Contents

Help Contents…

Introduction

Shareware Notice

Registering Art School

Getting Started

Understanding the Screen

Using the Action Bar

Using the Palette Bar

Using the Preset Brushes

Using the Pen Bar

Saving and Loading Pictures

Using the Colouring Book

Printing

Keyboard Commands

Child Locking

Customizing Art School

Upgrades

Other Product Information

Contacting the Author

End User Licence Agreement

Reference Information

Art School is protected under British and International copyright laws.  The Art School logo, “KidiCom” and KidiCom logo  are TradeMarks of and Copyright © 1993-98 Alan Carter / Digital Solutions.


Registering Art School

Thank you for taking the time to consider registering this product.  Your registration will ensure further development of Art School and my other programs, as well as giving me more faith in the shareware system!  Thanks

The current registration amount is US$30.00 or UK£15.00.  This will get you the latest, full version of ArtSchool on CD with Printed manual and all the other features that come with the full version.

A unlimited user site license is available for schools and institutions at US$100.00 or UK£50.00.

You can register Art School by:

1.  	Sending a US or UK personal cheque, cash or Postal Order to:

Alan Carter

57 Greta Road

Skelton

Cleveland

TS12 2NF

ENGLAND

If payment is with a cheque or Postal Order, please make it payable to

Alan Carter.

2.  	Registering Online at the Art School Website with your Visa/Mastercard.

The registration amount is US$30.00 when registering with a credit card.

Art School’s Web Site is located at:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Sector/7671/

At the time of writing I am working on a dedicated domain for Art School, however, the above page will always be available and will link to any new site when it becomes available.

3.  	Postal Credit Card Ordering.  Please send the following information for

prompt attention:

Card Holders Name

Card Holders Full Address

Credit Card Number

Expiry Date

And mail to:

Alan Carter

57 Greta Road

Skelton

Cleveland

TS12 2NF

ENGLAND

4.	Other postal / cash only orders in your local currency.  Please only send paper

currency as I can’t convert coins.  As exchange rates differ I’m afraid it is up to

you to get as close to US$30.00 as possible!  If you must use this method (its

awkward and quite insecure )  please send your details to the above address.

All credit card orders are processed by a US shareware processing company and will appear on your statement as Kagi.

If you have any problems: Contacting the Author


Software Discounts

Registered users of any KidiCom or Digital Solutions product receive

a voucher worth 20% off the purchase cost of any of our other products.


Introduction

Art School : Junior Edition is the fun and easy way for your children to experience computer art on your PC.  Hidden below its uncluttered and easily accessible interface you’ll find a wealth of creative tools and accessories to occupy and fascinate young minds, as well as prompting artistic talent!

All of Art Schools many features are accessed using a simple button orientated approach.   This makes it simple for kids to get to the tools they want without having to negotiate confusing menus and dialog boxes.  What menu options are available can be locked away from prying fingers with the Child Locking facility.

This version of Art School, the Junior version, is aimed at kids age 4 and upwards, and a look under the hood reveals the some of the many features:

A forty page colouring book containing a wide variety of pictures to paint.

240 preset brushes ( or stamps ) that can be used interactively with 11 full colour themed backdrops

38 special Actions all accessed at the click of a button.

Full complement of traditional drawing tools, pen, line, ellipse etc.

An easy to use colour palette.

A fill tool with over 45 different styles.

Two pages to draw on, twice the fun!

Animated buttons and vocal accompaniment.

Create posters from your drawings.

And many more!

As always the easiest way to get to know a new program is to experiment.  By all means play with Art School to get to know it better, the more you know, the easier you can guide your children.  However, some features are indispensable when using the program and unless you are aware of them you probably won’t be using Art School to its full potential.  As a gentle reminder..

Read the Tips of the Day, that appear when Art School is started, and,

Read this help file.


Getting Started

Select a topic:

System Requirements

Installation

Running Art School

Common Problems


System Requirements

Required:

Microsoft Windows 95 / 98.

Super VGA or similar graphics adapter capable of supporting a display resolution of 640 x 480 with 16bit colour depth.  Art School will not run in 256 colour modes.

