Opinions & feedback?

[impulselondon]

Hey all - here's my current work in progress. Almost every filled object is mesh filled (the primary point of the exercise). Do you guys like this style, or does it seem like I'd be better just trying this type of colouring in Photoshop or Paint?
Let me know what you think - my entire comic book will be in DRAW most likely.

http://brome.toogeek.com/stuff/crap/ynopage2.jpg

Anthony

 

[javabearSTL]

It's very good, Anthony, but you've got kind of two different feels going on. One one hand you've got the soft edge feel of the mesh fills, on the other you've got the hard edges (like the yellow visor and shoulder pad-thingys). I'm just presuming they're items that haven't been finished yet (it *is* a work in progress). It's something that I certainly do not have the talent to create. Well done, man!

 

[Brushman]

I'm with javabear, very nice work. Makes some of my stuff as a sign hack look very ordinary. No doubt about it Draw is very powerful and there are some very gifted people out there.
Alan

 

[impulselondon]

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. I have the entire image almost entirely done now & will update it shortly to the same above link.
And Javabear, you're right - only the mesh-filled areas were actually 'done'. The solid-filled shapes hadn't been touched yet.
As a side note, while I'm really starting to like the sculpted feel I can get with DRAW now, it's really really hard on both my memory and my cpu. Is this pretty typical? I ask because it terrifies me when it crashes in the middle of a project like this - I've already had to start over twice.

 

[Brushman]

Most effects that remain editable in Draw ie dropshadows/blended fills etc can make file sizes huge and sap power, when the project is finished saving as a 'bitmap' may well reduce the file size, the original can be archived just in case you need to alter something at a later date.
Alan

 

[javabearSTL]

Yes, graphics apps are VERY memory and CPU intensive. They will always push your system in ways that pretty much no other application will ever do (except perhaps some games). It will be not uncommon that graphics apps will show problems in underlying system instability (read: hardware issues and other software incompatibility) that you may blame on the one application that shows these problems up when the problems actually lie elsewhere. I had a game that I enjoyed playing that crashed on me constantly - the problem wasn't the game, it's that I had a bad RAM chip and when the memory buffers filled up to the point it reached the bad portion of the one bad chip, things got wonky... it's just that I never reached that point of memory usage except when I played this one game (or sometimes working in large graphics files). I only found it out when I ran a memory tester... pulled the bad chip out and all was fine. I'm only relaying this to say: be sure to check out everything on your system before saying it's the the software app that's the problem (unless of course you can get someone else to run through a specific set of steps to reproduce your issue in the software - if the other person cannot reproduce the issue with the exact same set of steps, then it's likely something specific to your machine and/or your setup that you need to look into that is the problem and NOT the software app). Granted, NO software app on the market today is bug-free. It's pretty much impossible to make such an animal when you're trying to code an app that is "runnable" (if that's a word) on 16-bit and 32-bit, and soon to be 64-bit, operating systems. The structure of these OSs is very different and making something work in one version can screw up something in another and all these workarounds makes things wonky all over the place. As consumers people say "hey, you should've tested it with *my* configuration!" but the amount of new hardware comes out so fast that the software makers can't keep up with all the permutations of mobos, ram, video cards/drivers, CDs/DVDs, etc, ad nauseum that by the time they tested their software with all the possible combos of all the hardware/software on the market today right now, there would be probably 5x the amount of new stuff on the market for them to go test again... they'd never get a product on the market. So when does someone say OK, this is the date we say STOP? No more testing? No matter when that date is, someone will be pissed out there in the world because "you didn't test my configuration and it's buggy on my system."... sorry, my little off topic rant for the morning. No, you can't tell I've done beta testing for software before

 

[impulselondon]

LOL - well, then. Point taken - you did breathe during your rant, yes? Can you recommend the memory tester that you used? Oh, and I have discovered an instant disruption when I try to use any video program at the same time as Corel ('specially Win Media player).
Query: Can I pump my computer full of enough memory to be able to comfortably avoid this issue or will that help?

 

[javabearSTL]

I wasn't venting/ranting to you, IL, please don't take it that way!

http://www.memtest86.com/

I think this was the one I used - it a free app that extracts out to a floppy disk that you boot to. Yeah, there are bugs in Draw, there are bugs in every app out there. I was just trying to point out that very often just a fluke of an odd system config we may have that causes the problem (a unique combo of mobo, video, mouse drivers... stuff like that) or faulty hardware (memory chips, underpowered power supplies - these will give you flaky weird errors, too! just ask any of us with abit an7 motherboards we got POST codes that were not documented anywhere by the manufacturer - we had to figure out for ourselves what the problem was. I had one person telling me it was "xxxxxx" and I had a gut feeling it was power related. They told me I was crazy (not the first time, btw) Fortunately (and luckily), I was right - a more "name brand" power supply fixed the problem right away for that problem).

As for being able to pump the computer full of memory, the memory test will do that. If the memory test fails, pull one of the chips out (if you have multiple chips). If the test fails again, put the other chip in - hopefully it will pass. If it does pass, then you obviously have a bad RAM chip. Personally, I wouldn't run Draw on less than 512MB, I usually run it on 1MB to 1.5MB of RAM... but there are those people who do seem to run into issues with higher amounts of memory, too. There may be something with finding a happy medium of somewhere between 512 or 750MB of RAM

 

[impulselondon]

Ha hah - I love reading your posts, javabear. Makes me smile. Okay folks (I don't know who really cares...) - I have basically finished the piece originally posted above. Here is the link; it's on my 'free' portfolio site.

http://www.artwanted.com/imageview.cfm?ID=204384

Again, it's all mesh fills, except the background. The are currently no drop shadows or transparencies except for the sun glare. It's getting difficult now to stop adding detail...I know the chances of getting it printed at 4'x6' is unlikely. Yet it's so tempting because with a good enough print process, those details will show up at 10"x17" as well.

I babble.

 

[javabearSTL]

It looks gorgeous, IL! And you're not babbling. You should drop in over at the official newsgroups and show off -- do you post over there at all?

 

[impulselondon]

Newsgroups? I...am out of the loop. How do I get there, what do I do? Is there a handshake? I'm not very good with handshakes.

 

[javabearSTL]

yes, newsgroups - before webforums there was usenet. Use a newsreader, not a web browser (like outlook express - not the best, just using it as an example) and point it to cnews.corel.com and you can then subscribe to the various newsgroups (they're separated into various topics by software title and version numbers). They're pretty active and LOTS of very knowledgable people there.

 

[Brushman]

Javabear is a 100% right the Corel newsgroups are a fantastic source of information,I read the V12 one every day and I'm always learning.
Alan

 

[TamedTech]

One point i would like to briefly add if you were having memory and CPU issues... you might want to upgade to a power mac ... i found them much more effective at handling large image files ... you can play around with the system configuration and dedicate certain amounts of power to particular applications ... such as COREL of Photoshop ... this was other apps wont eat away at them!

Thanks, Rob

 

[Brushman]

V12 doesn't run on a MAC - V11 did but from what I read was not very successful, buying another computer with another operating system altogether does seem a little extreme.
Alan