2k-tan piccy

[CaptBrenden]

Well, im a bit late on the topic, but Im willing to offer any help you need, as I concider myself fairly good doing exactly what your trying to learn right now.   Ive been inking with the photoshop pen tool for a long time now and can use it far better then I could ever hope to use a tablet (hell... i almost concider my tablit a waste of money... i cant use it for anything -.-)  

One thing I noticed imediatly is that though you do varry the line width slightly its too slight to notice.  At 300 DPI for a page sized picture i would go with a 3 px brush for detail lines and a 4-5 px brush for contuor lines.  Possibly even a 6 px outline to the entire drawing...

Also you should tapper your lines instead of just letting them end.  Not tappering makes it enstantly obviose you used the pen tool and looks less natural. Zoom into about 300 % and use the eraser tool to shave off part of the line tip till you have a natural point rather then a rounded end.  It will look more like a pen stroke made by an artists nib leaving the paper.

As for layers... I would saggest this as a guidline.... Background (white) sketch (your scanned drawing with the levels adjusted to turn it blue so your ink shows up better) a color layer, a shade layer, a highlight layer and your ink layer.   These 6 layers will have just about everything you can possibly need.  Also.. if the drawing warrents it, a detail layer for odd ball things.

The background layer is self explaintory.  Leave it white untill you start doing your shading, youll need what ever is going to be in the background at that point so you can figure out what your focal light source is.  before that its just clutter to confuse you (your sketch should have already been drawn to match it so you shouldnt need it for that)

The sketch layer is your drawing.  Edit--> Adjustments --> Levels I belive brings up the option box you need.  from the pull down menu select the blue channel and then take the small white arrow below the graidiant bar and slide it all the way to the left, it should turn a grey sketch lightish blue.   Now black ink lines created on your transperent ink layer should be a hellavallot easier to see.  When done inking, either hide the layer incase you want it later or deleat it for size sake (its one of the bigger layers file size wise)  

All your inking should be done on a seperate transperent layer, possibly 2 so you can taper lines like I said before without erasing lines you dont want erased.  Bounce between the two and when your done inking hide everything else and merg the two visable ink layers togeather.  

Color is easy, color prep is hard.   Make a duplicate of your white background layer and your ink and hide the originals and then merg the duplicates so you have a black and white drawing rather then a black on transperent layer with a white layer under it.    Once thats done bring up the levels adjustment diolage  like before but leave it on the overall adjustment and the black arrow about an 8th of the way to the right and then the white arrow all the way to the left to meet it. It will turn your nice smooth brush line into a thiner but jagged version of your drawing.

Select--> Color Range.  make sure its set to selected color (you should have black as your foreground and white as your background) the tollerence slider set to 14 and the invert box checked.  click okay and photoshop will automaticly select all the white.  press delete and you will end up witha black on transperent jaggy pixilated version of your drawing.

From here, unhide your original ink and background and make sure the jaggy layer is between them.  If done correctly you shouldtnt but bearly be able to even tell its there as the original ink will be wider, however with this jaggy layer (hereafter called color layer) not having the variose levels of black to transperent you can freely use the paintbucket to fill the drawing with color. at this point coloring (at least the major portions) will take less then 5 minutes.  

Egads Ive been typing for too long on this....  -.-  Anyhow.. try out what ive said so far or not... but I think it will help you.  if you got questions, or anything just ask me..... here is a link so an example of what i do with photoshop 7.0 and a mouse:

http://www.deviantart.com/view/15202780/

[SleepyD]

wonder why I didn't notice this spilling of information from your brain in here earlier?

I've become a bit lazy, so I feel that drawing 2k-tan again would be faster than fixing all these mistakes I'm seeing now.  Anyhoo, these inking tips seem useful, and I'll be using them next time. ^^  (Provided I draw something soon enough that I don't forget... ^^; )

I'm still figuring out Inkscape at the moment, it's a new, unexplored world!

And as for layers, I use a LOT of layers. lol

[C-Chan]

INKSCAPE 0.44 R0X0r5 Ur B0X0r5!!!!!!  ^V^

No seriously, I love it.  I only average 1 crash every two days and it has a separate Layers window just like in Photoshop (though it's not immediately visible).  Take as much time as you want feeling it out, cause the more you know it, the more helpful it will prove to be, and the more you'll be shocked by the fact that the program is FREE!  ^0^

Thank goodness for Linux!  ^V^\

[CaptBrenden]

....wait... crashing is bad o.O and one every 2 days, that seems really bad to me.  once your done inking in it, can you move it to photoshop for color?

[C-Chan]

....wait... crashing is bad o.O and one every 2 days, that seems really bad to me.  once your done inking in it, can you move it to photoshop for color?

Course.  ^__^
Just export the vector image to a PNG file and choose how LARGE you want the output to be.  The maximum is some insanely-large resolution like 64000 x 64000, if you have hard drives to burn.  ^_-

Of course, with cel-shading, it's not entirely necessary to export it to photoshop for coloring.  But if you choose to do so, a large PNG file ensures you're Magic Want tool will work wonders on any section of your sketch.  

And believe me, version 0.43 crashed on my Windows machine almost every 10 minutes (or rather, everytime I did something wrong with the vector nodes).  Guess it's because the program was built for Linux, but either way can't complain since it's still damn-good freeware.  ^o^

[CaptBrenden]

-.- I dun like PNG they steal your soul.  However I do have the hard drive to burn, I just ordered myself a new DELL XPS M1710 with 100 gig 7200 rpm internal and an external 500 gig 7200 rpm firewire hard drive.  woo!

I dont know how the ink turns outn with inkscape, but in photoshop I dont color on the ink layer, I color on a seperatly prepared color layer that ive treated the ink to lose all its transitioning pixels and is thiner then the original. that way i can use the wand freely and I can over lay the original ink when Im done and all the smoothness of the original lines returns

if a program crashes on a regular basis for me, its no good no matter how good its tools are. My work is very precios to me and I wont have a single stroke of it stolen!

[C-Chan]

NOOoooOOO!!!
I lost a customer....  ;^0^;

Hehe,... well not that I have anything to do with the actual programming of the App, but since I can't bug-report to save my life and they don't seem to accept donations, my only contribution to the program's development is to attract new users.  So I'll go off and mope now.... ;_;

...

*mope*  ;___;

[CaptBrenden]

well since it was free.. im not really a "customer" tho just as a saggestion, "frequent crashes" is not a good line in a sales pitch.

hehe mope.