MS Paint the MMO, I mean... Painter's Playground!

This Guide will be outlining the Tools of the program, as well as techniques to draw with the mouse, and how to get the most out of the software. Also because obviously I had to, draw comparisons to the late and great MS Paint!

Foward

Greetings! This guide is put in place to help all new comers to the software, and to help alleviate any concerns you might have starting out in the wonderful world of art.

First and foremost a Huge thanks to Ryan Dorkoski and his team for developing such an amazing program; even more impressive is that it's running on a very old PC with no GPU and only 4Gb Ram flawlessly. Truly well optimized, and a project of passion that we can all appreciate.

Please enjoy the guide and let me know if anything needs improving, or if you like it!

Tools

Brush

This is the default round brush the game gives you. It behaves like the standard brush on many applications, take note however that the smallest setting leaves little "bumps" because it is leaving behind tiny circles of colour. This is the brush you will spend the majority of your time with in the program, at least until you buy some of the others.

Pen Tool

My personal favourite for line drawing. The Pen tool is your standard small, single pixel pen brush. It is primarily used for rough sketches and fine tuning outlines of works to be finished; it doesn't leave behind a bumpy path because it is a singular square pixel. This should be the first purchase made if you want to have crisp lines in your artwork.

Spray Can

Ahh the good 'ol SprayCan tool, now this is really where the program shines in the "MS PAINT" category. This is you standard, old style, paint SprayCan tool; The flow is almost identical of that long past MS Paint....just give it a click and hold and it'll fill in a circle shaped area randomly pixel by pixel. It's a good way to make those old "MS DOS" style game drawings and to shade in pixel artwork. The way it blends is pretty normal for spray tools, and it's got that '98 charm to it.

Paint Bucket

It's a paint bucket. It fills in large spaces with a single colour so you don't need to do it manually with a brush. Take note however, that this paint bucket is a bit picky and is prone to filling parts of the canvas with other colours on occassion, especially if the lines aren't clearly and neatly defined, resulting in loss of work (unless you have the "undo" button purchased). The tool fills in part of the canvas a single colour, but leaves all the other solid colours that aren't the original colour you've clicked. For example: A blue canvas with many colors, if you click the blue, it overrides just that blue wherever it finds it, and as long as lines are neatly defined, it won't mess with anything else.

Water Colour

This basic brush will add colours to the canvas very lightly, and in a fashion that lets them blend "organically" together (i.e. Red and Blue make purple, Blue and Yellow make Green, etc.) so that it looks like water colours. This brush is one of the more advanced brushes and it certainly adds a very good style to the software. Combine this with the smudge tool, and you can get some water colour, or even Oil Painting-esque results.

Square Brush

This brush is basically the same as the default, except it produces squares. This brush is perfect for pixel related art due to their square nature, and it is an easy brush to use. My personal use for it is to fill in edges since most of them are jagged anyway. This brush here reminds me greatly of the default MS Paint brush...hehehe.

Smudge

Ah Smudge, the most advanced (and most gpu/cpu taxing) brush in the set. This brush isn't really a "brush" but instead it smears the pixels in a random order on the canvas to achieve an anti-aliased "smudge" effect on the piece. This is VERY useful for making Oil Paintings and water colours. It's easy to use, but it will take longer on older and less powerful hardware.

MS Paint!?!?!?!?!

You all knew this was coming!

This software is fantastic, it's easily accessible to anyone (even with a mouse!), and obviously it looks like MS Paint on some levels. It's a fantastic thing! especially since Microsoft is done with it's old 'Paint' program :<

Taking a look at the software thus far here are some things I and my friends have made, both with a mouse, and a Wacom Tablet It has Wacom Support right out of the box! no pressure though, but it doesn't need it.




As you can see most of these are extremely "MS Paint"-esque. This software harkens back to the days of old, when we didn't have those fancy nVidia cards, or those new wonderful Photoshop tools; instead we were at school, doodling away to pass the time, or at home hastily making something fun for our friends...Well....Now you can share them all over again! But this time you can share them over the internet with the whole world. I like to think of this as "MS Paint: The MMO" and I wouldn't have it any other way. Obviously you can make other styles of paintings using water colours or the smudge, but lets face it....no matter what, the charm is there from '95!

1st Edition, Baby!

Originally posted by Sergeant 16-bit:

I had a ton o' fun playing this game. It triggers fond memories of games like Mario Paint. Unlike Mario paint, however, rather than just making stuff for the sake of making stuff, the more you paint, you gain experience points and, eventually, make better-looking images. Just look at this re-creation of the classic 1st Edition Charizard Pokemon card, here. I'll probably try drawing some classic Sonic the Hedgehog box art in the future. Thanks for the extra Steam key, Pixel.

Ease of use

If you know how to use a mouse or tablet in MS paint or Mario paint, you know how to use this game. Playing the game is as simple as clicking the tools and colors, then dragging your device around, totally simple.

Heck, when you begin the game, you are given just the brush. By the time you're comfortable with that, you will already have enough in-game currency to buy more tools to use, which you learn to use one by one as you buy more.

Before you even begin playing in ernest, you get an easy to understand tutorial that doesn't last too long. If you ever need a refresher on the in-game controls, just click F1.

The Gallery and Sale area

THE ONLINE FEATURES

This is where the "MS PAINT: MMO" thing happens, it's not an MMO, but rather the economy of the game, where people buy and sell their artwork. It generates an economy where people appraise art in the gallery, then it is pulled, put in the Harbour, and sold for the Currency - Bits. This generates a sense of economy and community within the program

The Public Gallery

The public Gallery is where all of your listed works go. It is here that you can upload, vote on, flag, and share your art with the world. Please keep in mind it is meant to be tasteful, and cultured, so avoid posting stupid, offensive, or blatant attempts at laziness. The gallery is also a great way to get your artwork to go up in value, as the more thumbs up you get, the more it will be worth.

The Harbour (Selling area)

The Harbour here is where you sell your works to people for the in game currency - bits. People can then put them in the public gallery to collect value and resell, or just keep them in their own private area. The harbour area of the game is where the bulk of the in-game economy happens, seeing as it's the sale of goods.

Conclusion

[Ryan Dorkoski]

Fantastic! Thank you!!