Pre Set Shapes

To see the printer friendly version of this tutorial, click HERE

There are lot's of different ways to use the preset shapes tool. I'm going to show just a few.

The colour palette usually determines how the shape will look unless you have Retain as Style checked.

Open a new canvas. I made mine 500x500 transparent

Click on the preset shapes tool   then go to the tool options box

First we're just going to have anti alias checked, line width set at 3 and solid line style

In your colour palette, set the foreground (top styles box) box to NULL and the background box (bottom styles box) to a solid colour, pattern or gradient of your choice

Click on the little arrow at the side of the picture window and a drop down menu will open. Choose a shape. I chose a flower

Now click on the new canvas and keeping the mouse button pressed, drag the flower shape to the size you want it.

I added an inner bevel to the flower using the following settings

Now we're going to make another shape but this time in the tool options box click on Retain Style

It doesn't matter what you have in your colour palette now because the shape will be made as it is shown in the tool options window.

Open a new canvas and make your shape.

Open a new canvas and this time we're going to create a shape as a vector

Draw the shape on the new canvas and you will see it has a box round it. The box also has little squares in the middle of each line and on each corner. It also has one in the middle

When you create something as a vector you can squash it using the little squares. Move your mouse over the squares and you will see it turns into a double headed arrow

Drag the squares around, play with them to see what they do.

The square in the middle rotates the shape. Move your mouse over the middle square and you will see it it changes to a curved arrow. Press the left mouse button and rotate the shape.

When you've got the shape to how you want it go to the layer palette and right click on the vector layer

Click on Promote to layer

For the next one we're going to use the ellipse shape

Take the tick out of the retain style box and just have anti alias ticked

change the line width to 10

Now open a new canvas and draw an oval. I added the same inner bevel as above

If you click on the little connecting arrow on your colour palette to change your foreground colour to your background colour you will get a solid oval

I added a tube and some text to the open oval I made

The way to learn about preset shapes is to play around with the settings and the foreground and background colour boxes.

For the sig tag above I Copied the first flower I made into Animation Shop and added rotate colours then added a doll

I have a tutorial HERE to show you how to add text (or a doll) to an animation

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial

Tutorial written by Shell © 2003