Corel Painter X3 Course

(SFX) Hello and welcome to this Corel Painter X3 training course from VTC. My name is Jason Maranto and I'll be your guide throughout this course. Before we begin I want to start my setting some expectations. I want to talk about some of the expectations that you may have for Corel Painter X3. And things that maybe you might want to work into your own thoughts about what you want from Corel Painter X3. But also expectations of what you're going to get from this course and from me in particular. Because when we start with the same goal in mind we're going to reach our destination more easily. So this is just kind of a get us all on the same page so that we can move forward from here. Now to begin with Corel Painter X3 is the brand new version of Painter from Corel. And even though it's called X3 it's actually Painter 13. So there's been a lot of versions of Painter previously and if you've used Painter previously you may find some similarities to some other versions but you're also going to find a lot of differences and of course I'm going to cover all of the new things. But I'm also going to make sure that I cover a lot of the things that I would consider to be fundamentals. Things that everyone needs to know and the reason why is because there's also going to be people who are coming to Corel Painter X3 for the first time. And there's really two major groups of people who might be coming to Painter for the first time and you might be in either one of these or both of these. The first group is going to be people who are coming from a traditional media background. Meaning that they work in the real world with real water colors or oil paint or acrylic or whatever medium you might want to name and they're going to be wanting to transition to the computer for any number of reasons. There's a lot of good reasons why you might want to make a transition to a computer. For instance one of the really nice things about working in the computer is you have unlimited undos. Or at least as many undos as your computer can support. And basically what that means is that unlike in the real world when you're working with a brush and paint, if you mess up you can just undo it and that of course is a very, very powerful incentive to move to the computer. But there's also other reasons why someone might want to move to a computer. One of the nice things about working in the computer is you don't have to worry about toxic fumes and chemicals and pigments that might be harming your health. Another thing that's really nice about working in the computer versus traditional media is the fact that you don't have to pay for art supplies. And what I mean by that is yes the software cost money but you can think of Corel Painter X3 as being an entire infinitely stocked art supply store. It has all of the various different papers and canvas's and mediums that you might ever want to try. They're all built in there and of course they're free. I mean once you've paid for the program you don't have to pay to purchase paint or your brushes or canvas or paper. It all comes with the software and it's infinite, you can do it as many times as you want and it doesn't really cost you any additional money. And of course if you work in traditional media you know how expensive art supplies really are. They are outrageously expensive and it's only getting worse every day. So certainly that's a really big incentive to move over to the computer for a lot of people. Particularly young people who are maybe students and you know maybe just want to try things. The flip side of that of course is that if you're coming from a traditional media background you really need to understand that Painter is not going to be a true mimic of all of those traditional media. And by that what I mean is, is that you're not going to find a real 100 percent looking watercolor or oil paint or whatever medium that you might want to have. You're going to find something very close. And the reason why is because Corel Painter is a natural media emulator. And basically what that means is it's a lot like a synthesizer and if you're familiar with music or musical instruments you know what a synthesizer is. It's basically a keyboard. But the idea with the keyboard is that you can assign it any number of different instruments that you might want to including voices and then you can play the keyboard and it will hit those notes and it will create those sounds for whatever instrument. However, if you're familiar with synthesizers you know that those instruments are not necessarily 100 percent true to the original instruments that it's trying to synthesize. And of course that's the key word here, it's synthesizing them. They're not as good as the original. I mean if you're playing a guitar you're going to get a richness and a depth of tone that you're really not going to get from a synthesizer. So certainly it's something where you can get a lot of variety from a synthesizer and that's the same strength that you're going to find in Corel Painter X3. However, at the same time if you really, really need the real thing there's no substitute and they're probably never will. I mean if you really need oil paint there's really no true substitute for oil paint. However, if you need something that's kind of like oil paint that gives you a lot of the same feelings of oil paint then you're going to find that Corel Painter X3 fits the bill very nicely and of course the advantage there is no toxic chemicals and fumes and all that kind of stuff. So and like I said unlimited art supplies it's, it's a real awesome thing. Now the other group of people who might be coming to Painter X3 for the first time are going to be people who come from a traditional CG background, using other software most likely programs like Photoshop. And of course the thing about that is, is that they're going to have to adjust their expectations in a slightly different way and what I mean by that is, is that you know Photoshop is a really CG program. It's, it's primarily a photo paint program meaning that it's, it's meant to work with photographs and it's painting capabilities are kind of limited, very limited compared to Corel Painter X3 and they're very digital in their original and in, in the though process. Whereas Painter has mediums like watercolor which take time to actually process the effect. Now the thing if you're coming from a traditional CG background you might be going, well this is digital, why do I have to wait for it to process an effect? Well, you have to remember that Corel Painter X3 is an emulator. It's an emulator of traditional media and what that basically means is that it's going to try to recreate as faithfully as possible the effect of painting with watercolor. And the bottom line there is that in the real world when you're painting watercolor the effect doesn't just come out. It has to take time for it to develop. I mean watercolors dry and they, they blend and they blur and they bloom and they do all these interesting things that only watercolors do but the thing about it is, is it takes time for those things to happen. The same is true in Corel Painter X3. So if you're coming from a traditional CG background you want to come to it with the idea that this is not a photo paint program per se, although it can do that. It does a lot more than that. And sometimes you may need to apply a little bit of patience and realize that Corel Painter X3 is a natural media emulator. Aside from all of that the expectations that I want you to have from the course is I'm going to cover all of the basic fundamentals of working not just with Corel Painter X3 but in digital art in general. Because I really really want to focus on the really fundamental nitty gritty things that maybe people have never even seen before things like layers and channels and paths. There's a lot of really basic stuff that even people who have been working in the computer for a long time don't know. So I'm going to cover the really, really fundamental stuff. And if you've used Painter in the past you may even find a bunch of tricks that you've never even known that the program can do but may have been there for server versions in addition to of course whatever new features we have. Now in addition to that I'm going to have some Work Files and if you look up at the upper left-hand corner of my screen you'll find that I have a folder there for Work Files. I want you to go to VTC's website for this course and I want you to download the Work Files for this course so that you'll have them and you can access them as I'm working. Because as I'm working I'm going to tell you open up this file from the Work Files or get this file from the Work Files and put it here. Because a lot of really good stuff that you're not going to find anyplace else is in those Work Files and I highly, highly recommend that you make sure that you get them because they're really critical to be able to follow through with the rest of this course. Now all that said let's go ahead and push on to actually looking at the software and the various different aspects of working within the computer and particularly with a natural media emulator like Painter X3.  

Download WorkFiles