This tutorial was written March 10, 2002 using PSP7.04. In this tutorial you will create a vector bunny while learning some vector tool techniques: grouping; copying; pasting as a new vector selection; making objects the same size; aligning objects; plus saving a vector group as a preset shape. The brown bunny on the right in the title is the one you'll be making. The gray bunny was made from my preset shape bunny. I'll show you another that I made from my preset shape later.

To give credit where credit is due, it was by taking both of the PSP7 Cartooning with Vectors classes at LVS, taught by Ron Lacey and Sonja Shea, that I really started to learn some of the terrific things that can be done with the vector tools. In fact, there is so much information and so much to learn that I'm taking both classes again starting March 18, 2002. If you are interested in taking these classes, or any other LVS classes (Filter Frenzy classes are also terrific!), plesase click here

While this was written using PSP 7.04, you may be able to follow it with other versions of PSP. However, you will not be able to save the preset shape bunny. There are no plugins or filters required. I have, however, used plugins on the images I've created. Based on the criteria established by the FlyByNightGraphics tutorial writers, this tutorial would be considered an advanced tutorial with the following skill level:

If you do not already own Paint Shop Pro, you may download a trial version. If you own an earlier version of PSP, then you can download or purchase the upgrade to PSP7.04. You can find and download them HERE.

You will need my bjw_shadow gradient and bjw_highlight gradient. You can download my gradients HERE. Place these gradients in your gradients folder in PSP.

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Open a transparent canvas 450 x 550 to provide plenty of work space. Get your Preset Shapes tool, elipse, vector and antialias checked, line width of 1 (it doesn't really matter). Set your Foreground color to Null and your Background color to a light beige so you can see your shapes. Draw a circle for the head near the top of your canvas. Hold down your shift key when you draw the circle so it will make a perfect circle.

Get your Object Selector tool. Make sure the bounding box is still around the head. If not, click on the head and the bounding box will appear. Right click and click on Node Edit - at the bottom. Click on the node on the left and pull down and a little to the right with the arrow. Then do the same on the right. This is to bring the sides down and in for the chin - sort of like this:

Next, right click on the node on the right. Select Node Type and then select Symetric (mine is grayed out as I've already done this). This will round out those nodes:

Do the same on the left node. This is about what the shape of the head should look like:

Get your Preset Shapes tool, again, elipse, and lay down another elipse starting at the lower part of the jaw, but not below it. Make this longer and a little wides as it is the body:

OK, let's do a little work with the node here. Get your Object Selector tool. Right click and click on Node Edit. Then click on the arrows on either side, one at a time, and pull them down a bit to make the bottom of the elipse a little wider.

Now click on each of those nodes again and pull the arrows at the top out slightly to make the shoulder area a little wider, sort of like this:

So we don't get confused later on, let's go to the Layer Palette and click on the minus sign to open up the layers. Right now you have two that both say 'elipse'. The one on the bottom is the head. Right click on that layer and Rename the layer 'head'. Then right click on the layer above it and Rename it body.

From now on I'll try to remember to remind you to rename your layer as you'll notice that we're not adding any raster layers in between now. Stay with me on this and you'll see why, I hope!

Next, we won't want the body to cover the chin area so, make sure you have your bounding box around the body. Right click, and click on Arrange and then when the fly out appears, click on Send to Bottom. Now the body will be under the chin.

If you are having trouble seeing the head from the body, now that you've moved the body down, make sure that you are on the body layer, then get your preset shapes tool, set to either rounded rectangle as I have, or elipse, and make a small shape in a slightly darker color. For this bunny we're going to be adding a bow at the neck, and we'll do a little shading before hand so you'll be able to tell the difference. But, in my screen shots now you'll see where I have added that little patch of darker brown.

Before I add anything else, I now see that my bunny is a bit too far up on the canvas. This is easily corrected. You may also want to move yours around, too. Get your Object Selector tool and first, make sure that you do not have any bounding boxes showing by clicking anywhere on the blank canvas. Then, move your cursor up to the left above the bunny's head and drag it down and to the right. You will now have a bounding box around all that you've done so far. Now you can simply click on that knob in the middle of the box and move your image on the canvas. Neat, isn't it! Once you've moved it, click anywhere on the canvas again and you will be able to click on the 'parts' and have the separate bounding boxes appear.

