Community Project: The Vector Colouring Book! (Journal copied from `ChewedKandi's News Article

The Vector Colouring Book

At some point in our lives the majority of us have encountered colouring books. This could have been from your childhood, maybe your younger family members or your children... or if you're like me as a way to relieve stress!

These books of printed line art were coloured in by traditional tools... of coloured pencils, crayons and felt tips. For some of us, this was the doorway into learning and appreciating art.

There was a lot of satisfaction and joy in being able to finish a page or even a book! Often the hardest challenge was to stick inbetween the lines.

It's with this nostalga that I bring you a two stage Colouring Book project!


What is Vector Art?

In digital art there are two layer formats: raster and vector. Raster formats are based in pixels and vector is based in paths and points.

When you resize a raster image, you are expanding the pixels. Your program has to try to estimate what the colours would be for the additional pixels created. Due to this, the image loses it's clarity and creates a pixel effect.

When you resize a vector image, you are increasing the distance between the points. Due to this, the image doesn't lose it's clarity and doesn't pixellate.

The key element of vector is that it's infinitely scalable without any quality loss and it's why we love it!


Stage One - Vector Line Art!

The Colouring Book Project will be in two stages. The first is for the vector art community to take part in and the second for the whole of the community.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to upload a piece of vector line art for others to be able to download, print and colour in traditionally.

There is no set theme to the piece(s) you upload. If you consider how varied in style and subject colouring books are... it's always good to have something that appeals to everyone!

Want to take part and don't have much time? It doesn't even need to be a new piece! If you want to take part, you can always use the line art of a previous vector piece for the project!


Stage Two - Colouring In!

Stage two won't officially start for another 2 months to give vector artists enough time to be able to contribute their line art.

You'll be able to download and print off your favourite pieces of vector line art and colour them in using traditional methods only. This means using colouring pencils, crayons, felt tips and more! You could even get creative and use watercolours and other mediums.

Then when the gallery is opened in 2 months time, you can scan your traditionally coloured piece and upload it to the project gallery. We'll ask you to ensure you credit the vector artist who donated the line art and mention which tools and mediums you used to create your childhood masterpiece!

More details on this stage will be announced nearer the time to keep you fully informed of the awesomeness of this community wide project!

However, while vector artists contribute to the colouring book gallery please feel free to give your encouragement and compliments to the pieces they are donating to the community to colour by way of comments and +favs!


Stage One - Technical Requirements

There has been a Community Project gallery set up purely for this project. All submitted pieces must go into the following gallery to be part of the project: Community Projects > Projects & Clubs > Vector Colouring Book > Art Lines

This gallery will be open as of Friday 11th February 2011 until Monday 11th April 2011, which gives vector artists 2 months to upload their line art.

Art work created in vector is only accepted with black lines and a white background. No gradients, meshes or blurs are accepted. Solid lines only please.

Please upload it in an A4 150dpi jpg or png file (595 x 842) in either portrait or landscape format. Do not upload your original vector source file, this is not required.

By uploading your work to this gallery, you are allowing others to download and print your work for personal use only and to re-upload it on their accounts once coloured in. If you do not feel comfortable with this, then I suggest you don't take part. I will try my best to moderate the galleries to ensure all coloured in pieces are creditted by the original vector artist. Likewise, if you use a stock image as a reference, please credit in your description.

Although not a requirement, it would help spread the word about what vector art is; please give an explaination of what vector art is. If you're lost for words, feel free to copy and paste the section above entitled "What is Vector Art?". This will help our community gain further understanding from beyond.

Any non vector created line art submitted to the galleries will be moved to your scraps.

You can submit as many vector line arts as you wish!

Please keep the work original as possible and avoid the images of copyrighted characters.


Who's Taking Part?

Before finalising this project, I approached several friends and respected vector artists in the community to see if they'd be interested in taking part. The vast majority of which expressed their interest in contributing within 24 hours!

You can expect to see the following vector artists in stage one of our wonderful vector community project...

`LineBirgitte ~cd-marcus `ChewedKandi *CQcat `CrisVector =DiSmeCha $Ikue `jussta ~lanitta ~phig =Asher-Bee *ssst ~FlowisKing ~Toolkit04 =Vashtastic


Closing...

The project's aim is to help the vector community gain exposure and spread the knowledge of what vector art is to the rest of deviantART. It is also a fun, light hearted project to reconnect with the joys of colouring in and embrace traditional methods.

By the vector community helping to dispel common myths of vector being "cell shading" and "tracing photos", we can have a lot of fun doing so and maybe some exposure and understanding for ourselves along the way.

It doesn't matter if you're new to vector or an old time professional vector artist, this project is for all abilities!

If you've got any questions or concerns to do with this project or anything to do with our vector art galleries, please feel free to either leave a comment or send me a note. I'm always happy to help!

deviantART & the Vector Community loves YOU!