8 megabytes of memory, 16 or more definitely recommended.

A mouse with at least two buttons (oh yes!)

A 386 or greater processor, Pentium recommended.

Optional:

B&W or colour printer installed through Windows.

Sound card


Installation

If your reading this help file, you don’t need help with installation!  Art School runs entirely from the directory you extracted it too, it doesn’t tweak registries and it doesn’t copy its files anywhere other than the folder your specified at install time.

Art School uses the reliable InstallShield program to Install and Uninstall.  To remove Art School from your system go to the Windows control panel and select “Add/Remove Programs”


Running Art School

Art School behaves like any other Windows program.


Common Problems

Art School will not start.

The most common cause of this problem is an incompatible screen mode in Windows.  If you clicked on the Art School icon and a dialog box warned of the screen mode problem then you can fix it by following the instructions below.  If you clicked on the Art School icon and nothing at all happened, that is very strange indeed and I would suggest re-installing Art School.

Changing display modes in Windows 95:

Move the mouse to an empty part of your desktop and click the right mouse button, a popup menu will, erm, popup.  Select Properties.

You will then be presented with the Display Properties dialog, select the Settings tab.

Look for the Colour Palette box, click on it and then select `High Color (16 bit)`

Note:  if your video card does not support 16 bit colour it may not be correctly set up for use with Windows, most recent cards support 16 bit and above.  Please refer to the instructions that came with your video card if this is the case.

Click okay - on some machines you may have to restart windows for the setting to take effect.

The mouse pointer is trapped.

You have forgotten to disable the Child Lock, though how you did that and managed to be reading this is quite fantastic!  Use Control + Alt + F12 to disable it.

The colour scheme is wrong.

Some video cards handle high colour modes in different ways, Art School performs a self test when it starts to determine how it will interpret colour on your machine.  If this test has returned a result incompatible with your machine you can disable this self test from the menu.

There is no sound.

Check to see if Windows is generating sound first, if it is there are a couple of potential problems.

Make sure Art School is the only program running, sometimes another program may be using the sound device and Art School is denied its use.

You may have deleted the sounds from Art Schools folder.  Check in the music folder, if it is empty Art School cannot play any MIDI music.  Then check in the system folder and see if a file: Sounds.wav exists, if that has gone Art School will not be able to play sound samples.  In either case try re-installing.

The Colouring Book doesn’t work

Art School will look in the ColBooks folder to try and load in a page.  If there are none in the folder the button will simply click back up.  Try re-installing.

The Preset Pictures don’t work.

The preset pictures are stored in the Presets folder in the Art School folder, if they are corrupt or missing Art School will display an error.  Try re-installing.

The Actions are running too quickly.

On high-end Pentium class machines the tool may indeed run too quickly.  This can be fixed by selecting `Change Tool Speeds` from the supervisor menu in Art School.

My bank balance is dangerously low.

So is mine, I’m afraid I can’t help you with that problem!


Child Locking

The Child Locking feature provides the following:

Stops kids from clicking the Start Bar.

Stops them from resizing or exiting Art School.

Restricts any menu’s or control buttons.

Disables any dialogs that would normally popup.

It does not protect against ALT+TAB program selection.

To enable child locking select Supervisor | Enable Child Lock from the pull down menus.  The menu strip will be replaced with a message and the Child Lock is active.

To disable the Child Lock, press and hold CONTROL+ALT+F12, a sound will play and Art School will revert to normal operation


Saving and Loading Pictures

Art School uses the standard Windows Bitmap ( .BMP) format which means pictures created in Art School can be loaded into any other Windows painting. application.

To load a picture Select File | Load Picture from the pull down menus.

To save a picture Select File | Save Picture from the pull down menus.

By default, when you select either Load or Save Art School will look in the Pictures directory, there is no need to use this directory if you have pictures located elsewhere.

NOTE:  Art School can not currently load compressed or bitmaps containing less than 256 colours.  If you intend to import pictures not created in Art School, please see the documentation that came with your other application regarding colour formats.


