Hi, I have been teaching myself animation throughout highschool for the past 3 years. I have constantly hit a problem that I have been unable to solve.
I ink my all of my line art to be scanned in the computer with black, scanning with Black and White, so it will only pick up the two colors. However, I want to have multiple levels of shading. I have seen animators make the cels by outlining the shaded area with blue or red ink, to paint in the computer. When I try to do this, it means I can't use B&W, and must use True Color to scan. And even with high contrast, there are still inconsistancies in the paper which are aggravating to deal with. Any ideas will help.
Thanks for response L_Finston, I never knew about that.
Actually, I came across the solution today. I will use red, blue, and green pens to ink, then use photoshop to reduce it to a 4-color picture. The problem with using black and blue ink is the computer often sees the edges of the black as being closer to blue, so all the black lines got a "blue glow."
Most of the studios use pencil for cleanup, this might get rid of the "blue Glow" deal. Useing diferent colors allows you to do the shadows on the same clean up drawing as your outlines, some linetest and compositing software can regognize this in the process of scanning. You could also do the shades&highlights on seperate sheet of paper.
I may be misunderstanding the problem here (excuse me if I am) - but it sounds as though you want to "shade" your 2D animated characters in the same way that the "flat" cel characters were shaded in "Roger Rabbit"?
If this is what you're trying to do - then one of the key questions is what compositing software you're using, not simply the Ink & Paint programme (for scanning and colouring the line artwork). Again and again students use inappropriate, non-animation-specific software (like Photoshop) in an effort to solve all their animation, scanning and compositing problems - when there are plenty of really good packages out there which are designed to deal with animation (as opposed to illustration or print) problems, so - do try to make sure that you're using the right tools. If you're not - you may spend a lot of time and energy re-inventing the wheel when there's no need to (none of the Adobe packages, Photoshop included, were designed with animators, amateur or professional, in mind)
I spent many years working as an EFX Animator, following the work that so many of us (London-based crew) did on "Roger Rabbit" and I also worked for the Animo people in the early '90s, so - if this IS what you're trying to do in your own work - what you want to be clear about is the difference between a "paint split" - where the areas to be shaded are indicated on the character artwork in a different colour pencil - and a "tone matte" - which is, in effect, a piece of specific shading, animated on a separate level but in tight peg-registration with the character artwork.
Rather than go into the whole thing and then find out that this is NOT what you're trying to get - let me know if you're keen to learn the procedures for either of these techniques and I'll try and post a more detailed outline,
best wishes,
Fraser MacLean
UK
I actually just worked on a short cartoon personally and came across the same problem.
What I did was I would draw my rough drawings in pencil and then do my clean up on a seperate page using ink. I used to try with the roughs in blue pencil, but I had a problem with pressing too had on the page and it was showing up in my scans.
When I wanted lines for my shadow, I would draw it with a red pen on the cleaned up/ink page.
Next I would scan it in black and white. All the lines, including the red ones, would be black.
In photoshop I would use the select color range or wand tool to select all of the black in the picture. this would form a selection around all of the black lines.
then I would just take the pencil tool and draw the shadow color over the shadow lines.
Last, you just go in and click with the paint bucket to fill in the rest of the colors.
If you think that is the effect that you are going with, the kind of Batman: The Animated Series/Justice League type of shadow, then that should do it. It might be a little confusing without seeing it. I'll try and put up some pictures this weekend.
Hope that helps.
KalEl118
KalEl118,
I tried your suggestions since I was having some of the same problems that started this thread and it worked very well for me.
thanks!
Darling Dimpled Jason
bump.......
...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."