Neato! I like the subtle delay on the ears and the knot of the apron. And of course, the super appealing colors and character designs are great, as usual. I hope to see more clips soon, some possibly longer than one second maybe?!
My stupid website server sucks and keeps going down off and on many times each day. Sorry about that folks....but i don't want to post it on Youtube...i don't like the way things look posted on it etc...Hopefully I can get this webserver issue resolved soon.
"All done in flash, using traditional penciled keys."
I'm always curious about the process that people use ...
Do you mean that you did the Key clean-up drawings on a new layer in Flash with the brush tool or did you process your cleaned-up pencil drawings through Streamline first and then do inbetweens in Flash ?
I remember a post you had here a few years ago explaining your process on Waif and you showed how you did your clean-ups on paper and then vectorized them with Streamline. Is that still the case ?
The cleanups for this particular scene were done using the brush tool in Flash. Unfortunately, the new Intel Mac's don't allow the use of OS 9 which means I can't use Streamline any more (booo!) I have been told that Illustrator now contains this function but I haven't tried it out yet so I have started just doing the cleanups in Flash...the line work is a little wobbly and takes a little longer but it saves on paper which can get quite pricy over the course of a film production. So I guess it's a bit of a trade-off. I'm sure this process would be aided greatly by using one of them fancy-schmancy Cintiq tablets but they cost quite a lot and no one has offered to buy me one yet; so it may take a while to save up my paper route money before I can get one myself.
One option would be to get an old Mac PPC iMac dedicated to run Streamline (and any other "Classic" apps you like) . You can pick those up fairly cheap on eBay .
Just do your inking on paper as usual, scan , import the drawing to Streamline (running in Classic mode on the old Mac PPC ) , then after Streamline has vectorized them drag the whole folder of vectorized art on to an external hard drive or a jumpdrive to transfer to your Intel Mac running Flash.
I liked Streamline ok, but it is frustrating that the Intel Macs don't support "Classic" apps like Streamline. It is possible as I suggested to get an old PPC iMac to be dedicated to only using Streamline for converting scanned drawings to vector lines , but that's a bit of a hassle ... better to have everything on one computer .
I've been trying out a demo version of Illustrator CS3 over the past couple of days... Illustrator's LiveTrace feature : WOW ! Much better and faster than Streamline . Too bad that Illustrator CS3 is so expensive . I wish they would integrate the LiveTrace feature of Illustrator CS3 into Flash (replace the useless "Trace Bitmap" feature in Flash with LiveTrace).
I've found that ToonBoom Studio 4.0 does a pretty good job of vectorizing scanned b&w line art clean-up drawings . As long as the clean-ups are done in a clear , dark line and the scans are at a high resolution (300 dpi) then the Import & Vectorize feature in ToonBoom Studio 4.0 works well. (not as good as Illustrator LiveTrace, but better than Flash Trace Bitmap). ToonBoom Studio 4.0 doesn't do motion "tweening" and that sort of Flashy thing, but I don't think that ever looks very good anyway , so I prefer to do my own inbetweens.
Most of the time I prefer to use a bitmap application called TVPaint Animation, but if I ever needed the final drawings converted to vector I would probably use ToonBoom Studio 4.0 .
Yes, Silhouette is now available for Mac . It's trickier to get it set up than Streamline or the new LiveTrace in CS 3 , but it does seem to work pretty well as long as the original drawings are drawn in a bold , clear clean-up line and scanned at high resolution. (similar to results you'd get in Streamline , but not as easy to use as Streamline was . )
The LiveTrace version in Illustrator CS is not very good in my experience . The newest version in Illustrator CS 3 is great ! Very easy to use and produces good looking results .
Out of all the bitmap-to-vector methods I've experimented with the Illustrator CS 3 LiveTrace works the best , saves the images as EPS files , then import to Flash .
Another one that I've found which works well is a freeware app called Delineate , but you have to go through some extra steps with Delineate which are a hassle when doing high volume scanning and converting to vector . Delineate only has one file format : SVG (scalable vector graphic) . The SVG conversions look good , but then you have to run them through Illustrator and scale them correctly before importing them to Flash.
First you use Delineate to convert the bitmap images to SVG files , then load the SVG files into Illustrator , then export them from Illustrator as EPS files to import to Flash . Unfortunately Flash does not have the ability to directly import SVG files. You have to convert them to EPS files in Illustrator first . The other major limitation about Delineate is that I haven't found a way to make it batch process a lot of scans at the same time. I have to do them one at a time, which isn't so bad for just a few drawings , but if it's dozens or hundreds of animation drawings it's not workable . Delineate is an Open Source software , so I suppose a "script" or whatever they call it could be written to allow it to batch process a lot of scans at the same time, but that sort of thing is beyond me ... I have no experience or inclination to learn computer scripting . I"m just a cartoonist.
Inkscape is an Open Source , free app that will take a bitmap image and trace it to a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) file , which can then be taken to Illustrator and saved as an AI or EPS file for import to Flash or ToonBoom (it would be so much easier if Flash or ToonBoom would support automatic import of SVG files , but that's another topic ...)