Printing

Art School 1.2 can now print to any printer installed through Windows.  When you are ready to print your pictures, Select File | Print Centre from the pull down menus.  The following dialog box should appear:

It is from here that you can choose how you want your picture to be printed, what size, type, and choose your printer and / or settings.

General Settings

The options in this part of the dialog box setup the basics for your print-out and are described below:

Print Cut-Out Guides:  click this option on if you are making a poster or would like to cut-out your picture from the printed page.  This is useful if your drawing has a white background, especially for posters where you will want all your pages to be an even size!  This option just draws a fine outline around the drawing.

Center Picture on Page: makes sure that your outputted picture is always placed central on the paper regardless of its orientation.

Show Print Dialog Box: after clicking the Print! Button in the dialog box, if this option is set it will bring up the standard Windows Print Box to allow you to select more settings.  If you just want to print-out your picture immediately, click this setting to off.

Print Type

The options here select whether or not you want just a normal single page sized print-out of your picture, or one of three poster sized printouts.  A poster print works by chopping up your picture onto more than one page - which at the end of the print run can be combined into a big poster!  Printing very large posters can be time consuming!

Page Scaling

These options allow you to “scale” the output of your picture to the printer.  The most common use for these options is when printing big posters - it is often faster to choose a smaller printing size for bigger posters.

If you choose Do Not Scale, the picture will be output to the printer in the same resolution as the display (which is often much less than printer ).

Change Printer Setup

If you have more than one printer, or would like to print in a different orientation ( landscape or portrait ), clicking this button will bring up your standard Windows print settings dialog.  The settings here are not permanent, and are used just for the duration of your print run.

Once you have finished printing, Click the Cancel button to return to Art School.


Keyboard Commands

Art School uses the following…

CONTROL + ALT + F12 : Disable Child Lock (when active)

SPACE BAR : Switches between the current and spare pages.

ARROW KEYS : Alter a drawing effect when the flashing arrow icon is visible.


Customizing Art School

Select a topic:

Creating your own Brush sets.

Creating your own Colouring Book pages.

Changing the Music.


Customizing Art School:

Creating your own Brush Sets

Things you should know:

Art School uses brush files as 640 x 480, 256 colour Windows bitmaps.

Brushes are arranged in the bitmap in a grid, 64 x 64 pixels.

The default brush file is CLASSIC.BMP.

All brush files are in the BRUSHES directory.

For brushes to appear transparent, the background colour must be absolute black - an RGB value of 0,0,0.

To use black on the brush itself, use an approximation, an RGB value of 16,16 16 should work just fine.

For a better understanding of the arrangement of the brushes inside the picture, load DEFAULT.BMP (or any other brush set) into a graphics editor such as Paint Shop Pro, or, for a quick look, load the picture into Art School (you wont be able to see the whole file).

Implementing your own files:

Step by Step:

1. 	Start up your painting package.

1. 	Create a bitmap 640x512 with 256 colour depth.

1. 	Draw your brushes into squares 64x64 size, if you need to simulate black on the brushes, use an approximation : RGB 16,16,16 will do fine.

1. 	When you’ve finished, colour in all the regions you want to show transparently with absolute black : RGB 0,0,0

1. 	Save the bitmap ( in .BMP format, uncompressed ) into Art School’s Brushes directory.

The brush set will now be available for use.


Customizing Art School:

Creating your own Colouring Book Pages

Things you should know:

Art School uses 1 bit ( 2 colour ) 640 x 480 PCX file for the pages.

On startup, Art School scans the COLBOOKS directory for a list of all available colouring book pages, and then picks a random start point.

When a user clicks the Colouring Book button, Art School moves sequentially through its list of available pages, cycling back to the start when the end is reached.

Before the page is displayed on the screen it is scaled to fit the Painting Area, depending on the image this may sometimes cause gaps to appear between lines that allow the fill tool to leak out onto other parts of the picture.  ALWAYS make sure your outline image is constructed with lines at least 2 pixels wide.


