Drawing Anime Cel art for characters and translating to Photoshop 1. Determine your subject, camera angle, and attributes of the character 2. Determine the pose. Make a very light general outline. Position major items, like eyes, shoulders, general thrust of the body, etc. Arrange parts like eyes, nose, etc. the iris and pupils are not added at this stage. Keep in mind body rotations. Add details like the expression, size of eyes, etc. 3. Develop the line work. Don’t erase yet. Now draw the fine areas, including the iris, etc. Next comes shadows. Draw them with a colored pencil. The shadows will ultimately not have outlines, they will be designated with color only. If your shapes are all “closed” they will be easier to edit in Photoshop later. When you feel the drawing is ready [called a key drawing] trace a clean copy of it on the light box. 4. Make a table for colors [palette] and designate assignments. Sketch them in on the pencil drawing. Keep in mind a light source for all shading and highlight breaks. 5. Trace the line areas only on a separate sheet of paper – trace lines, not color breaks. Make lines in single strokes. Take advantage of the varying weights of the pencil drawing and use that to inform your work. Take care with the place lines meet. think of this as the final product. 6. Scan the marker art as well as the pencil art. Position them exactly on 2 layers in PSD. In clean up you can use Image/Adjust Replace Color. Use the Select by Color method to bezier curve the outline layer. Use the pencil scan as a reference for shading. Make the line art layer transparent by load as selection, inverse selection, fill the layer with black. A simpler version is to just put the line layer to multiply and it will ‘look through’ the white. Shadows – use the freeform pen tool – set curve fit to 3 pixels, then use fill path button on the pen palette. Inking in PSD alternative – instead of making your lines in markers then scanning them, you could scan the pencil art and draw in PSD. Here would be your brush setting: 5 pixel diameter angle 0 100: round and hard spacing under 25% shape dynamics – pen pressure min diameter 1%; other options to 0 or off dual brush – select a hard round brush, mode color burn, diameter 2, spacing 1% scatter 0%, count 1 Make the base art blue so you can ink easier. On inking This is slow. Practice varying your line weight with pressure, as well as assigning different weights, for example, heavier for the face than jewelry or hair. Perhaps start with the face and hair and work outwards. Converting to paths option If you want to have your lines as paths [for editing, using in Flash, etc.] you can select using a variety of methods ... one is select by color ... when making the path, use any tolerance setting between 1.5 and 2.0. Redrawing lines with the freeform pen tool Curve fit 2.0 for small areas, 3.0 for large. Painter If you are using Painter, use the Pen/Scratchboard tool, Min size 0%, size about 1.5 Set a make new paper to:
Tips: double click hand tool icon on the toolbar to make the entire image fit the window. Double click with the tool on the image re-centers. Try using the hand tool; painter is more flexible getting around your image than PSD. Also, images [all layers] can be rotated with ease. Rotate canvas = E ... Brush = B ... Magnifier = M ... Grabber = G ... Brush Creator = Ctrl B ... Dropper = D Blue lines in Painter Make the template [pencil scan] blue in Painter: N = color talk
save as make blue lines ... then run that script. Illustrator Make a pen like this ... your drawing will be very fast, easy to correct, sharp, with an interesting flow and variation.
AI path editing shortcuts Selection = V Direct selection = A Pen = P Add anchor = = Delete anchor = - Convert anchor = Shift C Complex repeating shapes like jewelry You can make one shape, Alt drag to overlap, then add to shape Expand compound shape does a clean-up
Re-apply the brush stroke to the path
Here are your path tools ... Alt-Ctrl J = average 2 points Ctrl J = join 2 points
Outline stroke will take your brushed lined and convert them to filled shapes
Release compound paths and recolor resulting separate shapes
You could also dispense with the brush and use the pencil tool to make freeform shapes and fill ... Ctrl Y = preview as Outline
Clip board option
Paste into PSD as pixels, resize with handles, and you will get a very nice result. Or for more effective editing, paste as paths and then remove the middle line and individually fill each line. Looks just as great and can also be edited. Paste in the fill areas separately as pixels. The trick then is to manually resize up the handles to match.
