I want to make sure you understand the concepts and terminology behind computer graphics. If you are certain that you already understand this then you may elect to skip this page. What I will give here is a glossary of important terms. Usually a glossary is given in alphabetical order. However, I give the terms to you in a need to know order. For example, you need to know what a pixel is before you know what dpi means. Read it, understand it, and move on. You must understand it, but it really has very little to do with cartooning. You won't have to pass a test on it.
Array-An array is a string of related data. Such as 0,5,4,7,6,3,2,4,5. Each bit of data in the array is called an element. The first element is usually called element 0(zero). So in the previous array the 0th element is 0. Element 1 has a value of 5. And so on. An array can be muti-dimensional. Meaning it can be an array of arrays. For example a 2 dimensional array is an array of arrays. 2 dimensional arrays are often visualized as having rows and columns. Rows run left to right and columns run up to down. (Do you remember your mutiplaction tables? They were a 2 dimensional array.) You can find the value of a specific element by row and column. In computer GRFX row is notated as x. Columns are notated as y. They are writen in pairs like this (x,y). So 3,4 is the value that is at the fith element of the fourth array. Or, for the sake of simplicity, go over 4(0-1-2-3) and down 5(0-1-2-3-4). This will become more clear when we start drawing.
Coordinate-A coordinate is a way of specifing a location. In 2D computer graphics the coordinates are specified by the (x,y) pair.
Pixel-A pixel is the smallest unit in a computer image. A computer image is made up of a 2 dimensional array of pixels.
Bitmap-Not to be confuse with the bitmap image file, a bitmap is a 2-D array of image data. For our purposes THE "bitmap" is the canvas in QuincyPaint.
Clipboard-The clipboard, as far as we are concerned, is a memory location to temporarily store a bitmap. QuincyPaint has two clipboards. It has its own, and you can use the Windows clipboard. Use the windows clipboard if you want to copy the bitmap from QuincyPaint to paste in a nother application.
Blit-A blit is the copying of an array of memory data. To humans(to us at the moment) it is to "paint" a picture(bitmap) to some other picture. A blit takes place if you copy and paste an image in QuincyPaint.
dpi-Dots Per Inch. This is not really important until you want to print your cartoons. Printing is not covered in this book. Images saved in QuincyPaint are 96 dpi, so if printed at 96 dpi an image that is 96x96 pixels will be one square inch.
Resolution-This is how many pixels wide and high the image is. This usually refers to screen resolution but can be used to describe any bitmap image(image dimension-see next entry). What appers on your computer screen, incidentally, is a bitmap in the computers memory.
Dimension-This is the size of the image. In QuincyPaint the image is in pixels.
Color-You know what a color is. You may not know that in QuincyPaint a color has three components Red, Green(not yellow- when emitting light green is a primary color. Yellow is made by mixing red and green.), and blue. A color has a value of 0-255 for each component color. So a color is desribed as RGB(Red,Green,Blue). So Magenta is red 255, green 0, blue 255. Black is RGB(0,0,0). White is RGB(255,255,255). Each pixels is nothing more than a RGB value.
Mask color-A mask color is a color that is ignored during blit( and other) fuctions. In QuincyPaint the mask color is usally the right mouse color.
Pointer or mouse pointer-This is an indicator of current position. The current position is where any change will occur. The position is given in the coordinate pair (x,y) and is usually moved by the mouse.