Dewdrop Fairy
Helpful! Dec. 2007 Writer of the Month
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This is a small collection of (I hope) helpful hints and links for people who want to start screenshot editing or drawing with (MS) Paint. It is directed mostly at people who are completely new at editing pictures and have never used it before. So I apologize if it seems like I over-explain things sometimes.
Note: this is actually the very first time I try to write a tutorial, and English is not my first language. Plus, my version of Paint is in german, which means I am often not entirely sure on the correct name of the tools or menus. If you find any horrid mistakes in vocabulary, grammar or content, please let me know. Also, if you have additions or suggestions on how to make things clearer, please tell me. I have every intention to keep this updated and to use all the help I can get!
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Basics:
What is Paint? - A very simple graphics program that has been a part of any Windows version since Windows 95 (in older versions it was called "Paintbrush"). It is often referred to as "MS Paint" or "Microsoft Paint". So, if your operating system is any version of Microsoft Windows then Paint is most likely already somewhere on your computer.
There are different versions of it, depending on what Windows version you use. (Older versions do not support .png files, for example). The core functions are the same for all versions, however.
How to find (MS) Paint on your computer: Click on "Start" => "Programs" => "Accessories" => "(MS) Paint". Click here for a picture.
A beginner's tutorial I found on the net, explaining all the basic functions and tools, and also how to take screenshots. It seems to be based on an older version of MS Paint, which means that more advanced versions of Paint may have some functions not mentioned in there.
Working with Paint:
Making sprites with Paint
=> Good tutorial for beginners: Karmageddon41's sprite tutorial. Best read this first, you probably can skip most of the stuff below then!
What is a "sprite? - From Wikipedia: "In computer graphics, a sprite [...] is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene."
Basically, here we mean a cut-out picture of something (your character, an item, a monster) without any background (which, for MS Paint, usually means with a white or otherwise unicolour background that can easily be removed). I understand that strictly speaking these would have to be called "renders" (as we did not create the pics but only rendered them). I'll continue speaking of "sprites" though as this seems to be the term most people use.
The obvious advantage of sprites is that they can easily be pasted into another picture.
Well, I'll be honest: I hate this part. I'm far too impatient to be good at it, and accordingly all my sprites suck raw eggs ^_^. But in theory I think I know how it should be done, which I hope will be enough for this tutorial.
1) First, you will have to take a screenshot. If you need help with that, I'll better refer you to Niko's Guide that explains everything in great detail and also has the links to Imageshack and Photobucket, the most popular sites for uploading your finished work.
Taking a screenshot in short:
- Press the "Print Screen" button (usually right next to the "F12" function key. There's a pic in Niko's guide if you can't find it). Nothing happens. Good. That is perfectly okay.
- Open Paint, choose "edit" in the menu and click on "paste". Now, looky there. Your screenshot. It will probably look similar to this, except a lot bigger.
2) Now, we will select the part of the screenshot that we want to sprite. Click on the "select" tool:  and select the area around whatever you want to make a sprite of, by left-clicking, holding down and drawing a rectangle with your mouse. Then go to the menu again, choose "edit" and either "copy" or "cut". Close this document (you need not save, we hopefully don't need it again) and start a new one. Go to "edit" once more, and select "paste". The area we've selected earlier should appear in the new document, in my case:
(Note: If the new pic is either too large or too small you can change its size by choosing "Image" in the menu and changing the "Attributes" height and width of the picture.)
3) Okay. Lets get working on actually erasing the background. (Ugh.) Basically, we have to get rid of the entire background, leaving only the flamebat in an otherwise snow-white picture. There are several tools that can help with that.
Important: Use the zoom  so you can better see the details.
a) The Eraser  . Seems to be the most logical tool, yet it is the one I use the least. The eraser will always be the colour that you have selected as your background colour. If you click on the tool, you will see a second option below the toolbox:  Here you can pick the size of the eraser to be used. But even the smallest option will most likely be not fine enough for some parts.
*** Result when using the eraser ***
b) The Selection tool  . I use this to get rid of large junks of the picture. Just select a rectangle, and click on "del" (or go the menu and either "cut" or "delete").
You can also use the free selection tool  , of course. It is actually better, but at least my version of Paint does not show me exactly what part of the pic I have selected before I erase it, but only marks a rectangle around the edges of the selected part. That's probably why I'm not so very comfortable using it. But if you can handle it, it can indeed be very helpful.
*** Result when using selection ***
c) The Fill tool  : Probably the best and easiest tool for erasing backgrounds in Paint. From the colour palette  pick white as your foreground colour by left-clicking on it. (Right-clicking would select a background colour, by the way.)
Now use the fill tool on the background of your screenshot.
Note: It helps a lot if the background of your screenshot consists of only a few colours and has little colour shading, unlike in my example picture. ^_^
*** Result when using Fill ***
d) The Pencil tool  . For the work on the details, i.e., getting rid of those annoying single pixels in the wrong colour that somehow always remain around the edges of your sprites. Works just like the Fill tool, if you choose white as your foreground colour. If you change the colour to black or another dark colour you can also carefully use it to repair the outlines of the sprite.
