The L.A.-Noire Times Tutorial Thread

[The Coca Cola Kid]

I had planned on posting this in The L.A.-Noire Times thread. Without spoiler tags it would make that thread very unmanagable in a very short time if a Newspaper really does get going here.

I have made several demonstrational pieces for my plan for how to make a newspaper. I think I made it so anyone can learn how to do so with just a few tutorials. Also i think it leaves plenty of room for any ambitious and creative person to really show of their writing or artistic skills in many many ways.

How to make a Newspaper like I would like to here at L.A.-Noire.net

As you can see I have divided the paper into 4 sections running horizontaly and 4 columns verticaly.

This is my basic unit of the paper I'm calling a Section. This is the Times Layout Guide.

What you would do is click on this guide and save it to pictures on your computer and then use it to set up your layout guides and create one of the four sections of the newspaper. Four of them together would be placed on the The L.A.-Noire Times background with the header and you have a newspaper. Its not complex and its actually quite fun and I think everyone can do it. I have created a GIMP TUTORIAL showing how.

If your new to GIMP my best advice is to browse this thread and run Gimp and go step by step. Reading it, it sounds like to much to take in for a first timer but i wanted to give you real helpful info for now and the future.

PROS: just skim and look at the pretty pictures. the last image on the Gimp tutorial is all im guessing you will need to see. You dont need to leave any space at the top or the bottom. also there will be 3 other layout option sizes and some suggestions on what you can do in them but there are NO RULES BESIDES: BLACK TEXT (000000) and WHITE BACKGROUND (fffffff), IMPACT font headlines, TAHOMA BOLD font articles, nothing in the margins. We can get super fancy in the future with backgrounds and such at first lets just try basic standard newspaper with fonts and background so everyone can play. Your THE BOSS as far as content...as long as its acceptable to the forum rules that is.

Using GIMP you would save it as an .xcf file and anytime you want to create something for the paper you would load that file and your guides are already positioned. It would save you maybe 2 minutes of work.

Snap acts like a magnet and makes your layer edges stick to guides or the edges of your canvas. if a layers edge gets within a certain small distance of a guide snap just moves the layer by itself. Its both good and frustrating sometimes when positioning things just so but without it a perfectly aligned newspaper column would be very hard to make.

If your new to GIMP you will want to go back up to the top and look at what you didnt notice highlighted and circled in red. The layer selection and the eye icon is pretty important. If you select your white fill layer and click on the eye so it isnt visible you will see your Guide layout layer. Helpful if a guide accidently gets moved as is that yellow arrow for the history. Never worry about making a mistake no matter what you do you can go back to one step before that with History, like it never happened.
If you right click on the blue highlighted section next to the eye, options will appear. One is to delete a layer. Sometimes you accidently create a strange one letter layer and just delete it.

YOU CAN WRITE AN ARTICLE FOR SURE IT SOUNDS HARDER THAN IT REALLY IS!

If you made it this far your a real trooper. Here's the other 3 layout sizes you can make. 410x750, 620x750 and the big dog the whole page im saying 800 high by 750 wide. Max height is 850 but some space between the header and bottom of the page would be nice.

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just showing what you could do not what has to be done. only suggestions.


size 410x750

size 620x750

Well thats it for now. It's a simple plan, split the paper into four pieces and people can choose to do as many pieces of that as they want. Put whatever floats your boat in it that seems interesting and RIGHT to you.

Team up with people and one does art the other writes...whatever people want to do even including taking over the whole show. I don't really mind. Just a good idea i really think will work if people give it a chance to. I made it this way because I dont want to play editor except for a small little section thats all mine.

[Seven]

I'd be willing to contribute to the paper

I've got a lot of photoshop and writing experience, and I'd love to help out with the design, etc.

[The Coca Cola Kid]

Wonderful Seven, that's really great to hear.

I hope to get some more positive responses then we can make a paper!

I have an idea for what I want to do roughly in one SECTION.