[IAEP] Any ideas how to make an image with a transparent background inSugar?

[Alan Kay]

Hi Caroline (and folks),

What is a good document exchange format for IAEP? Open Office Writer? Vanilla email is painful for more detailed explanations, and most wikis are too.

First, for a teacher’s approach to animating a caterpillar in Etoys, see the excellent book: The XO
Laptop In The Classroom, page 39-44, by Sdenka Zobeida Salas Pilco.

For animation, we have a choice to either give the
children an animation “application” which has special features to allow certain
kinds of animation to be done easily – for example, the Animation Activity on
the XO – but how a computer does this is a black box -- or, we could try to reveal how animation works (and a little about how
programming works) by having the children make their own animations from more
basic materials. Etoys does the latter. The crucial threshold here is that the mechanisms
revealed have to be simple enough to allow the main goal of
making an animation and using the mechanisms to be thought about at the same time.

The problems of scaling, etc., are handled by the mechanisms in Etoys

Your Goal
Etoy images are held internally in their highest resolution (to allow scaling without losing detail).

Your question is quite reasonable, and works easily inside of Etoys world, but requires a little more work to make an image in the form you need that can be exported to another Activity.

Here's how I would make a scaled image for export.

1. I would use the resize handle (just as you did) to make the caterpillar on the desktop the size that you want.
2. I would "grab a stamp" from this image, by getting the stamp tool and using it.
     a. To do this, I would open the Supplies Bin by clicking on that icon on the Sugar Nav bar.
     b. In here are often used objects and a more general object catalog with many more -- this is found in the first position of the Supplies Bin.
     c. Drag out the Objects catalog.
     d. Click on "Graphics"
     e. "Grab Patch" is in the second row. Click on it to get a sticky "grab patch" cursor.
     f. Draw through your caterpillar on the desktop.. This will give you a new caterpillar picture at the size and resolution you want.
     g. click to put this on the desktop.
3. Right click on this to get its halo of handles. Choose "Repaint".
4.Choose "No Color" in the color palette. Choose the fill tool (the paint bucket). Use this to make the color around the caterpillar transparent. Click on "Keep"
5. Export this to your other activity

A good reason for doing the animation also in Etoys (or Scratch), is that the animated caterpillar is essentially like a Logo turtle with costume changes, so it can move around under program control, can sense "food" and possibile "dangers", etc. This is closer to the spirit of using computers to model ideas than just to make animated cartoons that show a little story, but don't have models of meaning behind them.

Cheers,

Alan




________________________________
From: Caroline Meeks <caroline at solutiongrove.com>
To: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
Cc: iaep SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Sent: Friday, October 2, 2009 7:19:49 PM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] Any ideas how to make an image with a transparent  background inSugar?

Thanks Alan and Bert!

I have made progress. My next problem is that my caterpillar is too big! Even when I resize cartoon builder still wants to make it full sized.

http://screencast.com/t/MH1XZmd27s


On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:26 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:

>
>About how to get the drawing out of Etoys:
>
>
>Drag-and-drop it into the Sugar Frame's clipboard, or just press Ctrl-C when its halo is showing.
>
>
>Then either insert into the activity you want directly by drag-and-drop or Ctrl-V (if the activity supports that), or store the clipping in the Journal via its Frame clipboard icon menu.
>
>- Bert -
>>
>
>On 02.10.2009, at 04:30, Alan Kay wrote:
>
>>>
>>>>
>>Hi Caroline
>>
>>I think what you want to do is to take that picture of the caterpillar and erase all but the caterpillar?
>>
>>To do that you want to "repaint" the picture (it is already an image).
>>
>>>>First get the "halos" (which every object in Etoys will show) by right clicking on the picture.
>>
>>                 There is balloon help on most things in Etoys, and each halo handle will say what it does.
>>
>>                       For example, to duplicate your picture, drag on the green button in the upper right corner. A duplicate copy will drag off.
>>
>>                       To put something in the trash, click on the "move to trash" handle in the upper left corner.
>>
>>--> To repaint, click on the "repaint" handle on the right side, mid height.
>>
>>                  There is help about most things in Etoys under the "?" on the Sugar menu bar.
>>
>>For doing your task, I like to choose "no color" in the paint palette (it's the bar over the color rainbow). Then I will choose various sizes of the circular brushes to do the work of removing the background. The "Undo" in the paint box will undo one whole stroke.
>>
>>When done, click on "Keep" in the paint box. If you want to start over, click on "Toss".
>>
>>You now have a picture of the caterpillar with transparent fill around it. 
>>
>>The PNG format (a standard open source format) will allow the picture to be filed with the transparent fill preserved.
>>
>>I'm presuming that the reverse of the process you used to get the image into Etoys will get it back to where you want to use it.
>>
>>For a nice way to animate a wriggling caterpillar, you can also look at the example in Sdenka Salas' recent book of the XO in Peru.
>>
>>Don't hesitate to ask more questions.
>>
>>Best wishes,
>>
>>Alan
>>
>>>>
>>
>>
________________________________
From: Caroline Meeks <caroline at solutiongrove.com>
>>To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
>>Cc: iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2009 6:41:26 PM
>>Subject: Re: [IAEP] Any ideas how to make an image with a transparent background inSugar?
>>
>>Thanks Alan,
>>
>>
>>Where should I look to figure out Etoys paint. I'm stuck and there is no kid here to teach me!
>>
>>
>>http://screencast.com/t/4lvde8qWV2pD
>>
>>
>>On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 9:32 PM, Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>Paint it in Etoys, save as a .PNG picture
>>>
>>>Cheers,
>>>
>>>Alan
>>>
>>>>>>
>>>
>>>
________________________________
From: Caroline Meeks <caroline at solutiongrove.com>
>>>To: iaep <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>
>>>Sent: Thursday, October 1, 2009 6:28:22 PM
>>>Subject: [IAEP] Any ideas how to make an image with a transparent background inSugar?
>>>
>>>>>>
>>>
>>>http://screencast.com/t/K0lH5L7tsBU
>>>>>>
>>>
>>>I am trying to make a new character for cartoon builder. The video explains my goals.
>>>>>>
>>>Basically I want to take a picture and cut out just the caterpillar and have it be cropped/transparent background.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>
>>>thanks,
>>>Caroline
>>>
>>>-- 
>>>Caroline Meeks
>>>Solution Grove
>>>Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>>>
>>>617-500-3488 - Office
>>>505-213-3268 - Fax
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>-- 
>>Caroline Meeks
>>Solution Grove
>>Caroline at SolutionGrove.com
>>
>>617-500-3488 - Office
>>505-213-3268 - Fax
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
>>IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
>>>>http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
>
> 
>


-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax



      
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