Let's do the ears next. Get your Preset Shapes tool , elipse, and draw a long narrow elipse to the left of the head:

You'll need to turn that a bit and make it part of the head. First, get your rotating handle and turn it so the ear is sticking out to the left some, and then grab the knob in the middle of the bounding box and move the ear over to the head if your rotating it did not already move it:

This looks a bit silly having the ear sticking out like that so we now need to do a little node editing. Here's how I've changed mine:

Next, move the ear just below the head. With the bounding box still around the ear, right click and click on Arrange and then click on Move Down. Then go to your layer palette and rename the ear. I've called mine 'ear-left'.

Now for the right ear. Ready for some fun? OK, with the bounding box still on the left ear, right click, then click on Copy. Move your cursor over to some blank space and right click and click on Paste as New Vector Selection. Terrific!

But, now it's not facing the right direction. This is also easy to fix. Put your cursor on the left middle knob and drag it across the top of the box and to the right. This turns your box for you! It's just like turning a piece of paper. :)

Now you can edit the right ear if you want. You can make it stand up, have a different angle, whatever you'd like. Just make sure you move it over to the head, and then move it down the way we did with the left ear. And remember to rename it as it is now also called ear-left since it was copied over.

Before I add my arms and legs, I'm going to add some nodes to the top of his head so I can make some tufts of fur up there. If you'd like to do that, here's what I've done. First, click on the head to make sure the bounding box is around it. Then right click and node edit. Then I added several nodes on top by holding down on the Ctrl key and when the + appears, left click to add the node. I alternate the sides when I add them as they are rather close together and I don't really want them on top of one another. It really isn't critical to do this as we're going to be using the smudge tool later, but this just makes those tufts a little more prominent. I added eight to the one that was there as we always want an odd number. Then, starting the second in from the left, I started pulling them up a bit and moving a little to the left. For the last one I move it to the right. Here's what my edited nodes look like:

Let's give this bunny some legs next. Get your Preset Shapes tool , elipse, and draw a fairly long narrow elipse down on the lower left of the body. Don't worry about the placement at the moment. Get your Object Selector tool and right click, Node Edit and let's make some changes to the elipse. Click on the node at the top and pull the handles out a bit to widen the top of the leg. Next, click on the node at the bottom and widen that a bit. Now, to make it look like his knee is pointed out, click on the middle node on the inside and move it to the left. Then click on it again and pull the top of the arrow a bit to the right to widen it. Click on the middle node on the left and move it to the left. Click on the middle node again and pull the bottom arrow a little down and to the right. If necessary, pull the top of that arrow out and a little to the left. Here's what mine looks like:

In your layer palette rename this leg to 'leg-left' - it should be at the top at the moment. Before we move it, let's add the foot. Get your Preset Shapes tool , elipse, and draw an elipse at the bottom of the leg. I've made mine kind of big as I want my bunny to have big feet.

Of course we're going to have to do some node editing to get this the shape we want. Get your Object Selector tool and right click, Node Edit and first push the bottom node up a bit and pull the arrow a bit to the right to flatten out the bottom of the foot. Then click on the node on the right and pull the arrow up a bit for the heel. Then click on the top center node and pull the arrow on the left up and it should make a nice curved toe area, like this:

Next, click on the node on the left and pull the arrow up and out to the left a bit and pull it down just a bit to make that foot flater on the bottom, like this:

Before moving on, if you have room at the bottom of your canvas, you may want to move the foot down a bit to make more of the leg visible. If we need to shorten it, we can always do it from the top.

Go to your Layer Palette and rename the foot - 'foot-left'. Then go to the bottom and click on the glasses by the body so we can hide it for a few minutes. Now we're going to go back and with the Object Selector tool, click on any blank area of the canvas so there are no bounding boxes visible. Then take your Object Selector tool and click on the canvas above the top of the leg to the left of where the foot is and drag your tool down and to the right so that all of the leg and foot are in the new box. Just in case we need to move this in a minute, let's make it a 'group' for the moment. With the bounding box still around the foot and the leg, right click on the canvas and then click on 'Group'. Now you can move the leg and it won't fall apart! Why don't we move the leg to the left for now in order to give us some working room.

