It's a few years since I've been here, and I'll have to be in and out;
too much on my plate.
But I'm so excited - and wondered if anybody else is doing much in the
way of vector drawing with PSP9? I can't afford an upgrade; my dogs'
medical expenses have totally wiped me out for the last three years -
first, knee surgery, one on each of the two dogs, now diabetes in my
younger dog - THAT is an ongoing expense. But these are my companion
animals, and they WILL get their care!
I hope you can pardon a long story, which I feel I need, to explain
the project I'm working on.
On the diabetic mail lists, I often find newcomers wailing and
terrified - I never was, because my vet is so good, but vets vary, and
these people come in terrified in the first place that their dogs (or
cats) have diabetes, and often, believe they can't possibly give the
required injections of insulin under the skin, usually twice a day.
Well, it does take some time to learn, but most anybody can do it. The
thing is, you have to start immediately - there's no time ahead to
learn! I've become quite a pro at it after a year and a half or so,
though I managed it without too much problem to start with.
But a problem that many encounter is that their vets prescribe a form
of insulin that has 40 units of biologically-active insulin (crystals,
I believe) per one milliliter of fluid (suspension). This is U-40
insulin, by definition. The problem is that the syringes made to
deliver this insulin only come with huge - fat - long - needles!
(anyway, by my standards, they are cruel for small animals). So using
U-40 syringes can be hazardous to the human's health - or state of
mind - and the animals don't like it, either, and I can't blame them;
the injections should not hurt!
So some clever humans change over and use syringes made for the U-100
insulins, Of course, humans just wouldn't tolerate those huge, long
needles, right? Why should our animals? NOT! We got lucky, because my
dog Kumbi was prescribed a U-100 insulin to start with, so my syringes
are U-100, and I can get them (and do) with 31-gauge needles (thin!),
only 8 mm long (5/16") in contrast to the standard U-40 ones, with 28
or 29-gauge needles, half an inch (12 mm) long.
There's a catch. How to measure the correct number of units of insulin
(these are International Units) using "the wrong syringe"? It's easy
enough to do the math; to convert the measurement in a syringe of U-40
insulin for a U-100 syringe, you multiply by 2.5. So if you're
delivering 10 units of U-40 insulin, and you measure that in a U-100
syringe, you need to draw up to the 25-marker on the barrel of the
U-100 syringe. What you're doing is using "markers" rather than
"units," when you use "the wrong" syringes.
Well, I can't do that math and have it make sense to me; I'm totally
incompetent with: direction (points of the compass), left and right,
and the concepts of basic arithmetic. Yet there's something I sort of
understand at times. So I decied if I could do an explanation in
pictures, that SHOULD (I hope) be of assistance to people who want to
make this conversion, and don't know how, or don't dare, or whose vets
(you'd be surprised how many) won't cooperate, and show them how.
I've been working on this project, often nearly full-time (I'm
retired, long ago, too) for the last couple of months. Part of the
reason for that is the concept; I need to work it out in pictures; my
goal is to explain using pictures, if possible with little to no text
- I can put needed text in the pictures, I hope.
I'm using photos - Raster, of course - my own photos, taken with my
old, cheap, point-and-shoot camera, as I have no other, and can't
afford a better one. A few people have contributed this photo or that,
which of course, I will credit appropriately. But the mainstay of the
pictures is vector drawing - you can see why - it's good for something
that seems to *measure* things. I can draw apparently to scale;
nothing you could depend on actually to measure, but you can get the
idea of how to measure, and if I squish the drawing, or stretch it,
the scale is retained. Luverly, luverly!
Unless, of course, I skew it, and I'm experimenting with skewing now,
but that's for my characters. I decided this has to be as hilarious as
possible, to get people past their terror, and make them forget they
have trouble (same as me) with math concepts. So as I sweated it out
learning the basics of vector drawing, it suddenly occurred to me that
my main narrator can be VekToria TwinkelMaus, and so, she has become
that, though all my pictures so far are in draft only.
Her grandparents are Paint, Shop, Pro and Nine; her sire is Vector,
and her dam is Drawing. I'm not sure of the pedigree of Vekkie's
cohort, VekTORio ThunderRat, who appeared in my mind maybe a month
ago, and suddenly showed up onscreen the other day, when I was trying
to draw Vekkie in a new position, but the result was so totally male
in appearance, that he became Tor - VekTorio ThunderRat.
I only have the one drawing of Tor, and now I need to change HIS
position, and I'm putting together the techniques I've been learning
in order to draw Vekkie.
To summarize the beginnings; of course I had to learn how to edit
nodes, how to use the Pen Tool, all the other related stuff, and I do
now seem to have the basics of that. I find using Bezier curves is the
most efficient and pleasant way to make cartoon characters with the
properties I want. (The Bezier curves confused me no end for a long
time, too, but once I caught on to the nodes, their specifications,
how to edit them, change their properties, I was sort of in business.
Also I now have a bit of a library of Vekkie drawings from which I can
copy and paste for a new drawing (new position.)
What excites me no end today is that I've had a big breakthrough -
having learned how to handle grouping and ungrouping - and re-grouping
(any pun intended here) - I can suddenly skew, put two drawings
together, get rid of parts of them, add other parts, and my work load
is greatly lightened - and it becomes fun to draw, now that I have
some idea what I'm doing!
I'm also on an old monitor, at 1024 x 768 resolution, and it felt
horrid at first to be so limited in size (I like to work on a big
canvas). But I'm coping.
After discovering I can use the Vector Object Selector, and then drag
the top of the bounding box down so it's the bottom instead of the
top, and rotate it 180 degrees also, that way, I can do Mirror and
Flip with ease, without having to do something about "transform
selected nodes," which has limited applications.
Then I also discovered that I can use the Raster Deform to do much the
same, say, on one Raster layer - drag the top to the bottom, and
rotate 180 degrees, and I get a similar effect - just what I need!
I still have a ton to learn, but beginning to get some control is
exhilarating! I tend to forget how to do things, and once I've
finished this project to the level at which I'm willing to pass it to
other human keepers of diabetic companion animals, I WILL forget how
to do it, so I should try to make notes along the way. I'm kind of
old, and notice my memory failing me too often.
Thanks for bearing with my long story! I'll post a few drawings, for
kicks! - and will welcome any comments.
Tue, 4 Mar 2008 12:46:10
Carol W
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