium, DVD’s governing body, ratified DVD-R, but a number of major players preferred the DVD+R format, which isn’t supported by the Consortium. +R media cannot generally be read on -R DVDwriters (and vice versa), and even DVD-ROM drives need specific compatibility. Both types of drives create DVDs that can hold data or video – in fact, unlike audio CDs, which have a unique data format, DVD video is just more data, stored in a particular file format and within a root-level folder on the DVD called VIDEO_TS. Not all set-top DVD players can handle DVD-Rs, and even fewer handle DVD+R. Laptop DVD drives are also notoriously fussy about the DVDs they read – compatibility often hinging on the type of dye used on the DVD’s surface. Rytec dye is the most universally compatible, and used by many blank media manufacturers, including Rytec (obviously), Zero Defex and Traxdata. So here they are: five portable and easy-toinstall external DVD-writers, primed for the CA Group Test experience. Which one will come out on top? Read on to find out…

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SONY DRX-510UL PC £269

A great dual-format drive, manufactured by a company that promotes +R? Go figure

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ony’s rivals and partners pay a lot of attention to Sony’s plans. Being a major player in the electronics industry, the company has a huge impact on the direction of consumer technology. When Sony advocates +R, no-one dares write the format off, even though most companies still prefer -R. So is this dual-format drive an admission of failure? Probably not, but it’s certainly a desirable unit. Offering 4x speed DVD+R and -R writing, the DRX-510UL compares CONTACT favourably with the other writers on Sony test. However, it also manages to do 08705 111999 rewritable +RW disks at 4x speed,and www.sonyisstorage.com -RW at 2.4x speed, making it the fastest device for rewritable media. At 24x and SYSTEM 16x, it delivers the swiftest CD-R and PC Pentium III 800MHz • CD-RW writing performance, too. 256MB RAM • 1GB HD i.LINK (FireWire by any other name) space • Windows 98SE and USB 2.0 connectivity are provided, • USB or FireWire port enabling you to hot-swap the drive VERDICT between computers. FireWire is certainly useful for hooking the writer up to laptops (although, oddly enough, the This Sony drive missed our DRX-510UL isn’t compatible with Macs). top spot by the narrowest The kit does come with a generous of margins. It’s fast, sports software bundle – you can burn discs great connectivity, comes with Veritas’ RecordNow DX, use DVDs bundled with good or CDs as virtual hard drives with the software and is reasonably help of packet mode software, author priced. Very worthy. DVDs and convert video to DVD with Sonic’s DVD Now… even create CD and DVD music compilations, courtesy of DVD Jukebox. Elegantly designed and moderately priced, the only thing missing from the DRX-510UL is some blank media to get you started.

★★★★

AMACOM BABY PC AND MAC £350

Not even the innovative, all-purpose interface can justify the £350 price tag

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macom has developed a unique and clever interface that enables you to connect a variety of storage peripherals to your computer. Each device has a proprietary but universal interface to which you then attach any of the company’s relevant interface modules (so you can hook up via USB, FireWire, and so on). Because of the speed that data needs to be supplied to a drive for DVD writing, though, you can only connect DVD-writers via USB, FireWire or 32-bit cardbus. Most models nowadays come with both FireWire and USB, but, unfortunately, because of its peculiar interface design, you can only use one or the other with the Baby, not both. Still, the drive boasts the fastest access times of all the models rated in our Group Test. You might think this would bode well for its read and write speeds. Don’t you believe it. The drive is actually far and away the CONTACT slowest in our roundup, with DVD Amacom writing performance a full 50 per cent 020 8993 7373 slower than the next slowest models. www.amacom-tech.com On the plus side, the Baby is the only writer, apart from the LaCie model, that SYSTEM works with both the PC and the Mac. Any Mac or PC with a Software-wise, it comes with the superUSB, FireWire or 32-bit friendly Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 cardbus port burning software for the PC, while Mac VERDICT users get Toast Lite. PC users are also given VideoWave, an entry-level videoediting package that enables you to The Baby may be Mac prepare your footage for DVD, and and PC-compatible, but it PowerDVD player. As with the LaCie only comes with a single drive, then, Mac users are being classed interface and a weak as second-class citizens in the software software bundle. It’s stakes, having to contend with a slice slow and overpriced, too. of Toast while PC users get an exciting software bundle to play with. Light and small, Amacom’s drive is certainly ultra-portable. Even better, it requires no drivers, so it’s a true plug-and-go device – although, of course, you will need burning software... You might expect to sacrifice a little performance and to pay a bit more for a drive with this level of convenience, but, frankly, £350 still makes the Baby over 37 per cent more expensive than its nearest most expensive rival.