Now we're going to copy the leg and foot and flip it over, just like we did with the ears. Ready? Make sure you have your bounding box still around the left leg. Right click anywhere; click on Copy. Move to a blank area and right click; Paste as New Vector Selection:

And now you can flip it over to the right by grabbing the left middle node and dragging it over to the right. If you make it too wide, just push the node back to the left. Or, if it isn't wide enough, just pull it to the right a bit more. Then we need to get these legs where they belong so let's turn on the body layer and move the legs into place. While we're at it, let's also, for each leg when still in the bounding box, do a right click and Arrange, Move to Bottom. This will put the tops of the legs under the body. Also, while in the Layer Palette, let's also fix some of the layer names. The top Group 1 needs to be named Group-Leg-R and in that each of the items in the group need to be renamed to change the 'left' to the 'right', and also change the Group name for the left leg group to 'Group - Leg-L' as shown below:

Still with me? I hope so! :) Now it's time for the arms. Get that Preset Shapes tool , elipse, and make a fairly long and narrow elipse to the left of the body. Don't worry if it seems too short as we're going to give him some front paws. (Yes, NO FINGERS!)

With your bounding box still on the left arm, rotate the box so the arm angles out from the body. Get your Object Selector tool and right click and then do your node adjustments so that the arm looks sort of like the one shown below:

And now for the paw. Get your Preset Shapes tool , elipse, and draw an elongated elipse at the bottom of the arm - a little wider than the arm. You may also want to rotate it a bit so it is pointed in just a bit. At the bottom just pull the arrows apart a bit. At the top pull the arrows up a bit so the side of the paw lines up with the side of the arm. Here is how mine looks with the nodes adjusted, but before I rotated it a bit:

Next we need to group the arm and paw so we can copy it. Let's first name the arm and paw. Then we need to turn off any layer that will be in the way when we draw around the arm and paw. That means the left ear, left leg, neck area, body, and if the remaining parts - the head, etc. are in the way, just hide those as well. As a matter of fact, since we're going to be dragging the copy to the right, turn off the other parts now. Then with your Object Selector tool click somewhere on the canvas to release the bounding box. Start at the upper left and drag the box down and to the right until you have the whole arm and paw in it. Then right click, and click on Group. Next, right click, Copy; right click, Paste as New Vector Selection. And drag the left node on the copied bounding box over to the right.

Remember, if you don't like something you can click on that part and node edit or move the bounding box in or out, or if you want to resize an entire part but keep it in perspective, just click on the lower left corner of the bounding box and hold down on your right mouse button when you move the box in or out.

BONUS: At this point, if you would like to save your bunny base as a Preset Shape, with your Object Selector tool click somewhere on the blank canvas to make sure you do not have any bounding boxes. Then, put your cursor in the upper left and click and drag it down and to the right making sure all of the bunny is in the box. Then right click and click on Group. Next, go to File|Export as Shape, and give it a name starting with your initials. I named mine 'bjw_Bunny-base'. Now when I want to make a bunny like this all I have to do is draw out the shape. I can then open the layers and click on the individual layers and can change the color of my bunny! Of course, the finishing touches still have to be added. I made my gray bunny in the title image this way in about 45 minutes or less. :) I'll be doing a tutorial next on how to work with the preset shapes that you've made - and all the others that you have in your collection. This is what my bunny base look like:

And here is another little bunny - or something - that I made using my bunny Preset Shape. I filled it with a brown gradient and then used Eye Candy fur and jiggle on it - I think.

We want the next part to be separated from the first. So, add a raster layer. Now were going to put the patch in the middle of his tummy and also the light areas on his ears. See, we really are getting close to having all the hard part done! First, change the Background color to a lighter shade than the one you have been using as it will be easier to see. Get your Preset Shapes tool , elipse, and draw an elongated elipse in the tummy areas. Then go up and draw an elipse on the left ear. Once you have it the way you want it, you can Copy it and Paste as New Vector Selection for the right ear. This is what your bunny will now look like:

Now we're going to convert the vector layers to raster layers. Click on Layer 2 in your Layer Palette, right click and Convert to Raster Layer. Do the same with Layer 4. (These were the vector layers.) Note: We did not export the patch vector layer as a preset shape as it is not that difficult to make that again. I suppose you could do it if you wanted to, but then you would have to line it up making sure you put a raster layer in between. That might make sense, too. :)

