May 21 2011
Black Pearl Basics
Personally I prefer Photoshop, but it’s quite expensive, GIMP on the other hand is FREE.
www.gimp.org
When downloading GIMP you’ll notice they also have tutorials in all sorts of language, this is your help files, and you probably want them.
To create a coat for the Black Pearl, you need to create some digital art. What this means is you’re drawing on the computer. You can use traditional media (pencils, paints, etc.) but that requires a lot of extra work to get your picture ready to submit (I’m not going to go over that, it isn’t worth your time).
To learn more about digital art and specifically how to draw horses just search google for “digital art horse tutorial” and you’ll find hundreds! (I’ll be publishing a list of some of my favourites soon).
The first thing you need to come up with is a concept. You should read all the other articles I’ve done on the black pearl so that you understand the rules. Come up with something different & creative from everything else available, and get ready to practice TONS!
Your creation MUST have a transparent background so that when it’s placed on howrse, you can see the background behind the picture. This is why we are saving your creation as a .png instead of a .jpg/.jpeg; .png has transparency.
Once you’ve got GIMP downloaded & installed on your computer, open’er up and and get ready to play around.
You must follow this guide step-by-step until you are more familiar with the GIMP program.
The first thing to do it download the frame for the golden apple (or HR or HoG).
Open it up in GIMP.
Now you’re ready to start drawing, right click in the area where it shows all your layers, and create a new layer for all your work.
Draw your horse (okay that’s a PRETTY rough pony!), check out the dozens of available digital art horse tutorials on how to draw properly.
Make sure you make him nice & big so he fills up most of the available space.
The horse I drew didn’t overlap the boarders so I added a little bobble just to demonstrate the crop tool clearly.
When you are finished drawing your horse, go to the crop tool, select all the area inside your frame & double-click to crop. This will make sure that there is NO overlapping of the border, which will go against BP guidelines & cause you problems when you’re uploading your image.
(Make sure you are only cropping the layer which has your drawing on it, you submit your artwork with the frame on it)
Now to save, we go to “save as”, make sure “save background colour” is checked, and save your work!
All done!
Now, this image would be accepted into the black pearl but, uh, I can do better ;).
Photoshop is MUCH easier to use, but I’m not going to post a tutorial for that one, because frankly, if you need a tutorial for Photoshop you need a lot more help then I can offer and should be checking out the Adobe site.
Good luck!
UMM. IT WONT WORK FOR SOME REZON CAN YOU DO IT FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY NAME ON HORWSE IS MONSTER86
UMM IM A BIT SORRY A BOUT POSTING THIS A T MY AGE OF TEN
Do not post your password online as other players can access you account. Sorry, but this is the only help to offer. Players create their own coats so they can have the credit
Hi, I was wondering where I could find the frame for the Golden Apple to download? You mentioned downloading a frame for the Golden Apple in the first step. I just got Gimp so I’m a bit confused how to work it.
Thanks!
If you go to the “Creation Space” thread in the events forum, it will always have the newest frames to download.
GL!
You might wan to practice a few times before you sumit your coat so that you have experience of making coats and you have a better chance for your coat being picked.
Where do i go to download the frame for the golden apple?
DO you have to do it on a website or can you draw it?!
Any more tips on Gimp?
I suggest you make multiple layers when using Gimp (one for coloring, one for lines, one for shading, etc.) If you have troubles drawing horses, I would open a reference image as a layer and trace that. Also, the fill bucket DOES NOT work filling in lines painted by the paint brush; you can only fill in lines painted with the pencil (paint brush has soft edge, so you get light spots around the inside of the shape). After you are done coloring the coloring layer, lock alpha it so you don’t have to worry about coloring outside the lines (lock alpha saves the transparency and shape of the colored bits of the layer.
I use Photoshop, and it works well, I know how to use it a bit better than GIMP. I also, because I use a laptop, I take a pencil(With no lead) and press my finger on the left click, the draw. It works nicely. I’d post a screen shot, but I have NO clue how to make those on a dell XD. My user on Howrse is edenlore1234 if you want to PM me!
Does Howrse except all BP drawings that follow their guidelines? I know that is probably a really stupid question, but can you please answer anyway? I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m thinking about buying a BP and then creating a coat. I want to do all my research before I invest pass into it. :)
I don’t believe all are accepted. In fact, I don’t think you can send in a coat at the moment as Black Pearl is not available in the Black Market.
I was wondering how to get gimp on mac. it won’t download for me!!!
Hi , so the first step . ,where do i go to download , i went to creation space but it doesn’t say anywhere where to find it -___- , please help me ! please respond
Thanks Julia aka – thunder6643 ( on howrse ]
can you use picassa? or paint?
How do you put a template in???