★★★

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Group Test

PLEXTOR PX-504UF PC £264

Another competent performer from the Plextor stable proves it’s got what it takes

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uring the good old days, when CD-ROM was the ‘in’ thing, a Plextor drive was always in a class of its own. Nowadays, the competition may be fiercer, but this keenly priced DVD-writer demonstrates that the company still has what it takes: the PX504UF is easily the most attractive model in our Group Test. An average performer, it’s one of only two units that write +R discs, but that’s enough to make us edgy. It’s like Betamax and VHS all over again, except this time the better format (-R) is already the most popular format. The 504UF’s 4x DVD+R writing speed is as fast as anyone offers today – just CONTACT shy of 5.5MB per second. Its rewritable Plextor speed is average at 2.4x, but remember 0870 4293010 that the unit’s single-format capabilities www.plextor.be are set against Sony’s dual-format DRX510UL, which can do DVD+RW at 4x for SYSTEM about the same price. As for CD writing PC Pentium III 500MHz • and reading, the PX-504UF boasts the 128MB RAM • Windows same specs as the HP and LaCie drives: 98SE • USB or FireWire port 40x speed read, 16x CD-R and 10x VERDICT rewritable, which is plenty fast enough. Arguably, the drive provides the best software bundle of our entire Group Test: A beautifully built drive, Nero 5.5, a respected burning package, with Plextor’s trademark and Pinnacle’s Studio 8, an excellent high-quality construction. video capture and editing program. Performance is average, Connections-wise, both 4- and 6-pin but the drive is made FireWire (plus USB) are provided, too. more attractive by the The final cherry on the top of this excellent software bundle. package is Plextor’s drive management software, which gives you precise control over every aspect of the drive, and includes numerous media players. Performance may be average, but this package certainly isn’t.

★★★

HP 3OOE PC £199

Hewlett-Packard’s middle-of-the-road performer comes at an attractive price

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ike its competitor Plextor, Hewlett-Packard has added value to its DVD kit by including proprietary software. But while Plextor’s software is primarily functional, enabling you to tweak the drive’s performance and functionality, HP’s is purely creative. Take the fun of consumer-orientated Memories Creator, for example, which enables you to create digital photo albums and, like MyDVD, easily convert your home videos into DVD video collections. The remaining software is similar to Sony’s offerings – competent but far from friendly. So that leaves the drive’s performance, which is virtually identical to that of the Plextor unit. The HP300E is a DVD+RW drive with slightly faster access times for DVD-ROM. This would improve its overall performance, especially for multiple small files, if it weren’t for the poorer DVD-ROM transfer CONTACT rates. The HP300E can read DVD-ROMs Hewlett Packard at 8x speed, which is 33 per cent slower 0870 474747 than Plextor’s 12x read speed. Having www.hp.com/uk said that, you’re not buying the drive to read DVDs; you’re buying it to write SYSTEM them. Apart from these most minor PC Pentium II 450MHz, differences, it performs as well, with 64MB RAM, Windows 4x DVD+R writing, 2.4x DVD+RW 98SE, USB or FireWire port performance, 16x CD-R and 10x VERDICT CD-RW speeds. To give you an idea what that means, 4x writing enables you to record a full 4.7GB DVD in a little Functionally very similar under 15 minutes. to the Plextor, but the As with the Plextor, the unit provides software bundle is less both FireWire and USB 2 connectivity pleasant to use. Still, it for easy hook-up to any modern PC or comes at a great price. laptop – but not, alas, a Mac. This seems to be a software-based decision, because the drive should be physically capable of communicating with Apple’s machines. Presumably, HP, Plextor and Sony don’t want the additional cost of bundling Mac software and having to support it. And while HP’s 300E may look great with its silver and black fascia, its warranty (one-year, 5-7 day turnaround) is anything but; most of the competition offer two years’ onsite. Don’t forget the higher costs you could be paying further down the line if something goes wrong…

