Animation Background Painting using Satori Film FX Software

Special web edition. Written and Illustrated by Michael Hirsh.

Tutorial 01. Page 2 of 5

Step Four:

Now, go into the Actions Palette and click on the Object button. Move the slider down until the "BlockOut" layer shows in the window, and you will see all the various objects used in painting the layer: There will be Polygons, Rectangles and Brush objects. The buttons on the right of this window give you the opportunity to Select for Edit, Rename... or Apply Current

Give Objects more memorable names...

Click on the bottom-most object (probably the Rectangle you used to create the sky,) and it will be highlighted in blue. Now click Select for Edit and look at the main screen. You will see tiny grey points at the edge of the object you have selected. If it is a rectangle you've chosen, it will have the points at the corners, connected by thin grey lines. Click on the Abort Edit button on the Edit Toolbar to quit the editing process.

Cancelling the Edit.

Now you have associated the part of the picture with its default name in the Object List, you can use the Rename... button to give it a sensible name, such as "Sky".

There are two advantages to selecting and deselecting objects in the list.. First you can find and rename the important ingredients of your pictures so that you don't become bewildered by scores of identical looking brushstroke names in the Object List. Don't bother to name every single object, just the important ones. It's good to get into the habit of naming significant objects immediately after creating them, and so avoid having to hunt through the list. The second advantage of selecting and deselecting is that you can reload the parameters of one object and apply them to another, new object straightaway. This is a real time saver.

Satori comes up with some fairly dry sounding names.Work around this by supplying your own.

Step Five:

Now paint in the sky using Geometry /Shape / Rectangle/ Box Corner fill.
Refer to your Blockout for colours to drop into the four corners of this control, or use the eye-dropper tool to select colours from the corners of the Blockout sky.
When you are happy with the colours, stretch the Rectangle to cover the whole sky area.

What a bright, shiny day.

This will produce a very smooth sky. Paint into the brightest and into the darkest corners to increase the contrast curve. We'll customise a large Airbrush for this by first adjusting its default properties.

You have two ways to enter the Brush Setup... menu.

Either; Click in the thumbnail which shows the size of the current brush, or use the button marked, you guessed it: Brush Setup... Only two of the five tabs concern us here, Profile, and Parameters. The Profile tab allows you to change the outline of the brush. Change this by dragging the square threaded on the line in the right hand window. Like so:

For this sky we'll be using a very soft edge to the airbrush, so drag the control square to the right and gently downwards. You can add further tag points along this line.

The Parameters tab allows you to change the elliptical shape of the brush, and its rotation. Use the Aspect slider to alter the thickness and thinness of the brushstroke, and the Rotation slider to alter its slant.

Hit the Apply Now button for your changes to take effect, then close the dialogue box.

Paint the large arcs in the sky with a big Airbrush, and a light colour. If you like the results but the brushstrokes are too heavy or need to be moved, click on the Edit tool bar, using the Previous Selection arrow keys to highlight the stroke, like so:

and either alter the Transparency Slider which appears on the Size tab of the Paint palette,or, move the brushstroke itself using the little arrow.

The "move selection" arrow.