Adding new parts to a comic

Occasionally, you find that you need a part that doesn’t exist yet to tell your story. One option for this is to modify an existing part, which you can read about in Editing parts in a comic . But sometimes that just won’t work. Maybe the part is a prop and there is nothing like it in any part file in your library, or maybe it’s a body part in a position that just isn’t like anything the program supplies. Either way, the command to use for this is New Part , which is available both on the toolbar and in the Objects menu. New Part assumes you have some drawing ability. It uses an editor and set of tools that are described in the Creating Characters And Backgrounds section of the manual, so look there for part creation specifics.

In a comic document, the New Part command displays a dialog asking you to choose the color set for the new part. (This section assumes you are in a comic document, but if you are in a parts document, no dialog appears because a parts document has only one color set.)

If you are making a new part for a character in your comic, say a bare foot when all he has are tennis shoes, choose the name of that character for the color set. This will give the new part access to all of the colors used in that character. In our bare foot example, this would allow you to give the foot the correct skin color.

(For information about how parts files’ color sets work, see Choosing and using colors .)

If you are making a new part that doesn’t need to use the color set of any existing character or background, you can use the Comic color set. The Comic color set is used by any panels and balloons that you assign a color to, as well as any parts you create for which you choose Comic colors. The Comic set initially only includes None, Black, White, Shadow, and Highlight, but you can add your own colors to it, as you can with any color set in your comic.

After you click OK in the color set dialog, you are taken to the part editing view. For information about creating a part in the part editing view, See Creating parts in the part editor in the Creating Characters and Backgrounds section. It has several subchapters that describe the various tools in the part editor for creating, manipulating, and setting graphic attributes on paths in a part.