(4)Seasons software

How to make a (fake) C=64 Petscii image with GIMP.
Tutorial made by BCO just for nostalgic pourpose.
Please forgive me for my bad english. If you find an error, please report me. Thanks!

Step 1:
Download our C=64 Petscii brush set for GIMP by clicking here (it's a zip archive).

Step 2:
Unzip and install the C=64 petscii brush set. Please refer to GIMP manual (http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/gimp-using-brushes.html) for installation.

Step 3:
Download this template. It's a 320x200 sized GIMP (.xcf) image, with a 8x8 grid and with a C=64 16 colors indexed palette.

Step 4:
Open the image in GIMP! XD

Step 5:
Set the grid to 'visible' (View → Show Grid from the image menu) and be sure to activate the grid snapping (you can access this command from the image menubar through View → Snap to Grid), it's important!

Step 6:
Activate the Pencil tool. The Pencil tool is used to draw free hand lines with a hard edge (see here: http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/gimp-tool-pencil.html). Now go the tool options.
Normally, tool options are displayed in a window attached under the Toolbox as soon as you activate a tool. If they are not, you can access them from the image menu bar through Windows → Dockable Windows → Tool Options which opens the option window of the selected tool.
You must set the size of the brush to 8! From now on, we will use only this tool.

Step 7:
Now you can start to draw! There are a lot of ways to do that! Now I try to explain you my method but from here you are free to do what you want do to in whatever way you like! YEAH! Freedom! ;)

Step 8:
Select a subject. It's a silly tutorial so I'm going to create a very simple image: an house!

Step 9:
Now we start to draw a background. We start using the brush #53. Select a color from the colormap dialog (http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/gimp-indexed-palette-dialog.html) (you can access it from the image menu: Windows → Dockable Dialogs → Colormap; or from the Tab menu in any dockable dialog by clicking on and selecting Add Tab → Colormap).
When you start drawing, please be sure that the brush snaps to the grid!
Try to make something like this:

Step 10:
Ok, now we put more details in the image by using the others C=64 brushes. Please pay attention to use the right background-foreground color combination for each brush. Here we have an example:

I used the brush #64 with the foreground color set to red (#09) and then with the cyan (#12) to refine the top of the roof of our house.
As you can see, this step need a lot of time and patience! But it's fun! :)
After a lot of work, you should have done an image like this:

(click to enlarge)

Good job, it's done!
Enjoy your art!

Other examples: