Graphics Homework Assignment

Due Date:	Monday July 2
Printouts:	One: Your original flyer. (in color) Two: Your modified flyer. (in color) Three: List of features used on the flyer. (in black and white)
Evaluation:	15 points
Related Materials:	The Macintosh Bible Guide to Claris Works 4.0 - Rubin. Chapter 9 of this book is on reserve at LSM and Alexander libraries. (The Instructor's name is listed as Kathleen Goelz. The course is Intro to Computers, 198:110.) The materials are also available online at this link. You may also want to search for tutorials on the web such as this series of appleworks lessons and these online videos. (If you go to these you can view any of the quicktime movies under Intro, Getting Started or Interface to get some useful introductory info about Appleworks.)

Preparation:

As usual, before beginning this assignment you may want to read about the drawing and painting components of Appleworks. It would be wise to sketch out your ideas for a flyer on a piece of paper before attempting to create it on the computer. Also, it is worthwhile to review your key websites to choose any interesting graphics that you may want to use within your flyer.

Most importantly, it is strongly recommended that you spend considerable time experimenting with the painting and drawing components of Appleworks before attempting to do the flyer. It is rather easy to make huge modifications to your drawing which you did not intend - effectively destroying it - if you are unfamiliar with the software. Spending time to learn Appleworks well before setting out to do a real drawing is highly intelligent and can save you much grief and frustration later. Even when you are familiar with the software, always remember to save often. Also, note that the UNDO command is always merely a menu away. If you make a major mistake but react quickly to use UNDO, you usually will be able to recover from your error.

A wise thing to do while learning the software is to go to the HELP menu. Also, to learn about tools, leave your mouse over the tool for a while and a description will eventually pop up.

There are two key areas to investigate while experimenting with the software. First, understand the difference between "paint" and "draw" features. Secondly, understand the methods to utilize in order to make modifications to segments of your painting or drawing. At the end of this document there is a more detailed description of some of the features you should learn. The best thing to do is work through that list and see if you can figure out how to do each activity. Do this by working on a practice document before you begin your real work.

The Assignment:

The main goal for this assignment is to make a one-page flyer advertising that you are looking to purchase a particular product and asking individuals to contact you if they are interesting in selling you one for a good price. To make the flyer eye-catching, it should mainly consist of graphics. You will not be graded on your artistic ability, but rather on demonstrating the various graphical features of Appleworks. You are encouraged to include graphics that you can copy and paste from the websites where you found info on your product. (Note: It is somewhat illegal to use material that you have taken off of some websites without permission. But since this flyer is not really to be posted and you are doing this work for academic reasons, there is some flexibility in the copyright laws. ) However, it is also important that a significant part of the flyer be created by your own utilization of the various drawing and painting features within Appleworks.

You will be printing three items:

1. First, once your flyer is presentable, you should print a copy in color. (The computer labs have precise rules on color printing. You can only get a few color printouts a day. You cannot print more than three copies of any one document. So DO NOT print until you have perfected your flyer.)
2. Then you will demonstrate your understanding of the graphics software by making a number of modifications to the flyer and reprinting.
3. Finally, using the word processing component of Appleworks, you will create a short two-part document describing how you used the graphics features. In part one of this description, you will list the graphics features you used to create the original flyer and tell which part of the document these features were used on. (Example: "Paint Brush: used to draw the race track.") In part two of the description, you will list the modifications made to the original flyer and what features you used to make these changes. (Example: "Horse turned 90 degrees: Dotted box,Rotate".) You should be able to create this document very quickly (15 minutes?) The purpose of it is to help your TA see what features you used and to make fair grading possible. This printout should not be in color; use the regular black and white printer instead.

This assignment is rather free form. Simply use the drawing and/or the painting component of Appleworks to make a flyer. Use as many graphics features as you care to demonstrate. The design of the flyer is up to you. Hopefully, it will be attractive and interesting and draw attention to the product you would like to purchase. Your first submission will be of this flyer.

For the second part of the assignment, you will make various modifications to the flyer. If you do not wish to ruin the original flyer, then save any modifications you make into a file with a different name. What modifications you make, and how you make them are up to you. Again, the point is to demonstrate your knowledge of the software. So, be sure to make an adequate amount of adjustments to the original flyer.

If you are unsure whether you have demonstrated enough features while creating the flyer and making the modifications, feel free to ask your TA in recitation, lab hours, or through email for their impressions.

The final chore you need to complete for this assignment is to create the document listing the features you used (as described above.)