★★★

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WINNER

LA CIE DVD-RW PC AND MAC £228

LaCie’s contender delivers dual-format flexibility and good performance at a great price CONTACT LaCie 0207 872 8000 www.lacie.co.uk

VERDICT

★★★★★ A stylish rack-mountable aluminium case, versatile connectivity, excellent writing performance, dual-format capability and a great software bundle ensures that the LaCie is the perfect drive for PC users. Mac owners may prefer the cheaper FireWire-only version, which includes additional Mac-specific software. Either way, a fantastic drive at a great price.

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W

hen you’re creating DVDs for a variety of destinations, for both video and data formats, or when you receive discs from various sources, you want to be sure your drive can cope. Struggling with other people’s incompatible DVDs is bad enough, but when it comes to writing your own, it’s vital that you provide data in a format your clients and colleagues can read. -R has been around a lot longer than +R, and enjoys wider support. However, while advocates of the +R format say it offers greater set-top player compatibility, the opposite has turned out to be true of +R media. Furthermore, until relatively recently, +R media has tended to be more expensive. If the +R format has anything going for it, it’s the fact that on dual-format drives, including this one, you can generally write +R rewritable discs faster than -R discs – usually at 2.4x speed rather than 2x speed. (At which point, -R advocates can rush in and say, ‘So what?’) The LaCie DVD-RW offers 4x speed DVD+R and -R writing, with a read speed for DVD-ROM of 12x. It also writes CDs at 16x speed, which is slower than the Sony drive, the only other dual-format model in our Group Test. At 10x, its CD-RW speed is, again, slower than that of the Sony, but at least it can read CD-ROMs at 40x, making it the joint fastest in our roundup. The fact that the drive writes CDs a little slower than its nearest rival is of little relevance to DVD writing, anyway – and we’re only talking about a difference of one minute on a 650MB CD.

The 2MB buffer is pretty standard. This figure tells you how much information the buffer can store to ensure a smooth flow of data to the writer. Interruptions to the data flow can ruin a disc. However, underrun protection, which enables the drive to continue writing properly, even if the buffer is completely depleted, is also provided. The drive incorporates fast access times of 130 milliseconds for DVD and 120 milliseconds for CD. The access time tells you how quickly the drive can find and start to read data on your DVD or CD. Faster times mean quicker reading, and although times measured in milliseconds are too tiny to appreciate in their own right, the overall effect on more complex jobs – when scanning CDs full of files, for instance – is much more noticeable. Like all the drives in our Group Test, this LaCie model comes with a comprehensive software bundle, enabling you to make movies, record data CDs, create data backups and more straight out of the box. The main PC writing software provided is Easy CD & DVD Creator 6. Living up to its name, this is easy to learn and use, with a wizard-based approach that guides you step-by-step through the process of making CDs and DVDs. Mac users are given the equally friendly Toast Lite version 5.2.2l, although nothing else. MyDVD from Sonic, is an entry-level DVD authoring package, which, among other things, enables you to convert old video tapes to DVD. With its dual USB 2 and FireWire interface, LaCie’s well-balanced offering is a perfectly rounded DVD-writer and represents excellent value.

Group Test

MODEL

SONY DRX-510UL

BABY DVD-RW

PLEXTOR PX-504UF

HP 300E

LA CIE DVD-RW

12x/4x/4x (+RW) 2x (-RW)

8x/2x/1x

12x/4x/2.4x

8x/4x/2.4x

12x/4x/2.4x (+RW) 2x (-RW)

