My palette-making adventures (middling longish post)
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My palette-making adventures
By Sue Dunn Embe
How do, fellow dollmakers,
I made a couple of fkiss dolls early last year. They were nice 256 color doll sets, and I thought I'd go back and fool with them some more. But danged if I can get the palettes right.
Back then, I used PaintShop Pro (Hereinafter referred to as "PSP") version 4, or thereabouts. This time, I'm using PSP 8.10, which is so convenient and helpful that so far, I've found it impossible to use.
These are the things that have changed since last year:
a.) I'm using a new version of PSP
b.) I'm using Win XP, so I can't use the utils I used a year ago (tried 'em, no luck. PFKS 1.0 does work, however).
c. I forgot what the heck I did in PSP to make that furshlugginer .kcf file come out right. Miss Lum looks like she been run over with a Bush Hog (tm).
So I've been reading the boards and people's websites, including Zorro's excellent tutorial (which enabled me to succeed last year. Thank you, Zorro!)...but with XP and the newer version of PSP, I'm still a few miles out to sea w/ respect to palettes. So as I relearn this Lost Technology, I'll record my adventures--maybe I'll make my own tutorial after I figure it out.
To save my more experienced Kiss/fkiss-making comrades wear on their fingers, here's the stuff I already know how to do vaguely tolerably well:
a.) making.cnf files
b.) making .cel files out of a 256 color bitmap
If you'd like to see the Lum doll I made last year, here it is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sue_dunn_embe/files/
lamuzip.zip
Oh, and: ranmafkiss.zip , too. Martial arts loitering with poseable Happosai. You can really see how lazy I was drawing only the front parts of the clothes. Note the one outfit that is a palette boo-boo which turned out to look pretty neat. It was the first .cnf I had composed since, like, 1997, and it's a mess! Surprising how nice the set actually works.
(Good luck getting there if you aren't a Yahoo member...or even if you are. Everybody I know says it's bloody impossible to get into this adult-section group to see the files. Search in Yahoo groups for one called sue_dunn_embe, and it'll say "sorry, no such group found" even though the group has been there for 2 or 3 months. I think since it's a Yahoo group, you have to join it, but you can just look around and unsubscribe five minutes later if you want to. There's no voluminous email dialogue going on there, so don't fear for your inbox's purity.)
Anyway: trying to figure out what I did to make the palette file last year. Since I had a whole mess of bitmaps to make .cels out of, did I have all of them open at once in a single file? I mean, like a collage? I don't remember doing that.
Then there's the background color/transparent color/whatever. I don't remember doing anything with that at all, except that the background is black.
I was pretty lazy doing the clothes, just drawing the front side of whatever garments that were involved. This time, once I figure out that potrzebie palette issue, maybe I'll get a bit more polished and do it like I meant it.
See you around,
Sue Dunn Embe
Posted on Feb 28, 2004, 1:47 AM from IP address 68.88.76.176