Creating a Dynamic Product

Creating a Dynamic Product

How to …

draw a freehand outline in Serif DrawPlus X4

One useful application of freeform drawing tools is to trace around the outline of an imported photo to create drawn elements for your animation.

Warm up exercise
/ Open DrawPlus X4 and from the Startup Wizard click on Start New Drawing and then select your paper size e.g. A4 portrait. Click Open.
The three main freeform drawing tools in DrawPlus are the Pencil Tool, the Paintbrush Tool and the Pen Tool.
Make marks with these three tools on the new drawing page to get the feel of how to handle them. /
The Pencil Tool is designed to sketch curved lines and shapes.
The Paintbrush Tool lets you paint with a selection of preset brushes.
The Pen Tool creates connected line segments using a series of "connect the dots" mouse clicks. Open a new drawing page and try out these three tools. Select some of the lines you have drawn and edit their properties such as thickness and colour.
The Context Toolbar changes to reflect which tool is selected and offers a menu of refinements that you can experiment with.
Three practical new tools for editing vector drawings have been introduced. These are the Freeform Paint Tool, which allows you to paint freeform strokes at variable nib widths with line/fill properties just like shapes; the Erase Tool, which enables you to delete part of an object; and the Knife Tool, for splitting an object into fragments.
The Fill-on-Create feature on the Context toolbar allows unclosed vector shapes to be filled.

Start a drawing

/ From the Insert menu choose Picture > From file or click on the Insert Picture button and navigate to a photo you have saved. Click and drag on the page to size the picture.
/ To make the image more transparent, so that it is easier to trace, select it, and on the Colour tab drag the Opacity slider down to about 50%.
If the tab is not visible, toggle it on from the View> Studio Tabs menu.
Zoom in for greater accuracy.
/ Add a new layer. This will keep all your drawing elements separate from the source image. For a complex drawing make a new layer for each element. For animations, only use a new layer when tracing around a source image, then delete the source layer. Having multiple layers for a single frame make animation unnecessarily complex.
/ Hard edged curved lines can be drawn using the Pen Tool with Smooth joins selected on the Pen Context menu.
Trace around the object/person/character in the photo by clicking so as to set nodes. Before you release the mouse button, drag slightly left or right, up or down to adjust the control handles that determine the curve of the line. This takes a lot of practice, but mistakes can easily be fixed with the Undo button. Save your work.
/ The shape can be tweaked and perfected later by selecting the Node tool, clicking on a node or a segment and choosing one of the buttons on the context toolbar to make an adjustment – Straighten Line, Sharp Corner, Smooth Corner, Symmetric Corner or Smart Corner.
/ An enclosed shape can be created by connecting the end node to the first point in the drawing. Click on the Close Curve button. The shape can now be filled with colour and the line removed if preferred. In DrawPlus X4 even unclosed shapes can now be filled by selecting the Fill-on-Create button, as the examples show.
/ Select a fill colour on the Colour tab by clicking on the Fill icon to bring it forward. Bring the Line icon forward to select a line colour. For no fill or line click on the No Fill swatch in the same group. Line size and style can be modified either on the Line tab, or on the Context Toolbar.
/ When your drawing is finished, click on the original photo with the Pointer tool to select it, and then press the Delete key. Or simply delete the layer.
/ Your finished drawing can be saved to the My Designs folder in the Gallery, from where it can be pulled out whenever needed and further edited: just drag the drawing onto the folder window, and give it a name in the pop up dialog box.