Customizing Art School:

Changing the Music

When Art School starts it scans the music directory for any MIDI files and then puts them into an internal list.  The tunes are then picked and played randomly during the running time of the program..

You can add or delete as many MIDI files from this directory as you wish and Art School will play them accordingly.  As long as the MIDI file can be played through the Windows multimedia tools Art School will have no problems.


Upgrades

This is version 1.2 of Art School and improves considerably on earlier versions.  More are planned, including a full rebuild for version 2.0.  All registered users will be kept informed of developments.


Shareware Notice

Art School is Shareware, a cool way of distributing software cheaply and giving you the user the chance of evaluating a program at your leisure.  The software is not free and if, after using the program a couple of times you decide to keep it you are required to register.  Registering a program brings with it many benefits often including new features, technical support, upgrade options and other bonuses only registered users can enjoy.

Shareware relies heavily on the honesty of a user.  It’s all to easy to simply keep on using unregistered shareware, after all, the program works so why pay for it ?  Well one answer is that an individual (in my case) or individuals has spent many, many hours crafting that program you see before you and will no doubt be expecting some kind of reward for their work.  Even the simplest of programs take a massive amount of time and effort too produce, not just the programming but the graphics, the sound, the documentation, the help files etc, it is actually quite an undertaking.  When you register you give the authors the incentive to continue and the just reward they (mostly) deserve.  Quite often registering a program will indirectly benefit you, for example, if enough people register this program I will see that it found a market, that people like it and will continue developing Art School more and more, making it better and better.  If you don’t register but like and use the program,  the chances are the version you have will be the only version ever produced, support will end and so will the development.

Thank you kindly.


Other Products

Look out for the following product demonstrations in circulation, or you can order them right now if you have faith!

Private Notepad	32bit	US$5.00

A quick and reliable replacement of the indispensable Windows notepad, except this one features built in document encryption and a true notepad feel with red line margins etc.

WinCrypt	32bit.	US$20.00

A powerful encryption tool for Windows 95.  Wincrypt works by creating a secure file area on your computer that acts as a virtual drive.  All files can be read and written too just like a normal drive, except Wincrypt encrypts all data moving in and out of the device.  A powerful cyphering system using a random file key ensures your data remains secure at all times.


Contacting the Author

You can contact me, Alan Carter, for whatever reason by:

Telephone:	+44 (01287) 653225

E-Mail:	kidicom@kagi.com

alanc@fcmail.com

ICQ:	10480931

WWW:	http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Sector/7671/

Snail Mail:	Alan Carter

57 Greta Road

Skelton

Saltburn

Cleveland

ENGLAND

TS12 2NF

I would especially be interested in comments, ideas for new tools and bug reports as this is the first release of Art School and I have every intention of developing it further.  I look forward to hearing from you all!


End User License Agreement

Art School is protected by copyright law and international treaty.  This license agreement describes your rights and responsibilities as a user of this software.  "Art School” and "KidiCom" and “Creative software for the next generation” are trademarks of Digital Solutions.

Art School : Junior Edition Shareware Demonstration Version is provided to the user for evaluation for 30 days without a license fee.  At the end of the evaluation period, the user must either register the program or stop using it.  The Demonstration Version may be copied freely and distributed to other users provided that no fee is charged.  Anyone distributing Art School for any kind of remuneration must have authorization from Digital Solutions.  See the file "VENDOR.TXT" for more information about distributor licensing.

Upon paying the registration fee, one copy of Art School : Junior Edition Registered Version is licensed to the purchaser for use on one computer at any one time.  You must treat the software just like a book ( not literally, just like a book).  This software may be used by any number of people and may be freely moved from one computer location to another, so long as there is no possibility of it being used at one location while it's being used at another.


Reference Information

Art School : Junior Edition was created using the following tools:

Turbo C++ 3.1 Visual Edition	( Borland International ) .. an oldie but a goldie!

Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0	( Microsoft )

Deluxe Paint II	( Electronic Arts )

Paint Shop Pro 4.11	( JASC Inc )

Word `95	( Microsoft )

A DX4-75	( ? )  Since upgraded, along with the program

Art School has been tested and found to work without error on:

Cyrix 166 and 200 running Windows 95

Pentium 166 running Windows 95

Pentium 133 running Windows 95

DX4-100 running Windows 95

DX4-75 running Windows 95

Combination test also involved Cirrus Logic, S3, Diamond Stealth and Matrox Video Cards as well as Creative Labs and ESS sound cards.  All machines had differing memory configurations from 8 to 64Mb.


The Main Art School Display

Click an area for a description of its use.

Art School may also display the following windows instead of the Palette Bar…


FLASHING ARROWS

Whenever these arrows flash it signals that your current tool or action can be

altered in some way.  Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to check out the

effects.  For example, when using the Text Action tool, the flashing arrows

signify that the height and width of the font can be altered.


BIN TOOL

Quickly clears the screen without animation, to clear the screen

with animation, use the bin icon from the Action Bar.


MENU BAR

Contains the Art School drop down menus.

See Also:  Child Locking


TOOL BAR

This is the main point of control in Art School, all of the other interactive features of the program are accessed through this panel.  Click here for a description of each button.


PEN BAR

Changes the size of the `pen` nib for all tools and actions.


FILL SELECTOR

Located on the Palette Bar this tool is used to select a pattern that will be used fill shapes and areas.

Click here for information on selecting a pattern.


PALETTE BAR

This is where colour selections are made.  For more information on using the Palette Bar see: Using the Palette Bar.


ACTION BAR

When this bar is displayed each button represents a drawing tool or special effect.  Use the arrow buttons at each side of the window to scroll through the available Actions.

For more information on using the Action Bar see: Using the Action Bar.


BRUSH BAR

When this bar is displayed each button represents a brush or picture that can be pasted into the painting area.  Use the arrow keys at each side of the window to scroll through the available Brushes.

For more information on using the Brush Bar see: Using the Preset Brushes.


PAINTING AREA

This is where you create your drawings in Art School.

TIP:  Using the Space Bar flips you between a spare page and your current page!


MAIN TOOLS

 Pen Tool

Creates simple freehand drawings.  To alter the size of the pen, select a pen nib from the Pen Size Bar.  To change the colour of the pen, see Using the Palette Bar.

 Line Tool

Draws a line between two points

 Rectangle Tool

Draws filled rectangles in a variety of patterns

 Ellipse Tool

Draws filled ellipses in a variety of patterns

 Eraser

Rubs away a drawing back to the original paper colour.

 Brush Tool

Displays the brush bar at the bottom of the screen.

See also Using the Preset Brushes

 Actions Tool

Displays the actions bar at the bottom of the screen

 Fill Tool

Fills an enclosed area of the screen using the current fill style, foreground and background colours.  The pattern used to fill shapes and areas is selected from the Fill Selector.

 Scissors Tool

This cuts a rectangular area of the screen and then allows the user to paste it repeatedly.  After the area has been cut Art School automatically switches to Brush mode.

 Undo Button

This will restore the picture to the state it was in before the last action.


Using the Palette Bar

Fill Selector	    Colour Selection Buttons

The palette bar can be used to select a colour for use by one of the drawing tools when you click a coloured button or to select a pattern used to fill shapes and areas.  The colour you select also depends on which mouse button you press…

Clicking with the left button selects what is known as a foreground colour or primary colour.  This is the colour used for all drawing tools.

Clicking with the right button selects a background colour, or secondary colour.  The secondary colour is only used in Art School with the Patterned Fill options.  To see this in action select two different colours, one with the left mouse button and one with the right.  Then select a Fill Pattern, you should see both of the colours you selected in the pattern.

If the Palette Bar is hidden.

When the palette is obscured by the Action Bar and you need to pick a new colour, follow the following procedure:

Move the mouse pointer over the Action Bar.

Press and hold the right mouse button to display the palette.

While still holding the right mouse button, click on a colour with the left button and   release.  Your new colour will now be selected.

See Also:  Selecting a Fill Pattern


Selecting a Fill Pattern.

 The Fill Selector

The small box between the two arrows shows what fill pattern is currently active.