Features to Investigate:

It would be wise to explore these features before attempting to work on this assignment. Remember, a great way to learn the features of this software is to hold the mouse over a tool and read the description that eventually pops up.

General

1. How do you create a new painting or drawing? (Find Appleworks on the Dock on the botton of the lab Macs.)
2. How do you save your work?
3. What is involved in printing? How do you make sure printouts go to the color printer?
4. How do you load up an old document to continue to work on it?
5. How do you copy graphics from one document to another, or from a webpage to Appleworks? (You can drag most images from a browser window, into the Appleworks window. If that doesn't work, try holding down the control-key while clicking the mouse button down on top of an image and use the Save Image To command that appears on the menu that pops up. You can save it [gif? jpg?] on to your flash drive. After this you can drag it from your disk to the Appleworks window.)
6. If you make a mistake, how can you undo what you have done?
7. Can you use the eyedropper to set the fill color in order to make different sections of your graphics have similar colors?
8. Can you make new patterns, textures (wallpaper) and shadings (gradients)?

Drawing

1. How do you type text into a drawing? Set or change fonts, styles, sizes?
2. Can you use the various shape tools? Rectangle, rounded rectangle, oval and arc?
3. Can you make perfect shapes like squares and circles easily? (Hint: try holding down the shift key when you draw.)
4. How do you you use the polygon tool?
5. How do you use the regular polygon tool? How do you change the number of sides of the objects that the regular polygon tool will make?
6. Can you use the bezier and freehand tools?
7. How do you select the color, pattern, texture and shading of the fill of an object before you draw it?
8. How do you make the fill of an object clear so you can see through it to other objects underneath it? (Hint: use the upper leftmost fill pattern.)
9. How can you select the thickness, color or pattern of the outline (pen) of an object?
10. Can you place arrowheads on the ends of a line you draw?

Painting

1. How do you make the various shapes? Are the shape tools exactly the same whether drawing or painting? (Hint: try to modify a shape after you have painted it.)
2. How does the paintbrush work? Can you change the shape of the paint brush? (Hint: see the Options menu.)
3. How do you use the pencil?
4. How far can you zoom in while painting? (See leftside of the bottom scroll bar.) Can you turn each pixel on or off? (Hint: use pencil while zoomed in.)
5. Can you use the paint can to spill paint into a small enclosed section of the painting? (Hint: pick color, pattern, texture, shading first.) What is the difference between the various paint modes? (See menu.)
6. Can you use the spray paint? Can you change settings on the spray paint?
7. Can you make new brush shapes?

Modifications while Drawing

1. How do select an object?
2. Can you select more than one object? (Hint: try shift-clicking. Hint: try dragging the arrow over many objects at one time.)
3. How can you group objects together so they act as one (more complex) object. How can you ungroup such an object back to its individual components?
4. How do you delete an object?
5. How do you change the size of an object? (Try dragging any corner once selected.)
6. Can you move an object?
7. Can you modify the fill of an existing object? (Color, pattern, texture, shading?)
8. Can you modify the outline of an existing object? (Color, thickness, pattern, arrows?)
9. Can you align a number of objects?
10. Can you move objects forward and backwards so that they overlap in different orders?
11. Can you make an exact duplicate of an object?
12. Can you reshape an object - such as a polygon?
13. Can you rotate an object?
14. What kind of transformations (flips, scales) can you make to an object?
15. How do you lock an object so that it can not be modified? And unlock?

Modifications while Painting

1. How do you use the dotted-box to select a part of a painting?
2. How do you use the lasso to select a segment of the painting? What is the difference between the dotted-box selection tool and the lasso?
3. How do you use the magic wand to select connected segments of the same color?
4. How do you erase a part of the painting? How is this different than deleting an object in the draw component? How do you erase the whole drawing? (Hint: double-click the eraser in the toolbox itself.)
5. How do you change the size of a selected part of the painting? (Hint: try the menu command Scale by Percent.)
6. Can you move a selected part of a painting? What is left behind if you move a part of the painting or make it smaller? How is this different than drawing?
7. Notice how you can not easily modify the fill or outline of an object you have drawn. (Maybe that is because the paint component is not object-oriented.)
8. Can you make an exact duplicate of a selected part of the drawing. (Hint: try holding down the option key as you drag a selected section.)
9. There are many more kinds of transformations in the paint component than in the draw component. Spend some time getting familiar with them. (Hint: always select a region with one of the selection tools before trying to use transform.)