Create Your Own Dragons
by Neemers
Introduction
The following tutorial contributed by Neemers will show
you how to create your own dragon designs by piecing together templates
of the various different dragons. You will need an image editing program
such as Microsoft Paint, Gimp, Adobe Photoshop or other such program.
This tutorial assumes you will be using Microsoft Paint, but the directions
can be adapted for the other tools. You will also need to download the
templates you want to use to your computer:
Let's Get Started!
First open Paint. There's a few tools you'll have to be
able to identify and use for this tutorial to work.
Depending upon the settings you use the tool box will either be free-floating
on the screen as an extra window or be embedded into the side of the screen.
If you see no tool box go to the options bar at the top of the page and
hit view, then click on tool box. The tool box should now appear.
The top two buttons in the tool box are selection tools. When this tutorial
asks you to select an area you may use either one of these tools for the
job.
When you click on one of these two buttons another box will appear right
below the tool bar. The top option splices the background color along
with everything else while the bottom box does not select the background.
For the purposes of this tutorial always have the bottom box selected.
When you first see these boxes the top box will be selected as the default.
The yellow rectangle is the eraser. The tool next to it is the paint
bucket. Below these on the right is the magnifier tool, and below this
to the left is the pencil tool.
The color box should be displayed along the edge of the screen. To the
far left of the color bar the current foreground and background colors
are displayed. To select a new foreground color, right-click on any box
and to select a new background color left-click on any box.
If you don't see all these tools you may have a different version of
Paint and may have to modify these instructions to fit the version you
have.
Now that you have these instructions down, it's time to get started.
Pop your mouse open and clean it if you don't use an optic mouse. Yes,
I know it's a pain but a clean mouse will make this much easier.
Ready?
Let's make a dragon!
Step 1: Choose Starting Templates
Choose what bases you want to use for each part of your
dragon and put them all on the same Paint screen. For this example, we
will be making a dragon by combining pieces of the following four dragon
templates:
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Step 2: Erase the bits you know you won't use
Use some fairly light color with the pencil tool to close
in the shapes, then use the paint bucket tool to fill them in. Next replace
the black with some other dark color, but preferably different enough
that you can tell at a glance what's black and what isn't. In this example
I used dark red.
To replace the black with red you have two options. You can select the
entire area and cut it. Select the no background option.Then take the
paint bucket tool and flood the picture with the dark color of your choice.
select black as the background color and paste part you just cut. With
no background the black will have disappeared and the other dark color
will show through.
The other option is to select black as the foreground color and the dark
color of your choice as the background color. Right-click the mouse and
hold the button down, then move it over the black lines. The black will
be replaced with the background color you selected.
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Step 3: Resize and Paste
Select the part you want to resize, then copy and paste it. Right-click
inside the selection box that appeared around the pasted copy. Select
the stretch/skew option. Now enter the same value for both the horizontal
and vertical axis. Numbers greater that 100 will make the image bigger
while numbers smaller than 100 will make it smaller.
Resize all parts that need to be resized and lay them on top of the body.
If you resize the body do this first. Do not use the originals since you
may make mistakes and need to start over.
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Step 4: Connect the Lines
On all parts that were resized use the line tool with black for the line
color to replace them. Use the magnifier tool to get a better look at
the part of the line you are replacing and use very short lines so you
can keep the rounded appearance.
To do this quickly choose a starting point, click and hold to start the
line, drag it for a little way, then release. In the same spot click and
hold again to start the new line and repeat this process.
You can use this same process to customize areas of the dragon, such
as the jowls and tail in the example.
For any area not resized choose black for the background color, the dark
color of your choice for the foreground color, and replace the dark color
with black as described earlier.
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Step 5: Clean Out the Template
Now get rid of the dark color of your choice and the light color of your
choice. To do this select white as the background color, cut the entire
picture and paste it back again. While the picture is still selected switch
the background color to one of the colors you selected. Repeat this step
with the other color.
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Step 6: Color you picture.
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