Hi guys,
I am up to the point in my next animation where I have to test out the process of scanning a pencil drawing, and coloring in photoshop. For this, I have two questions:
1) I don't want to just retrace the pencil lines on another photoshop layer like I did in the past (even if I use a tablet), because I am interested in making the line "feel" like a pencil (if that makes any sense). What concerns me though is that it usualy comes out too grey in the scan, but when I make it darker, it looks more "crispy" and the usually unoticable pencil dust close the the pencil lines become more visible. I am sure that there is some way out of this, and I (being absentminded) just can't see it.
2) I have usually seen many of the precel drawings have red or orange shading on them, but I assume that that is only for cel animation. What I absolutely need to find out now, is what is the best way to outline a shadow in the paper drawing, and after you scan it in, to add the shade and not have to deal with erasing or coloring over the existing shadow outline.
These two things are standing in my way now, and I hope you guys can help me out on these. Any help would be much appreciated.
Sincerely Yours,
Lev
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "pencil look" so I'm going to guess that you just don't want a "vector/flash" type of look. If you can upload a picture, that would help.
All that I can suggest is that you start drawing with a non-photo blue pencil for all of your rough work and then take a black pen and use that for your outlines. That is what I did for my picture below.
Scan as a black and white document and it should remove all of the blue and just leave a clean, black outline. This will eliminate your pencil dust showing up.
As for coloring, I suggest that after you've done the above work, then take a red pen to mark your shadow areas. Then when you scan, the red parts will show up as black lines and you can use them as guides for coloring.
Now here is the only part that is kind of a pain:
Use the "fill bucket tool" to color your picture including your shadow areas. Next go up to the menu, click "selection" then "color range" (could be wrong, I'm not at a computer with Photoshop). Now, click any part of the outline on your picture. Adjust the slider as necessary so you are only selecting the black outlines of your drawing. Hit ok and you should have the selection markers surrounding all of the black out lines. now just pick one of your shadow colors and use the pencil tool to paint over the area of your outline that was a shadow line.
It's a pain to do, but after a little practice it can go pretty quick. I will upload an example that I did once I get home tonight.
Hope that helps.
KalEl118
Thank you very much for your info.
I guess when I think about it, it seems like the quickest way. So I will try it...
The only thing is though (and this is just a little thing) that I am not quite sure what kind of pen I could use that could give me clean but changing lines. This is one of the reasons that I want to trace with pencil (seeing as I have more control over the line thickness) Is there any brand of pen that you think would work best?
BTW: Nice Sheep.
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Lev Polyakov - Animation Director
www.levpolyakov.com
twitter.com/levpo
Here's what I do with pencil drawings:
I scan them in b/w at 300 dpi, adjust the black and white values until the lines are dark and the background is near pure white, then I click the RGB channel while holding the Ctrl-key and invert the selection. Now the pencil lines in all their unsmooth glory are selected. I create a new, transparent layer which I highlight and fill the selection with black. That leaves me with ruff pencil lines before a transparent background, perfect for adding colour in an additional layer. (You might want to delete the layer with the original scanned drawing or select its entire space and fill it with white as the original scan will still be in it, though.)
Hope that wasn't too confusing. Check out Tony Cliff's website, he has some good PhotoShop tutorials.
Hmmm... I know this might sound stupid (and I know I can always do it some other way) but I can't seem to find the tool to make the image black and white in the scanner:
http://levpolyakov.com/wp/my-files/my-img/images/Scanner.jpg
I think the histogram (center, left) is for this, but it seemed to complex for something as trivial as turning an image to b/w.
Thanks for the advice so far. You guys are helping me achieve greatness one click at a time.
EDIT: Ignoring the "I can't find b/w", I scanned it, turned it into greyscale, did all of the steps you told me, and Violla:
It all worked according to plan. Now, I will move on to the next step...
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Lev Polyakov - Animation Director
www.levpolyakov.com
twitter.com/levpo
Whoa - dunno nuthin' 'bout your scanner software. I usually use PhotoShop's Import command (located somewhere in the top bar menu). PhotoShop should use the installed Windows driver to bring up its own scanner control panel. All you then have to do is either chose a preset scan mode or tell the program which resolution and colour range you want.
I tried to scan it in through photoshop now, but there is one problem (which I think is because of the scanner). It directs me to either:
a) The same scanner menu popup, or
b) A simplified menu which gives "B/W as one of it's uncustomisable choices.
And if I choose "B", this is what happens:
Pretty Sad eh?
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So I guess I will tweak the image after I scan it and save it. Besides... if I am first doing the line test for my animation, coloring the thing can wait. So that is why I work "assembly line" style, putting in picture after picture into the scanner, and clicking the mouse per each picture.
But keep in mind that If I never knew the piece of info you guys told me today, I would be stuck when it would be coloring time, and spend my days with Mr. Photoshop Magic Wand. :o
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Lev Polyakov - Animation Director
www.levpolyakov.com
twitter.com/levpo