Creating an Animation for the WWW s1

Creating an animation for the WWW

How to … customise vector shapes in Serif DrawPlus X4 You can easily customise the QuickShapes in DrawPlus to create characters, scenery and other graphic elements for your animation. Drag completed graphics to the My Designs folder in the Gallery to store and re-use them.

Use and customise pre-defined vector shapes Open DrawPlus X4 and from the Startup Wizard click on Start New Drawing and then select your paper size e.g. A5 portrait. Click Open. Pre-defined vector shapes are called QuickShapes in DrawPlus.

Select a Quick Rectangle from the QuickShape flyout menu on the Drawing Toolbar and drag a rectangle out onto the page.

With the Node Tool selected, click on the shape and use the node slider to round off the corners. To customise your design, always check out the range of styles available for each shape when the Node Tool is selected.

Use the Quick Rectangle and Quick Ellipse shapes to draw a mobile phone as illustrated. Hold the Shift key as you drag out the Quick Ellipse to draw a circle and the Node tool to customise the shape to draw a semi-circle.

Modify fill and line Using the Pointer Tool click on the largest rectangle representing the phone body to select it. On the Colour tab in the Studio, check that the Fill icon is to the front and choose a fill colour. Next, bring the Line icon to the front and choose a colour for the line. On the Line tab or the Context toolbar you can also drag the slider to adjust the width of the line, or select None for no outline. Use the same techniques on the phone buttons and screen to add colour fills and line styles.

Group elements

When you are satisfied with your drawing, group the separate elements to make it easier to develop the design further. To do this, drag a bounding box around the drawing with the Pointer Tool and click on the Group/Ungroup button that appears.

Save your work. The native file type for DrawPlus is .DPP or DrawPlus Drawing. This is an editable file type that can be modified in future.

Combine and subtract elements

Arms and legs for the Moby character were drawn with a mix of QuickShapes and freeform drawing tools such as the Pencil and Pen. Select the shapes you want to combine and click on the Combine button on the Arrange tab to make a single new shape.

Export your character in a universal graphic format that supports transpareny e.g. PNG or GIF for use in other applications. But for your animation, simply drag it to your My Designs folder on the Gallery tab. You will be able to use it again and again and make changes to the size, the colours or the position of arms and legs, for example without affecting the original.