The Sphere
General Garbage => Tropical Paradise of Hard Shelled Fruits => Topic started by: B E C K on Aug 18, 2007, 09:25:39 PM
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Do you ever ink anything you draw? I'm getting annoyed with inking stuff. I only wanted to so it would show up clearer when I scanned it in because the pencils are coming in kinda light. Pain in teh ass.
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You can adjust the contrast/brightness.
Or, use a pencil with a softer lead (like, 2B).
Or, uh, be a bit more confident and press a bit harder with your final lines (like, as opposed to pressing lightly when you're just sketching it at first.. eh...)
Yeah, sometimes I ink stuff. A nice way of getting nice-looking lines with varying width is to use a felt tip pen with a brush tip (well, a nib shaped like a brush, and it's kinda soft and can bend and stuff). An alternative to this is to use a real brush dipped in ink. Also, you can use a quill thingie dipped in ink, or a fountain pen... those let you vary the line width (sometimes called thickness or weight) by pressing lighter or harder.
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I do that, but it doesn't come out quite right.
I do my sketching in non-photo blue pencil, so that's not so bad. It's been working great for me. Then I just overlay my pencil on top. A darker pencil. Duh. I should've thought of that. I have to ink the pages I've already partially done (only because I'm a bit of a completist), but I'm gonna try future pages in dark pencil. Thanks.
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If you have a light board, try tracing the original drawing using a mechanical pencil, and then scan that in. It'll be cleaner overall, give you a chance for some non-destructive alterations, and an opportunity to focus on line weights.
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A light board was something I was thinking about. Don't have one yet, but worth looking into.
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I've never got pencil to scan well (May have something to do with cheap scanners I buy.) and have always had to ink stuff. I've ruined things when I've inked them.
But I don't draw much anymore...so I have no practical advice.
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Yeah, I inked a page and it took away from pencils. I mean, I'm just drawing dumb cartoons and some character designs for, like, future dumb cartoons I guess :lol:, but I liked the way it looked in pencil. Ink makes everything look stark. I bought some markers to shade things in, and I think it improves it somewhat. I think the darker pencil may help the problem, since it was just a problem with some of the pencil coming in too lightly. Although I suppose I need to learn to ink shit some time.
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In all my years of drawing, and at one point I wanted to be a comic artist, I've never found a way to ink that I was completely happy with. But if you go with the accepted method it's really just a bottle of ink, a Pen, and pen holder. Although I use to use sharpies a lot to fill in large areas of black. (Course now you could just scan it and fill it in with Photoshop.)
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Yeah, I've been wondering about that. The program aspect. No way I'll be getting Photoshop any time soon. :lol: I do need a new imaging program of some sort. I use 20/20 and Microsoft Picture!It 99 (the same program I bought on my first computer, believe it or not). My new set up has made Picture!It completely buggy, which is a little sad because it really served its intended purpose reasonably well (though it couldn't make transparent gifs to save its life).
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I think there are free programs that are really similar to Photoshop.
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I got a nice scanner ($150 HP Scanjet 4850) a year or so ago. It only scans around legal size, so a "real" artist would probably stick their nose up at it, but it has no problems dealing with pencils. A lightboard is a nice thing to have if you can get one. I haven't used one in a while, though, and it didn't belong to me, so I can't give any tips on that.
I'm using The GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) these days, since I lost my "free" copy of Photoshop 7 (immediately after buying a book for it (http://www.shwiggie.com/boards/emoticons/atch.gif)). It's a pain in the ass sometimes, but I can get stuff done with it. Paint Shop Pro is a cheaper alternative that some use, and the cheaper Photoshop LE may be an option.
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There are also manga programs... I think they originate from Japan.
I've never used any, but from the screenshots, they seem to be exact copies of Paint Shop Pro or Painter. They're preloaded with screentones and stuff, though. Hrm. They are a bit cheaper priced, too. I wonder if they just ripped off Paint Shop Pro/Painter/Photoshop, or they paid some license to make customized/souped-up/lite versions of these programs.
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Another free art program, I think, is an early version of OpenCanvas. It's a .exe file that's under 1 MB. What's neat about it is that you can have up to 4 people draw/paint on the same canvas over the internet.
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Cool, thanks for the name droppings (not to be confused with owl pellets). I'll be checking some of that stuff out.
My HP scanner isn't that bad, but it's one of those Print/Scan/Copy ones and it hasn't been printing blue for some time now. Not that I have any pressing need to print blue, but the point is I'm keeping my eye out for something new. My first scanner (I think also an HP) was perfect for stuff like this. I'm kinda thinking I never should've given it away, but then again I did get it in, like, 1999. So in the end, probably better off finding something new. The thing that annoys me with my HP is that it automatically decides what it wants to scan for you. Even in instances where the area I want is far under the legal size limit, HP Director just says "Nope, don't want to do that" and chops it up. I'm not certain if I want to get another "multitasker". But I haven't actively been shopping around for one of those yet anyway.
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The thing that annoys me with my HP is that it automatically decides what it wants to scan for you. Even in instances where the area I want is far under the legal size limit, HP Director just says "Nope, don't want to do that" and chops it up.
There must be some way to get it to scan the whole area of the... scanner. Ugh, I have an Epson scanner and my parents have an HP scanner/printer/copier thing. I think I've learned from both ones that the software for these things is confusing and seem poorly designed.
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To read the entire scanning bed/area, you mean? Yeah, that automatic cropping is stupid. If I want to scan a big gap of white space, it should be considered my personal problem and not something that needs to be forcibly correctly. Though my first scanner was an HP and I had no problems with that.
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I had to buy a lightbox last week for uh, this Intro to Traditional Animation class.
Seems neat... I've always wanted to get one. It's an "Art O Graph Light Tracer."
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Are you taking any other classes like that? It sounds interesting.
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Nope... right now it's just that and GE classes... and Japanese 203... heh heh. I guess since I'm still iffy about my major I can still just do GE classes for now... ho ho.
I'm actually missing some pre-requisites for the Intro to Trad. Animation class, but I think my skills are currently sufficient... I wanted to jump ahead a bit and do a class that I'm really interested in, instead of wasting time doing prerequisites (once again, I do feel that I can handle the intro to anim. class) and then finding out I don't want to go in that path anymore. The prerequisites were 2D Design (done), 3D Design, Life Drawing (done), and Life Drawing for Animation.
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GE? What's General Electric class?