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Before you start getting your hands dirty, I have a few ground rules I'd like to lay out. My hope is that they will
a) Help you work through the tutorials in an organized fashion
b) Help you avoid any serious mistakes
c) Keep you from taking in too much, too fast.
Those have been my three biggest fears in putting these tutorials together. I don't want you getting overloaded, frustrated, and downright pissed off at me for getting you into this in the first place. <G>
Here are just the general rules for working through the tutorials:
- DO THE TUTORIALS IN ORDER - I can't stress this enough. I laid these tutorials out VERY carefully. If you skip to a later tutorial you WON'T know what you need to know to finish it.
- READ VERY CAREFULLY - Many of these tutorials involve a lot of individual steps, many of which don't appear to have any rhyme or reason until you're done. I did it this way on purpose, to MAKE YOU PAY ATTENTION. Hehe. Not really, but the rhyme and reason aren't always apparent until you're done. Just pretend I'm Mr. Miyagi.<G>
- FOLLOW THE EXAMPLES/DEMONSTRATIONS - For me, the best way to learn something has always been to get in there and do it. I think most people learn better this way, so most of the tutorials have projects for you to do. They're really small, they only take 5 minutes or so, and they'll enlighten you a great deal if you do them along with me.
- TRY TO HAVE FUN -
Man, I hate people who can't find a way to teach something in a
fun way, or at least mix in a little humor. I've tried to add some
humor (in the right places) and get you involved in the process as
much as possible. Try to have fun with it. If you're not enjoying
the process of learning, you won't remember what you learned.
That's about it for general rules. I'm going to follow those with some rules for you to follow WHILE PAINTING. These will help keep you out of trouble, help you be a smarter and more organized painter, and may even get me nominated for the Nobel peace prize. Ok, so I'm aiming high <G>
- DON'T BE AFRAID OF MISTAKES - I've been a perfectionist since I was a little kid. I was always afraid to make a mistake. It took me a long time to realize that making errors and then learning how to fix them are integral parts of the learning process. You're going to make mistakes. Don't panic or get upset, just figure out what you did wrong and then figure out the best way to fix it.
- CTRL-Z is your best friend. PSP has 'Multiple Undo', that means you can undo the last however-many steps you need. You'd be smart to use this to your advantage. CTRL-Z shouldn't replace working smart and being careful, though.
- NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER PAINT ON THE BACKGROUND LAYER! Don't do it, man. The first thing you should always do when you open up a car .PCX is double the size (200%), up the colors to 16 million, and create SEVERAL new layers. Anything you paint on the background can't be separated from it again with out doing a multiple-undo back to when you put it there, and you lose all the work in between. Just save yourself the headache.
- BACKUP YOUR WORK OFTEN - I have several dozen .PSP files of my cars at various stages of completion. Backing up often allows you to go back and make changes, even months later, without having to re-do the car from scratch.
- GIVE YOURSELF A LOT OF WORKSPACE - Run your desktop at as high a resolution as
you can. You can always increase the font size if it's hard to
read. I run at 1280x1024. Your hardware may not allow that, but I
recommend at least 1024x768 if you can do it. There are a lot of things you need access to simultaneously while painting, and a small work area will only serve to frustrate you and slow you down.
- TAKE YOUR TIME -
This is the last rule, and a very important one. Invariably, when
you rush, you will miss something. A car usually takes
me about 4 hours from start-to-finish. The steps and procedures in
this tutorial are second nature to me, so you're liable to spend
twice that long on a car until you get things engrained. Believe
me, you will know the work and extra time you put in was worth it when your car
is finished.
Take the pebble from my hand, Grasshopp--- DOH! Hehe& sorry 'bout that.
That's about it for the rules. Some of it sounds like it came from a psycho art teacher, the rest probably sounds like I made it up 'cuz I just wanted to have more rules. Hehe. That's not the case, I do all of those things EVERY TIME I paint. They're important, so please stash these away in that brain of yours, preferably somewhere far from all the malted hops and bong resin. ;)
Ok, Let's move on, shall we?
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