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This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it This is my first tutorial, and it's a workflow-style tutorial that discusses how to illustrate scanned drawings. It doesn't require any plugins or filters (not even built-in ones). The work is all you, and that's really great. Being able to draw your own objects without dependence on filters/plugins allows you to develop your own visual style and brings greater control in scenes, like clutter shots. Start by scanning the original drawing. Open it in Paint.NET. We'll call it the scan layer. Before you do anything else, decide what the color scheme is. Here's a self-describing example: The handle is brown, the guard is yellow, and the blade is gray because it's steel. These colors are chosen with some intensity in mind. If this dagger is in a night setting with bad light, these colors will be a lot darker. This dagger is in a neutral lighting, like outside on a cloudy day. Make a new layer to trace over the scan. You want it on a new layer so you can remove the scan from it later. Draw with the desired colors and try to fix as many drawing issues as possible. Notice in the picture below that the guard is visible over the handle, so the edges of the guard are drawn with yellow. Try to keep the regions to be colored on different layers to make it easy to texture them later. Fill in the colors. Choose a light source for texturing. Add a new layer for texture. Add another for highlights and shadows. With Outlines The process is a little more straightforward with outlines. You can create a scan layer as usual. Make a new layer to trace over the scan. Draw the outline with black lines and try to fix as many drawing issues as possible. You don't need to worry about colors yet. Alternatively, if the original image is in grayscale colors (like a pencil sketch) and doesn't need any tweaks, you can modify the scan layer directly to use it as the outline. Use the plugin Switch gray to alpha to remove the background, then use Alpha Threshold to darken the lines. Add a layer for colors under the outline layer. Color in the lines. Add a new layer for texture. Add another for highlights and shadows. Additional Steps - If it's hard to see, make a "screen" layer filled with some translucent color so you can see the difference between identical colors on two layers. That is, if you're drawing on the layer above the scan, and both have black lines, it's nice to have a translucent color on its own layer between the scan and drawing layers. That way, your crisp black lines show up in the drawing layer more vividly than the scan layer (which has a screen over it). - Make a layer underneath the image, fill in everything with white, then merge it so there are no partially transparent pixels left. Tips If the image is symmetrical, draw one side of the image. Flip it horizontally / vertically. The dagger picture had symmetry, and I took advantage of it. Images can have radial symmetry, like petals around a flower. You can copy a petal and paste it, then move the little circle to the center of the flower. It's the point the image rotates around. For highlights, remember to take surface texture, type of material, and angle of light into account. Highlights and shadows are the same color as the object being highlighted, tinted in hue by the light source. A highlighted surface often has more saturation or intensity. Avoid the mistake of using white or yellow colors for all highlights. Remember that shadows are fainter the further the object casting the shadow is from the ground.

Some great work, all very inspiring.. I've called this peice Imaginary amoeba.

In that particular case, you could have an array of DashStyes and an array of ints (or an array of a struct containing both). The arrays would be initialized to the proper values, then indexed by AmountX to get the gPen.DashStyle and gPen.Width. gPen.DashStyle = penDashStyle[AmountX]; gPen.Width = penWidth[AmountX]; g.DrawLine (gPen, a, b, c, d); It could, of course, be put in a separate method.

Almost all. Sorry, but if I read, that you spend 6 years or so to find out, that there is a support forum and plugins (all this you could find following some menu links in the software itself) than it will be hard to describe ALL the things, that you have missed out. Just open your eyes, take a look and read. You must have a natural curiosity, don't you?

I've seen the same thing happen a number of times.In fact, it happened today. I believe it usually occurs when I've had the same instance of PDN up for a long time. I don't use images as large as 3000x3200. I've learned that when plugins start disappearing from the menus, it's time to save everything and restart PDN.

1st Place: @Scooter with 13 votes 2nd Place: @toe_head2001 with 10 votes 3rd Place: @Pixey with 9 votes Congratulations everyone @LionsDragon very, very close - only one pip between us . Thank you all for your entries. Every one was very special .

Good work! Where does glossary stop and encyclopaedia begin?... I think you've struck a good balance! I see kilobytes have shrunk - I'm sure they used to have 1024 bytes in the old days. Possible additions? completely at your discretion. Height map: A way of encoding height information into the pixels of one image. Used to distort or shade another image. Sampling rate/Quality?Antialiasing*: Processing extra points 'between' pixels and averaging to get smoother results? Clipboard: Where 'copied' things are temporarily stored. Sprite sheet: Multiple images in one layer often used for animations. RAW file type: Unprocessed image data from high-end cameras? - *Antialiasing with a slightly different meaning to the edge antialiasing around objects.

Hi Joshua! Well done on starting a gallery, cool images, especially 'Water Avatar' - great imagination! I agree that hand drawing and scanning is a great way to start an image. I'm also very impressed by your Brush factory plugin! (Now you've changed your forum name I will keep thinking of you as 'Anthony Joshua' - the heavy-weight boxing champ!)

Spritesheet for Fleet Fighter The sprites involved in the creation of one of my games called Fleet Fighter. Not the greatest sprite work in the world, but the entire game was made in 3 days. Collectively took about 2 hours.

alea iacta est.

Far out man!

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it This is what we will be making. You can use your own image, or use one from my Pixel Art Shapes Pack found here Pixel Art Shapes and How to Add them to the Shapes Folder in Paint.net Open Paint.net and set the canvas to 100 x 100. New Layer and Draw your shape, or, use one from the Shapes Pack, with the Shift held down in the center of the canvas (smaller than the actual canvas). Uncheck the background layer in order to see the pixels better. Zoom in close. On the new layer, using the pencil tool, begin to paint each pixel. If you don't want an outline, paint over the lines. Tip: To remove a painted pixel, right click on your mouse. To draw a solid line just DRAG the pencil across the canvas. For closer work, use the pencil one pixel at a time. Obviously one must try to get the blocks of color symmetrical and blocky. You can save the image in a larger size for 'showing' in a larger size like this. After you flatten the image Go To: Image Re-size - & change the size and use Re-sampling and Nearest Neighbor. OR: Happy Pixel Making .