CD Read/write/rewrite

32x/24x/16x

24x/16x/10x

40x/16x/10x

40x/16x/10x

40x/16x/10x

FORMATS

DVD±R/RW

DVD-R/RW

DVD+R/RW

DVD+R/RW

DVD±R/RW

ACCESS TIME DVD/CD

200/160 mins

105/95 mins

140/120 mins

125/125 mins

130/120 mins

BUFFER

8MB

2MB

2MB

2MB

2MB

BUFFER UNDERRUN PROTECTION

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

INCLUDES BLANK MEDIA

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

INTERFACE

FireWire & USB 2

USB 2 or FireWire

FireWire & USB 2

FireWire & USB 2

FireWire & USB 2

SPEED DVD Read/write/rewrite

SPEED

(cardbus version as an option)

MAC/PC COMPATIBLE

PC

Both

PC

PC

Both

SOFTWARE

RecordNow DX, DLA, MyDVD, Simple Backup, Musicmatch Jukebox, PowerDVD

Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 Basic, VideoWave Movie Creator, PowerDVD

Nero 5.5. InCD, Studio 8, PowerDVD, Plextools

RecordNow, DLA, Simple backup, Showbiz, HP Memories Creator

Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 Basic, MyDVD, WinDVD, Showbiz

N/A

Toast Lite 5.2.2L

N/A

N/A

Toast Lite 5.2.2L

WARRANTY

3 years onsite

2 years

2 years

1 year, 5-7 day exchange

2 years

PRICE

£269

£350

£264

£199

£228

SCORE

★★★★

★★★

★★★

★★★

★★★★★

PC

SOFTWARE MAC

CONCLUSION

LaCie’s dual-format model takes the crown in terms of performance and smart pricing Unusually for a Group Test, it was relatively easy to winnow out the weak from the strong this month. Performance was of paramount importance – but price, too, was a strong factor. The Baby DVD drive failed on both counts: it provided the worst results and was considerably overpriced. Although we didn’t give exceptional weighting to dual-format drives, models offering this facility didn’t compromise on functionality, which automatically took the single-format Hewlett-Packard and Plextor units out of the running. DVD-ROM and CD-ROM read speeds were also of little significance – you’ll already own drives to read DVDs and CDs anyway. For our purposes, DVD±R write speed, DVD±RW write speed and CD±R write speeds were much more important. With blank DVDs at around £1 each, and DVD±R writing times twice as fast as DVD±RW times, we assumed that in most cases users would prefer using DVD±R discs even for tests and save the extra 15

minutes, treating the media as disposable. However if you don’t mind the extra wait or hate the idea of waste, then you’ll use DVD±RW media to test your projects. Of course, for backups DVD±RW is a more economical media. Finally, we considered the quality of the accompanying software. Note that companies are steering away from mainstream writing software, usually to your detriment and at the cost of ease of use. T our mind, the most important software should be the disc-burning package. In this respect, Sony opts for RecordNow, which, although competent, lacks the intuitive familiarity of WinOnCD, Easy CD or Nero Add to that the drive’s higher price point, and we’re left with only one clear winner: the LaCie DVD-RW This model is only one of two in our Group Test that you can also use with a Mac, doubling its compatibility and versatility. It offers good read and write performance, includes all the right software packages, and all for a good price. You won’t be disappointed.

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EXPOSURE SUBMISSIONS: Exposure Computer Arts 30 Monmouth Street Bath, BA1 2BW United Kingdom Turn to page 120 for full details

WINNER 1 NAME Simon Kennedy JOB Architect CONTACT [email protected], SOFTWARE Photoshop, 3ds max, After Effects IMAGE TITLES Reflections Of The City “These are renders from a movie about the city and its relationship to people. Modern architecture is shaped the way that it is due to the influence of abstract forces, such as commerce and structural engineering. Ordinary people, in order to reclaim such forms, speculate that the forms look like something else. The film is about a slightly disconcerting journey through the city where these perceptions become reality for a moment.”

116 Computer Arts_November 2003

Exposure

1

Computer Arts_November 2003 117

1 NAME Gerard Purcell JOB Graphic Designer CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Illustrator, Photoshop IMAGE TITLES Advert 8 “Design is everywhere: moving visuals on the TV; limitless colour in the natural world; the grandeur and impact of our towns and cities. Seeing good management of shape and colour in these environments inspires me to create new designs of my own.”