The use of this tool clearly determines how good your sprite will be in the end. The more time you invest in it, the better.
My advice: use the fill tool first, then zoom in and start working with the rest of the tools. But you will most likely have to find out for yourself which tool you prefer.
In the end, your sprite should look like this (but hopefully a lot better ^_^): 
Editing with Paint
Usually, a sprite or a couple of sprites will already be enough for quite a good edit. What you will need is the background picture (which you can get from taking another screenshot and cutting off the browser window at the edge) and your sprite.
This is probably also the best place to introduce another important feature (that I am not sure older versions of MS Paint already had):  lets you choose if you want to paste something with or without the background. Selecting the option at the bottom, like in the pic, will set your background to transparent.
Copy the sprite and paste it into the background picture. Maybe add some text (best make sprites of speechbubbles, too, as it looks a lot more professional), and you are done. Here is a brief tutorial to illustrate this step.
Now, sometimes you might want to alter the sprite you made a bit before pasting it into its new destination. This can be done in Paint, but the result will most likely always fall short on a couple of aspects:
No matter what you do, it will always look a bit pixelated.
No matter how many colour shades you apply, Paint just does not allow for really smooth gradients.
Paint does not allow to have several layers, unlike more advanced programs.
Resizing a pic usually will give you a very low-quality result and should better be avoided.
The possibilities to rotate an image are severly limited.
So, when we talk in terms of the game's art, the best you can hope for would be "low quality". ^_^
How this kind of editing works... well, I guess this is where your artistical skills are truely needed for the first time. The easiest way is to combine single parts of certain monsters or characters with each other to create a new one. For example, editing a warrior's helm on a moglin's head. Or, if you are good at drawing/painting, you may want to try changing the sprite by simply drawing some new armour, wings etc. onto your sprite.
Here is a very simple example for editing a DragonFable sprite: Making a double-headed wyvern.
Drawing from scratch with Paint
I was hesitating to write this section because when I draw it's usually a matter of trial and error, with the eraser being the most important tool ^_^. But here is what I have to offer in terms of advice:
First off, I usually do the outlines of the picture first, usually in black, then I use the fill tool to colour it. I prefer the "line" tool over the "pencil" but this may be a matter of personal taste. In a second and third step, I add the shading and eventually more details. I'm not sure if this is the best approach but it works fine for me.
Note: Saving the pic every now and then under a new name as a back-up in case you manage to ruin the version you're working on beyond repair is never a bad idea ^_^. Also, remember you have the option to "undo" the last three actions if you go to the "Edit" menu.
As I usually only draw NPCs I will use some old sketches I still had on my computer as an example. This was actually a request by Thor24. He asked me to turn his DF character into an NPC similar to the germanic god Thor.
I have to admit I'm horribly bad with proportions. No matter what I do, the legs, arms, hands and heads I draw always seem to get a little too small, big or fat compared to the rest of the body. So the first thing I do when I start a new drawing is get a reference pic. I simply took a screenshot of Artix' NPC in the design notes once and now always have him stand watch on the left side of the pic, so I can immediately compare if my drawing is okay in height and proportions. Even with that help, it turns out wrong often enough ^_^.
The first sketch usually is nothing but a weird chaos of lines roughly (VERY roughly) outlining what in the end is supposed to become the NPC. I usually start with a circle for the head, then draw a "box" for the chest and a couple of lines for the legs. Add some more lines to make sure where the shoulders, arms and hands are. From there on I slowly try to improve the drawing step by step, until I have a version I am pleased with. You can see some of the steps here. Pic 3 is what I first showed to Thor24, who then asked for a different headwear and a shield. Which are the changes you can see in pic 4.
Note: zoom in and make sure you really closed all your lines, or you will get some problems when you start colouring.
Colouring and shading is something that many people seem to find difficult. It isn't really (once you decided on which side of the pic your source of light is ^_^), as Paint gives you quite an easy option to find a darker or brighter shade of the colour you use, with the "palette" tool. In my drawings, the light always comes from the (upper) left side, so the right side would need to be darker than the left. Also, peeking at the Artix NPC and trying to figure out how the true artists do it helps a lot here ^_^.
First use the "fill" tool to give your drawing a first colouring. (In case not all your lines are closed you will notice now ^_^.) It will probably look a lot like version 1 in this pic. Now use the "Eyedropper" tool  and select a colour. Choose "colors" -> "Edit palette" from the menu, and pick a colour a couple of shades darker than the one you previously selected. Start adding shades, mainly on the right side of the NPC (remember, the light comes from the left). Improve it until you are pleased and do the same thing with a brighter shade to add highlights on the left side of the NPC. If I want to add details I often draw them on the edge of the pic and move them in by copy and paste.
Version 2 of the pic above shows the beginning of some early, basic shading, version 3 is the final one.
Adding text with Paint
This will be the shortest section ^_^. First off, there's not much you can do with Paint, none of those neat effects like in better programs.