A nice option might be, to do the lines in AI and everything else in PSD or Painter ... Paste the line art into PSD first to get a transparent background (it will go opaque in Painter) then open in Painter. this will access the lines in a transparent layer as pixels. Painter The keep the lines as shapes in Painter This gives the most control. Make lines with the brush in AI. Paste into PSD. Remove middle line. Export paths to AI. Open the paths file in Painter. Select fill to fill the lines and edit if necessary. Painter will retain the fill even if you change the lines, like a PSD shape layer.
To get the smoothest lines To see the best line preview at any size, save your Painter file as a .rif and reopen. The anti-aliased shape edges are superb. For both best editing and appearance, keep the shapes as shapes, and do not convert to selections, unless you have to fill with gradients or whatever. Tip – duplicate the shape layers before converting to selections to retain those shapes for future editing.
Note – you can also File/Acquire Illustrator from painter, but it is a little awkward in that it creates a separate file, does not recognize shapes that well, etc. You also have to save the right version legacy AI in order to make it work, or it crashes. Make shading blocks and other drawing shapes in Painter with its own pen tool, which is very handy and easy to use.
Working with shapes and painting together Take a shape and duplicate it. Convert to layer and make a layer mask. Painting will now be limited to the layer mask, functioning as a selection. You will still have the stroke for the clean line. Keep the stroke layer on top. You can even change the stroke thickness.
AI/PSD/Painter process summary Use the brush or the pencil in AI to trace ... use compound paths and outline ... do not color except the minimal to identify shapes ... Copy to AICB clipboard and paste into PSD Transform Scale as the file might come in small, and remove any center path lines from brush strokes in PSD ... export paths to AI From painter, acquire AI file [the export] and color in Painter. There will be a layer for each shape. Don’t color the shapes yet. Save as your file, and make each shape a selection. That will delete each shape selection as you go. Make new layers as required and fill each selection with the correct color.
You can skip PSD, and also color in AI, this way: In AI make all fills, no brushes. You can color in AI this way. No gradients, etc. Export to legacy AI 3.0 Acquire the exported AI file from Painter. Drag to your file. The rest of the process is the same, with making selections from shapes, etc. When you convert to selections, the center path line from AI brushes will be left behind, just delete those layers. 7. Color in a layer below the line art using a brush and a hard edge eraser to chisel the shapes. If you make all shapes “closed” you will be able to use the bezier curves as selections for color blocks. Tip – use the space bar to access hand tool to scroll around in PSD. Coloring with gouache brushes in PSD Make your gouache brush by taking a 100 pixel soft round set to dissolve at 75% opacity and painting a single dot in a 70x70 circle in a 72x72 file [72 ppi] ... make that your brush preset ... be sure to go back to 100% opacity normal mode to paint. Set spacing to about 8. this works great with a wacom tablet and not good without one. For highlights and details, add a texture to your brush. Gouache brushes in Painter Use Flat opaque gouache 20 for large flat areas Use fine round gouache 10 for smaller areas Making a tracing paper/Light Box file in painter Make a clone of your image to trace [File/clone] Select All/Backspace to delete Go Canvas/tracing paper Ctrl T = toggle tracing paper Backgrounds One choice is to start out at the get-go with a nice color to work over. Then you can build up the color layers above. for example, you could start with skin as a new layer. You will need to select those hopefully closed areas so set the magic wand to a tolerance of 30. Another tool to use is quick mask mode. Enter the mode – unselected areas will be red. Use a hard round brush and add and remove areas from the selection to make corrections. Black adds, white removes. Make all your colors Lock Transparency if you need to only change the color and not the shape later. Don’t use black outlines, use only colors, shades, etc., like an oil painting. |