2 NAME David Fleet JOB Student CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop IMAGE TITLES Bobcat “This drawing was almost entirely rendered in Photoshop, by simply using the Pen tool to create selections and adding colour with the Paint Bucket, Airbrush and Gradients. The secret is to utilise layers – after all, they’re free! Just keep adding and only merge when you’re really sure.”

3 NAME Mark Runkee JOB Freelance Illustrator CONTACT www.mrunkee.com SOFTWARE Photoshop, After Effects IMAGE TITLES Fluidity, Urban Design “I am inspired by film and magazines and use a range of styles, such as minimalist, vector and Animé to create designs that I find interesting – even if no one else does!”

1 118 Computer Arts_November 2003

Exposure

2

3

Computer Arts_November 2003 119

GET EXPOSED 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 non-exclusive 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.

1

Every effort is made to ensure that your work is returned safely. However, all contributions are submitted at the risk of the owner. Future Publishing Limited cannot accept responsibility for them either in transit or while in Future’s possession. If this is the only copy of your work, do NOT send it in!

1 NAME Matt Lyon JOB Freelance Illustrator CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop, Illustrator IMAGE TITLES Tarabe Cund, Onsken, Morin Taw “I combine the use of traditional media such as paint and pastel with much cruder materials like crayons, wax or marker pens. I also switch between left and right-handed work, allowing for variety in the quality of marks and line.”

2 NAME Teodoro Badiu JOB Freelance Artist, Multimedia Designer CONTACT [email protected] SOFTWARE Photoshop, FreeHand IMAGE TITLES A Broken Heart “I use FreeHand combined with Photoshop and traditional media. So, you find painted cardboard, hand drawings, different textures and patterns in my images.”

2 120 Computer Arts_November 2003

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Computer Arts_November 2003 121

RETROSPECTIVE ISSUE 24 NOVEMBER1998 An issue of bouquets and brickbats (whatever they are)

I

n case you hadn’t noticed, 24 was our annual Star Awards issue, in which we heaped yet more praise on Photoshop 5, XPress 4, FreeHand 8 and the like. (Yes, FreeHand, not Illustrator – controversial, us.) Besides the teary-eyed acceptance speeches and drunken punch-ups at the bar, there was news that Autodesk was to buy Discreet Logic, and that Intel had launched a hot new 450MHz Pentium II. Woo. Meanwhile, in profile land one George Cairns was showing off his sci-fi stylings – he went on to feature extensively in CA with his tutorials. CGI company Ex Machina, which produced virtual ride films, appears to have rollercoasted off into infinity, while Darren Goldsmith now runs design company Angel Digital. NewTek’s Aura made its impressive debut in the reviews section, and World Builder 2.2 looked remarkably similar to the latest version. But whatever happened to Nendo, the 3D modelling program? Or Satori PhotoXL, the photo-diddling program? Oh, hang on – that one’s still going… Finally, we tried to explain DVD. Again. Apparently, it “hurdles the capacity obstacle” and “breaks the speed ceiling of CD”, but we admitted that “mystery and confusion” surrounds the format in Europe. With metaphors like that, it’s hardly bloody surprising.

EDITORIAL 01225 442 244 VICKI ATKINSON EDITOR [email protected] ROB CARNEY DEPUTY EDITOR [email protected] RACHEL ELLIOTT OPERATIONS EDITOR [email protected] MARK PENFOLD STAFF WRITER [email protected] MATT GALLIMORE CD EDITOR [email protected]

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Contributions from Ian Anderson, Graeme Aymer, Frank Bartucca, Mat Broomfield, Simon Danaher, Christian Darkin, Steve Dent, Dan Goodleff, Chris Gregory, Karl Hodge, Jacey, Robert Lindström, Daniel Mackie, MagicTorch, Richard May, Dan Moore, Ed Ricketts, Sarah Robson, Mark Sparrow PHOTOGRAPHY Phil Sowel PRINT TPL Printers (UK) Ltd REPRO Radstock Reproductions Ltd

CONTACT Computer Arts magazine, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW 01225 732 361 ISDN 01225 789 293 Overseas subscriptions +44 1458 271 100

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

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

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THE FUTURE NETWORK 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 2002: 30,024

FLASHBACK

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122 Computer Arts_November 2003

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 1998’s issue 24…

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 2003. 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).