GATHERING YOUR TOOLS

If you want to produce art work on your PC, you not only need some basic talent, but you have to have the right tools. I've known some people who can do wonders with an ordinary mouse and the MSPaint program that comes with Windows. However, I will say categorically here and now, if you are interested in digital painting, don't even bother attempting to do so with a mouse. I know. I tried a looong time ago by sketching in DeluxePaint - and the hand-cramps were unbelievable.

HARDWARE

For serious work, you need a graphics tablet. It needn't be an expensive one, as long as it supports pressure sensitivity. Personally, I opted for a WACOM tablet, which are the best IMHO - but they are fairly expensive. There are cheaper alternatives that will do the job, and it pays to shop around for the best deals. Also, keep in mind that graphics tablets can come in a range of sizes, and the larger sizes will be more expensive. I manage with an A5 sized tablet (which refers to the drawing area, not the size of the tablet itself). So that's the hardware sorted, you say. Er, no, not quite. If you have already produced some sketches, and want to colour them, then you are going to have to get them from paper into the PC, and the best way to do that is to get a flatbed scanner. I won't recommend a handheld scanner - because you have to have a very steady hand and extreme patience to use them effectively. Flatbed scanners also need not be expensive, and again it's a good idea to shop around for one you like. Some even come with free packages (mine came with Textbridge OCR and Adobe PhotoDeluxe for example), so you can start building your software suite as you add new peripherals. If you can't afford a scanner, then you can always ask a friend, or check to see if there is a shop or centre nearby where you can have images scanned and saved onto disk cheaply. In the UK, you might find a telecottage nearby that offers these services.

Next you need to look at your PC. The more RAM you have installed, the better. I only have 256Mb RAM at the moment, and sometimes my PC slows to a crawl, especially when I am working with a file that has multiple layers. The other thing to look at is hard disk space...when producing graphics files at higher resolutions, which have multiple layers, you are talking in 10's of Mbs per file. Luckily, both memory and hard disks are relatively cheap these days, so if you find your PC can't handle it, it might be time to upgrade.

Now, you have to think about backups. Just imagine...you've spent a year or more producing great works of art on your PC...and then suddenly your hard disk crashes and you lose everything. One answer is to physically print everything you produce, but that still means you would have to scan them in again and tweak them at a later date. If you have a CD-burner in your PC, now is the time to learn to use it. It always pays to make more than one copy of piece of work, too, in case one of your CD's proves to be faulty. There are other backup devices on the market, such as ZIP and JAZ drives from Iomega, and others from LACIE, etc. However, these are usually more expensive in terms of initial drive cost and media.

Lastly, your monitor should support at least 24-bit colour. You will usually see some kind of banding at 16-bit resolutions, so I recommend working in 24-bit or 32-bit colour resolution.

SOFTWARE

If you're just starting out, I don't recommend anyone buying top-of-the-line packages with all the bells and whistles, because they all have hefty price tags attached. You can produce some good effects even with shareware packages. Personally - I've managed to cobble together my own little suite of packages, for minimal cost. Although I bought and paid for PaintShop Pro 7 (£50), and CorelDraw 6 suite, the rest of the stuff I use came as freebies on computer magazine CDs. I have Painter Classic, XRes 2.0, Bryce 2, Corel Photoshop, Adobe PhotoDeluxe 2, Freehand 8, Poser 3, among others, which just cost me the price of the magazines they came with. So it pays to visit your local store and check out all the PC mags - and I don't mean the dedicated game magazines. Personally, I've found useful software on PC Format, PC Plus and Computer Arts among others.

MY FAVOURITES

Although I have a range of software at my disposal, the two I use the most are Painter Classic and Painshop Pro 7.

PaintShop Pro has a lot of pretty good features that rival some of those found in Adobe Photoshop, for a fraction of the cost. I like it's airbrush tool, the smudge tool, and the selection and colouring tools. Perhaps more importantly, it supports layers, which is pretty much essential, because it allows you to set a background, and then overlay it with your characters, which can each be on a separate layer. I also use a layer for lighting and other effects, so that it doesn't affect the original images. In this way, if anything goes wrong, I can scratch that layer and start over - with no damage done. The only problem with using layers is that they eat memory like candy. By adding a layer, you are basically doubling the file size. I have 256 Mb RAM in my PC, which suffices for my current needs, but I do have to be careful.

Painter Classic (and subsequent version) emulate natural media, so you can paint with oils, watercolour, charcoals, do pencil sketches etc., all emulated very well within the package. It also allows you to configure all of the brushes etc, so it's like having access to an art shop. It also supports pressure sensitivity, which again is essential if you are used to applying different pressures to get light or dark strokes when using real pencils etc. The only disadvantage with the version I have is a lack of layer support - which is one of the reasons why I use PSP7. Later versions of Painter do support layers. Guess what's on my upgrade list. ;)