Room

You will be using furniture from IKEA to create a bedroom or living room. This assignment is all about using the select tools (Lasso & Magic Wand).


Walls

First open Fireworks, make the canvas 800 x 600. Maximize the window and make it 100%.

Select the Rectangle tool - set the Fill to any light color, and the Stroke to 1-pixel, black.

Draw two rectangles, so both rectangles are even, side-by-side. You want the Stroke to be visible where they meet but not for the tops.

Use the Subselect (white arrow) tool to angle the one rectangle for the side wall (or both a little bit). Select the bottom point that's near the edge of the canvas, and drag it down.

  • You can move everything up if you want. You want enough room to place furniture.
  • You can always change the angle and size of the rectangles.
  • Make sure the point where they meet lines up.

Now fill the walls with the color and texture you want for the wallpaper.

For example, something like this...

Add another layer folder. Rename bottom layer to "Walls", top layer to "Furniture", and lock the "Walls" layer.

Save your document as "Room".

Get Furniture

Click on one of the links below to look for furniture on Ikea's website (It will open in a new window/tab).

Find some furniture you like. Go to the full-size picture and right-click... Copy...

.. go back to FW and Paste it in. If you get this message, choose "Don't Resample".

Get rid of the extra white background. Select the Magic Wand tool. Make sure you have "Anti-Alias" not Hard or Feather. Click on the white area and Delete.


CTRL+D to deselect (get rid of dotted lines).

Resize furniture as needed with the Scale tool.

If you select with the Wand tool, and more than just the white background is selected, like this...

...you need to do the following:

  1. deselect (CTRL+D)
  2. change the Tolerance amount in Properties to a lower number
  3. try again until don't have any of the furniture included in the selection, like this...

Rename your layers as you go so they include the price. For example, for this sofa, round up the price to $680.

When you are done your furniture, your layers will look something like this...

Repeat this process for more furniture. You should have:

  • 3 big pieces of furniture (at least 1 facing other direction):
    • Bedroom - bed, night stand, chest of drawers
    • Living Room - sofa, coffee table, side chair or TV stand
  • 1-2 accessories:
    • vase
    • plant
    • lamp on table
    • hanging light
  • 1-2 things on the walls (one needs to be o a wall that's angled):
    • mirror
    • picture/painting
    • clock

Adjustments

You may need to adjust your walls to match the angles of your furniture.

Repeat with other furniture: side tables, plants, coffee table, side chair, lamps, etc.

If you put in something and you want to flip it, you can go to Modify>Transform>Flip Horizontal, or you can use the Scale tool, drag the side square over to the other side:


For the painting/window, you can use Scale>Distort.

You need to Distort anything that's on the wall on the wall that's angled, so it's bigger closer to the front of the room. Just click and drag the front points a little bit.

floor

You can find a picture of a rug and add it, but then you have to Distort it and that can be tricky.

It's easier to just use a Rectangle:

  1. Draw a Rectangle that covers your whole room. Fill it with a wood Pattern.
  2. Unlock the "Walls" folder in the Layers panel, and drag the rectangle down below everything else.
  3. Select the black arrow tool, then adjust the handles for the direction and size of the wood pattern.

Total Price

Add up the prices of all your furniture showing in your room design with the calculator, then:

  1. Add it using the Text tool. Make it a nice font, big enough.
  2. Add a Rounded Rectangle under it, filled with a solid/gradient.
  3. Resize text/rectangle so they fit.
  4. Select both layers, and move them to one of the corners of your room where you don't have furniture.