OK, layers converted to raster? Click on Layer 2 in your Layer Palette. Then go to Selections|Select All; Selections|Float; Selections|Defloat. Before I flood fill this I've changed my foreground color to a nice honey brown - #906320. You may use any color you like, even pink! Then flood fill your bunny base. Next, I want to add some spray paint in a darker shade. First, however, let's turn off the patch layer. Well use layer 3 for the spray paint. For my spray color I've used #4E3512. My Airbrush settings are: Round; Size 53; Hardness 16; Opacity 40; Step 25; and Density 36. Here's what I have:

Before we move on, change the size to 15 and spray some more around the chin area so it is a bit darker there. You may need to make adjustments later. At this point, though, you are going to have to make some decisions on how you want to make your 'fur'. I've used KPT-5 Fiber Optix and then my smudge tool as I've kept the KPT fur within my selection lines. You may prefer to use either Eye Candy 3.01 or Eye Candy 4000 fur, or you may use the smudge tool for all of it, plus there's also a Fur effect in the PSP7 Effects|Textures. So, with all those choices, I'm going to leave it up to you as to how you want to proceed with your bunny. I've also used EC 4000 fur on the patches in addition to KPT5 Fiber Optix on the body. Here's my bunny at this point:

OK, we're almost done now. Let's make some vector eyes. Get your Preset Shapes tool , elipse, Background color set to black and Foreground color set to Null. Find a blank area on your canvas where you can work. I used the area to the left of the head. Holding down your shift key to make a perfect circle, draw out a little black circle. Next, change your Background color to the bjw_shadow gradient with the settings below and draw out another circle just to the right of your black circle, but leave a little space in between:

Now change your gradient to the bjw_highlight, with the same settings as the shadow, and draw out the third circle to the right of the shadow circle. This is what you will have on your canvas:

Get your Object Selector tool , click on a blank area to get rid of the bounding box on the highlight circle. Next, click on the black circle, then the shadow circle, then the highlight circle, and again on the canvas to remove the bounding box. What you've just done is set the order for the next step. Now take your Object Selector tool and starting in the upper left above the black circle, draw out your box down and to the right of the highlight circle. Now the bounding box is around all three circles.

To make sure all of the circles are the same size, hold your cursor over the bounding box and right click. Click on Make Objects Same Size and on the flyout click on Both. Now to get them together, hold your cursor over the bounding box again, right click, click on Align Object, and on the flyout click on Right. Now the circles will be in the correct order and will become one. (See the screen shots below for these steps.)

Group your eye, so it doesn't fall apart when you move it, by right clicking on the bounding box and clicking on Group. Move your eye to where you want the left eye to be. Then right click on the bounding box, right click Copy and then right click Paste as New Vector Selection and place the right eye. (If you think your eye is too big, move it back to the blank canvas so you can see what you're doing. Then, while holding your right mouse button, click on the lower left corner of the bounding box and drag it in slightly. That will make your object smaller. Of course, if it was too small, you would drag it out slightly.) When you are satisfied with the eyes, Convert to Raster Layer. Here are the eyes that I have placed (at least for now):

To make the nose follow the same process we did for the eyes only use the heart preset shape. I've made the nose pink and used the same shadow and highlight setting. Don't forget to make the hearts the same size and to group them before you try to place it on the bunny. Again, just follow the same process we used to make the eyes.

Next, get your Draw tool , antialias and vector checked, line width of 2, Straight Line, and using the same color as the nose, draw a short line down from the heart point. Switch to the Bezier line and draw a short Bezier line to the left. When you have that as you want it (it took me several tries), then you can right click on the bounding box, Copy and Place as New Vector Selection and position that one on the right. You don't need to filp it over as they should be the same. If your line down from the nose seems a bit long, use your Object Selector tool to put the bounding box on the line. Right click on it and then on Arrange, Move Down. That will put the line under the heart. You can then move the heart nose down a bit on the line. When you are satisfied with the nose area, Convert to Raster Layer for the Nose.

As a final touch, place a bow at the neck and your bunny is done! And now, give yourself a big pat on the back! And don't forget to tube your bunny! Here's my vector bunny:

I hope you've enjoyed making your vector bunny. More importantly, I hope you've learned a few new things about working with your vector tools. Thank you for trying my tutorial! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

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