The colours shown in the pattern consist of both primary and secondary colours selected from the Palette Bar using the left and right mouse buttons.

Change the pattern by pressing the arrow buttons and cycling through the styles.

colours in the pattern box.


Using the Action Bar

The Action Bar allows you to select a fun action to use in your drawing, or to call up features such as preset backgrounds or the colouring book.  Simply click on the button you want and the action will become active.

Please remember, the Palette Bar will disappear while you are using an action.  If you need to select a different colour move the mouse pointer over the bar, hold the right mouse button and then click with the left over the colour you require.

Shown below is a summary of all the actions and there use:

 Bin

Clears the screen with an animated wipe.

 Filled Random Circles

Draws circles under the mouse pointer.

 Filled Random Squares

Draws squares under the mouse pointer.

 Up & Down

Move the tip of the pencil up and down as you draw.

 Left & Right

Move the tip of the pencil left and right as you draw.

 Orbital!

The tip orbits around the mouse as you draw!

 Wacky Worm

Makes a trail of 3d balls follow the mouse.

 GeoStamp

Creates geometric shapes at the click of the mouse.

 DeRezzer

Pixelises an area under the mouse.

 Twirl

Slowly draws a spiral growing from the mouse.

 Rainbow Maker

Fills the screen with a random rainbow ( only effects the background )

 Picture Tiler

Click the mouse on an area of your picture and this will tile that image all over the screen.

 Splat!

Splashes colour onto your painting.

 Clouds

Slowly generates ever growing puffs of cloud.

 Shaded Rectangles

Creates a shaded rectangle

 3d Floor

Drag the mouse on your screen to create a 3d floor.

 Ghost Pen

Echoes your drawing around the screen.

 Star Maker

Click and drag to make a perfect star.

 Text Tool

Click to position and then type away!

 Brighten

Slowly brightens up the colours where you click.

 Spray Can

Sprays your picture with the colour of your choice.

 Radial Lines

Draw lines emanating from a central point.

 Dotted Lines

A good old dotted line maker.

 Curves

Click once to create the size of your curve, then click and drag to stretch it into a perfect curve.

 Growing Squares

Squares constantly grow from under the mouse.

 Growing Circles

Circles constantly grow from under the mouse.

 Invert

Creates a negative image of everything on screen.

 Colour Comb

Drags a band of colour into your picture.

 Comb

Useful for simulating italic writing and drawing.

 Gridder

Puts a fine mesh over the picture.

 MagnaDraw

Try drawing while the hidden cursor magnetically bounces around your mouse pointer!

 Squiggler

Squiggles

 Nibbler

Creates an effect similar to a fountain pen as you move the mouse.

 Splash Pen

Don’t stop painting with this or a blob of paint will drip from the spot!

 Rub thru

Use this tool to `Rub through` to the spare page!

 House Maker

Click and drag to make the outline of a house.

 Shaded Ellipse

Draw ellipses, but with beautiful highlights.

 Spiders Web Maker

Hold down the mouse and a spiders web will be spun around it!

 Colouring Book

Whenever you click this button Art School will load up a picture for you to colour!


Using the Preset Brushes

Once selected the Action Bar turns into the Brush Bar and each button now shows a small picture, or `brush`.  Simply click a button as you would any other and the brush is selected.  Now whenever you move the mouse into the Painting Area a brush will follow it!

There are several ways of using the brushes and these are outlined below:

Flipping the brush horizontally and vertically

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard when a brush is selected.

Different ways of pasting the brush into your picture

Use the left button to paste one image of the brush

Use the right mouse button to draw with the brush

Hold both mouse buttons to `spray` the brush onto the screen


Using the Colouring Book

  The Colouring Book Button

Click the button (from the Action Bar) and Art School will load the next colouring book page in sequence.  Once loaded the picture acts like any other except that you won’t be able to colour in the black outline.  This is useful when kids are getting used to a mouse and accuracy isn’t  there yet.


Using the Pen Bar

Simply click the button you want and the drawing size of the pen will change accordingly.