{"id":1702,"date":"2010-12-16T05:00:45","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2010-12-12T12:58:46","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T17:58:46","slug":"howd-ya-do-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/howd-ya-do-that\/","title":{"rendered":"How’d Ya Do That?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

This is how I start. I sketch with a non-photo blue pencil and then ink over the lines. The drawing gets scanned in Xsane and then imported into Gimp where color is added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“How’d ya do that?”\u00a0 I get this question as often as I get , “How do you get your ideas?”\u00a0 And, of course, the first question refers to the kinds of digital tools I use to help produce my cartoon features and images for my blog posts.<\/p>\n

Since moving over to Linux,<\/a> I’ve been using the graphics applications the come with this wonderful OS<\/a>.\u00a0 And I use them exclusively to produce all my cartoon features.\u00a0 The Gimp (photo editing)<\/a> and Scribus (Desktop publishing)<\/a>, especially, do a great job in helping me create my cartoon features for newspapers and other print publications.<\/p>\n

In addition to my print features, The Gimp and Scribus both proved quite handy when I recently prepared a special blog post.<\/p>\n

If you’re a reader of this blog, you already know that, this year, I decided to offer a George Christmas ornament to all my readers.\u00a0 I used the Gimp and Xsane (the Linux scanning utility) to prepare all the art.\u00a0 I drew a festive George complete with Christmas Santa cap.\u00a0 Using Xsane, I scanned it at 600 DPI and brought it into Gimp.\u00a0 (For the uninitiated, Gimp is the Photoshop equivalent in the Linux world.)<\/p>\n

Once I have it Gimp, it’s easy to add all the color.\u00a0 The Gimp is as easy to use as Photoshop or any other photo editing software.<\/p>\n

Since I know I’ll be using this art in Scribus, I usually save my cartoon images as .png image files.\u00a0 Doing so allows me to give them a clear background.\u00a0 When I bring the .png file into Scribus, I can then make use of the clear background to layer over other images.\u00a0 Scribus also allows me to drop a color background into that clear area.<\/p>\n

Now that the art is complete in Gimp, it’s then a very simple matter of importing it into Scribus and laying it all out on the page.\u00a0 Scribus is a really\u00a0 powerful desktop publishing software app!\u00a0 It has all the tools you need to layout a newsletter, magazine page, greeting card, web publication…whatever kind of print publication you need!<\/p>\n

For the ornament, I used the shape tools to create the round ornament with green background field.\u00a0 I used Scribus’ text tools to drop in the text.\u00a0 Scribus has a nice drop shadow tool which will add that effect to the text.\u00a0 It’s really very handy.\u00a0 After I get it all laid out, I then export as a PDF and upload that file to my blog.\u00a0 I linked to the PDF file so blog readers can now, through the click of the mouse, get a free paper George 2010 Christmas ornament!<\/p>\n

Again, you can get the ornament, too, by visiting this blog at the following page:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/an-early-christmas-gift\/<\/a><\/p>\n

If you want to give someone a great gift this Christmas, give them Linux!<\/a> It’s free, powerful, stable, secure, and fits just about any computer system. And all the software mentioned in this article (along with hundreds of others) is absolutely free with Linux!\u00a0 Many are even pre-installed.\u00a0 When you install Linux, you install all this great software at the same time!<\/p>\n

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“How’d ya do that?”\u00a0 I get this question as often as I get , “How do you get your ideas?”\u00a0 And, of course, the first question refers to the kinds of digital tools I use to help produce my cartoon features and images for my blog posts. Since moving over to Linux, I’ve been using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,22,108,9,87],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-behind-the-scenes","tag-drawing-george","tag-gimp","tag-linux","tag-scribus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1744,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.georgetoon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}