The text tool  will allow you to draw a text box (it's resizable, btw!) to be filled with your message in the colour you have selected as foreground colour. For selecting a different font or font size you need to go to the menu once more after drawing the text box and choose "View" -> "Text Toolbar". (Note: At least in my version of Paint this option is never available as long as I have zoomed in on the picture.)
Remember to set your background to transparent when you add text.
Here is a short tutorial on creating some "effects" with Paint.
Off-topic: About pictures in general
The following has actually very little to do with MS Paint, but I thought it might be a good idea to include some general information for people who are completely new not only to picture editing but also to the forums.
- File formats: .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .png
These abbreviations indicate different "types" of graphics which mostly differ from each other in file size and in the quality of the pic. Not all versions of Paint support all formats, older versions will probably limit you to Bitmaps (.bmp), Gifs and JPGs.
You can change the format of your picture quite easily: Open it in Paint, and in the menu go to "File" -> "Save as...". You then should not only have the option to give your picture another name, but also to save it in another format (in the drop down menu).
Personally, I prefer the .png format when I work in Paint. However, if that one is not available, I suggest you save your picture as a Bitmap (.bmp) for the time that you are still working on it. Bitmaps are the biggest in filesize, so before uploading your pic to the internet, you should change it into another format, which would probably need to be .jpg. Please note that saving as a JPG will reduce the quality of your pic a lot in Paint, however.
=> If I'm not very much mistaken Imageshack will automatically convert any Bitmap to PNG format if you try to upload it there.
=> Additional information about this, thanks to ion24: Photobucket will convert to JPG instead (not advisable).
- Uploading your pics
So, here you have your finished edit and you're all proud about it and want to show it off. In order to do that, you need to upload in to the internet first. You can not link from the forums to a file on your computer.
The most popular free sites for uploading are Imageshack.us and Photobucket.com. You only need to make an account and follow the instructions for uploading a pic.
(Note: For Imageshack, it is not even necessary to create an account but I suggest that you still do, at least if you plan on making a gallery, update it often and thus will need to change the links to your own pics a lot. If you are unregistered and loose the link to your own pic you will have no way to get it back and have to upload it anew.)
For all further details, I would like to point you to Niko's Guide again, as he explains it better than I could.
- Displaying the picture on the forums
This is actually covered in Niko's guide as well, but just for a short reference: There are two ways to show a pic. One would be to have it displayed directly, like the sprite of the flamebat above. This is, however, frowned upon in most sections of these forums and should better be avoided, especially for large pics. The second possibility is to link to it, like I did to the example pictures in the paragraph about drawing, and just like you would link to any other post or thread.
The code for direct display of a pic:
[image]URL of your picture[/image]
The code for linking to a pic:
[link=URL of your picture]type anything you want here[/link]
Both codes require you to get the URL of your pic. An URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the "adress" of your file, indicating the location where it can be found on the internet. If you use Photobucket or Imageshack, there will be a whole bunch of ready-made links displayed on their websites for you to use. Unfortunately, most of them will not work properly on the AE forums ^_^. The only helpful one is the one labelled "direct link". If you enter that link into the codes above, where it says "URL of your picture", they should work on the forums.
Another method to find the URL: open the pic to its full size (make sure it's not some resized or thumbnail version that the website offers you), then right-click on it and go to "properties".
Bits and bobs and a couple of links
siris99's weapons' creation guide also has an excellent beginners' tutorial of Paint, explaining all core functions of the program. (You will need to scroll down to the end of the post.)
From the ground up. A beginner's guide on drawing in MS Paint, by ze frency
Tutorial on creating sprites with Paint: Karmageddon41's sprite tutorial
Tutorial on creating a background in MS Paint: tren54's Easy Paint background making guide for DF
Great tutorial on drawing and shading. Many thanks to Tomix for the link! It seems to use a graphics program slightly different from MS Paint but still has many helpful pointers that will work in regular Paint, too.
Easy gradients in MS Paint by .overdrive rewind
A very simple step-by-step instruction that I made for a friend once, on how to properly paste one image into another: guide page 1, guide page 2 and guide page 3. (Apologies for the program menu in the pics being in german, but my whole version of Paint kinda is ^_^.)
Tutorial on creating a sig / adding "special effects" to a render: A new MS Paint tut by .Passion//. (I have to admit that "artistic" signature making is just too far out for me, so I cannot tell how helpful this one really is. The result surely looks nice enough though.)
A tutorial on making smilies/emoticons: Nickwright's smilie tutorial. Now, you will probably rarely need to draw an emoticon but the tut actually shows a lot of the most useful tools in Paint, so I thought I'd better add it.
And finally, just to silence everybody who claims it is impossible to create good artwork with MS Paint, I would like to add this link to the work of an artist at deviantART.com, and to this page, named "Ultimate Paint". Yes, those works were done in Paint, and no, I don't think anybody of us will ever really be that good and that dedicated ^_^. But I think it's a nice example of what is possible even with such a simple program, for people who have the skill and the patience.
< Message edited by Dewdrop Fairy -- 9/5/2007 0:23:55 >
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