Welcome to Louie Toons, a HyperCard stack which allows you to create animated cartoons. These instructions tell you how to get started making your own cartoon.
First, make a copy of this stack with a new name, so you don't lose the original. Press command-space to get the menu bar and choose "Convert Stack" if you're using HyperCard 2.0 or later!
A cartoon is made by drawing several pictures, each slightly different from the previous one. Each picture is on a different page, so if you "flip" through the pages you get the impression of motion.
Louie Tunes starts with one page, the one you're looking at now. To make a cartoon you will clear this page and add new pages for each of your pictures. At the bottom of each page is a row of developer buttons which you use to create your cartoon. When you're done you can hide some of these buttons as discussed later.
TOOLS
You may press the "Show Tools" button to see the tool window. The drawing at the right shows what it looks like. To choose a tool, simply click on it. (Don't click on the drawing! Click on the REAL tool window.) You should remove my illustrations from this page by using the eraser tool. (Make sure you are working on a COPY of the Louie Toons stack so you can refer to these instructions later.) Remove this scrolling text field by choosing the field tool, clicking on this field, and then pressing the BACKSPACE key on the keyboard.
You can move the tool window by dragging it by the bar at the top. You will need the browse tool (the finger) to be able to press buttons again! If you accidentally close the tool window while using a different tool (by pressing the tiny box at the top of the window), you can get the browse tool back by pressing COMMAND-TAB. That is, press the COMMAND and TAB keys at the same time. The COMMAND key is illustrated at right.
Drawing hints are given later in these instructions.
ADDING PAGES
You can add as many pages as you want by pressing the "Add Page" button. This inserts a page after the one you're looking at when you press the button, and shows you the new (blank) page.
TRACING A DRAWING
To make it easier to make animated sequences of drawings, Louie Toons provides the "Cpy->Bkgnd" button, meaning "Copy to Background". This copies the drawing on the page you're looking at to a special "back-ground" page. You won't see anything different until you go to another page or add a new page. Then you'll see a dimmed copy of the page you were on before. This dimmed copy is not actually part of the new page, you are simply looking THROUGH the page to the background page. This allows you to TRACE the background picture onto the new page by hand, making minor changes for your animation.
A good approach is to make a drawing on the first page, then press "Cpy->Bkgnd", then press "Add Page". Now trace the drawing, adding minor changes. (For example if the first page was a picture of a walking person, then on the second page you trace the person but move his/her legs to a slightly different position.) Now press "Cpy->Bkgnd" and "Add Page" again so you can make the third page. Repeat this procedure several times until you've created several pages, each slightly different from the previous one. When you're done you can clear the background page using the "Clear Bkgnd" button.
ARROW BUTTONS
There are four arrow buttons. The left and right arrows move you to the previous and the next pages, if any exist. (You can use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard as well.) The arrows with the vertical lines next to them move you to the first and last page of your cartoon.
RESULTS
At any point you can try your animated cartoon out by pressing the "flipping" pages button. This will quickly flip through all the pages you've drawn starting with the first one and ending with the last one. If you double-click instead, the animation will go faster.
DRAWING
The HyperCard tool window includes a pencil, eraser, and several other useful drawing tools which you should experiment with. The HyperCard menu bar contains several useful options for persons more familiar with HyperCard and painting applications. Using the menu bar is discussed below.
Some useful keyboard commands when drawing (which are also available from the menu bar) are: BACKSPACE to delete the last item drawn, COMMAND-Z to "undo" the last change, COMMAND-X to "cut" the selected item (use the selection rectangle or the lasso to select something), COMMAND-C to "copy" the selected item, and COMMAND-V to "paste" the selected item. For example, if you use the paint bucket to dump paint into a part of your page and the paint spreads to fill the whole screen, you should press either BACKSPACE or COMMAND-Z immediately!
Have fun, and please write if you have any comments or results.
Ralph Gonzalez
PO Box 54
Newark, DE 19711
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* The remaining instructions are optional *
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FINISHING UP
When you're done you may wish to put the title of your cartoon on the first page. Choose the letter tool (the lower left one in the tool window), click the cursor at the bottom of the screen somewhere, and type the title and your name, etc. It's okay to put the title over top of the developer buttons, since you're going to hide them as explained below.
You can hide the developer buttons at the bottom of the screen (except the "Home", "Help", and the "flipping pages" buttons) as follows. First get the HyperCard message box by pressing the COMMAND-M key combination. Next type:
hide background button "Show Tools"
and press RETURN. Do the same for the other developer buttons. (If you want to hide the arrow buttons, they are called "previous page", "next page", "first page", and "last page".) Press COMMAND-M again to hide the message box. If you decide to make changes later, you can show the buttons again by typing in the message box:
show background button "Show Tools"
and so forth for all the buttons.
HYPERCARD MENU BAR
You can show and hide the HyperCard menu bar with COMMAND-SPACE. This gives you numerous useful options if you are already familiar with HyperCard. For example you can DELETE pages ("Delete Card" or "Cut Card") or choose a new fill pattern for drawing.
One very useful option is "Transparent", which you can use as follows. Copy the picture you've drawn to the background using the "Cpy->Bkgnd" button. Next use the lasso or the selection rectangle to select the picture. Press COMMAND-C (or choose "Copy Picture" from the menu bar) to copy the picture. Get the browse tool again and press "Add Page". Now press COMMAND-V to paste the picture onto the new page. Notice that the picture is still "selected", so you can move it around on the new page by dragging it with the mouse. However, you can't see through the picture to see the background page. While the picture is still selected, choose "Transparent" from the "Paint" menu. Since you can see through it now, you can position it slightly moved relative to the background picture. This technique reduces the amount of drawing you need to do to produce your animation.
COPYING TO OTHER STACKS
It is possible, though a little tricky, to copy a Louie Toons cartoon into another stack. First, choose "Bkgnd Info" from the menu bar and change the name of the background to some unique name for your cartoon.
Next, type in the message box: go card "about louie toons". (Use the quotation marks as shown.) Choose "Copy Card" from the menu bar. Now open the stack you want to copy the cartoon to and choose "Paste Card". To preserve the original order of the cards in the new stack, you may wish to go to the last card of the stack BEFORE pasting this card. You can do this by using the "Go" menu in the menu bar.
Likewise, copy each page of your cartoon to the new stack. Be careful to preserve the order of these pages. The rest of these steps assume you are looking at your new stack.
As usual, you will probably wish to hide the "Show Tools", "Add Page", "Cpy->Bkgnd", and "Clear Bkgnd" buttons. You will also probably hide the "first page", "last page", and "prev-ious page" buttons.
You may wish to allow the user to click ANYWHERE on the page to produce the animation. To accomplish this, use the button tool and double-click on the "flipping pages" icon. Change its setting to "trans-parent" and change its icon to "none". You may turn "Auto hilite" off as well. Now use the button tool to resize and reposition this button to cover the page.
You may leave the "next page" button in place to allow the user to continue with the cards in your original stack. Instead, you may hide this button as well and create a new button which links the last cartoon page to one of your original cards. Go to the last cartoon card and choose "New Button" from the menu bar. Then double-click on the new button and (1) turn the "Show name" option off, (2) turn on the "transparent" option, and (3) click "LinkTo". Now find your way to the the card you want to link to (using the keyboard's arrow keys or the "Go" menu in the menu bar) and press "This Card". Resize and reposition the transparent button as desired. Use the same technique to link one of the original cards of your stack to the first cartoon page.
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