Inkscape is better than Delineate which I linked above.
Give it a try.
To me the best and easiest way is still the LiveTrace in Illustrator CS3 , but I don't think I can justify spending the money on it right now. (I have the demo , but it's going to run out at the end of 30 days. I have an older version of Illustrator CS so I can use that to process the SVG files from Delineate or Inkscape).
I wish Adobe would put the Illustrator CS3 Live Trace function into Flash . Maybe they did in the Flash CS 3 ? I have Flash 8 , and again, I doubt I can afford to update right now.
Anyway, try Inkscape. They have an extensive Wiki/User Manual.
I haven't yet had a chance to do anything with this film for a while...I was hoping that the version of Illustrator I had would work but it is only CS1 and it doesn't work to well with the vectorizing...I'll try some of those links as soon as I have a chance. Thanks for giving me all that info! You're a superstar!!
16 comments:
Neato! I like the subtle delay on the ears and the knot of the apron. And of course, the super appealing colors and character designs are great, as usual. I hope to see more clips soon, some possibly longer than one second maybe?!
Cool animation. And nice characters.
-Ryan
In some reasons my browser (firefox) crashes..
Cant see it :(
Can you add it to youtube?
Dude, all I get is this:
"Not Found
The requested URL /sample001-desktop.mov was not found on this server."
Whhaaaaaaat?
My stupid website server sucks and keeps going down off and on many times each day. Sorry about that folks....but i don't want to post it on Youtube...i don't like the way things look posted on it etc...Hopefully I can get this webserver issue resolved soon.
Lookin great, Nick!
i like the subtle lift when he finishes pouring. nice work. great colors as usual.
That clip looks good.
"All done in flash, using traditional penciled keys."
I'm always curious about the process that people use ...
Do you mean that you did the Key clean-up drawings on a new layer in Flash with the brush tool or did you process your cleaned-up pencil drawings through Streamline first and then do inbetweens in Flash ?
I remember a post you had here a few years ago explaining your process on Waif and you showed how you did your clean-ups on paper and then vectorized them with Streamline. Is that still the case ?
The cleanups for this particular scene were done using the brush tool in Flash. Unfortunately, the new Intel Mac's don't allow the use of OS 9 which means I can't use Streamline any more (booo!) I have been told that Illustrator now contains this function but I haven't tried it out yet so I have started just doing the cleanups in Flash...the line work is a little wobbly and takes a little longer but it saves on paper which can get quite pricy over the course of a film production. So I guess it's a bit of a trade-off. I'm sure this process would be aided greatly by using one of them fancy-schmancy Cintiq tablets but they cost quite a lot and no one has offered to buy me one yet; so it may take a while to save up my paper route money before I can get one myself.
One option would be to get an old Mac PPC iMac dedicated to run Streamline (and any other "Classic" apps you like) . You can pick those up fairly cheap on eBay .
Just do your inking on paper as usual, scan , import the drawing to Streamline (running in Classic mode on the old Mac
PPC ) , then after Streamline has vectorized them drag the whole folder of vectorized art on to an external hard drive or a jumpdrive to transfer to your Intel Mac running Flash.
I liked Streamline ok, but it is frustrating that the Intel Macs don't support "Classic" apps like Streamline.
It is possible as I suggested to get an old PPC iMac to be dedicated to only using Streamline for converting scanned drawings to vector lines , but that's a bit of a hassle ... better to have everything on one computer .
I've been trying out a demo version of Illustrator CS3 over the past couple of days... Illustrator's LiveTrace feature : WOW ! Much better and faster than Streamline . Too bad that Illustrator CS3 is so expensive . I wish they would integrate the LiveTrace feature of Illustrator CS3 into Flash (replace the useless "Trace Bitmap" feature in Flash with LiveTrace).
I've found that ToonBoom Studio 4.0 does a pretty good job of vectorizing scanned b&w line art clean-up drawings . As long as the clean-ups are done in a clear , dark line and the scans are at a high resolution (300 dpi) then the Import & Vectorize feature in ToonBoom Studio 4.0 works well. (not as good as Illustrator LiveTrace, but better than Flash Trace Bitmap). ToonBoom Studio 4.0 doesn't do motion "tweening" and that sort of Flashy thing, but I don't think that ever looks very good anyway , so I prefer to do my own inbetweens.
Most of the time I prefer to use a bitmap application called TVPaint Animation, but if I ever needed the final drawings converted to vector I would probably use ToonBoom Studio 4.0 .
Nick,
Here's one more:
I've been trying out a bitmap to vector conversion application called
Silhouette . Seems to work almost as good as the LiveTrace in Illustrator CS 3 .
It's $297 dollars. Not cheap, but not way out of reach either .
Try the demo.
http://www.silhouetteonline.com/
Thanks everybody!
I'm going to try out the trace feature in my copy of Illustrator...I think it's just CS 1 though...but thanks for the tips!
David, is that Silhouette program available for Macs? I couldn't seem to find any information about system req's on their site last time I checked.
Hi, Nick,
Yes, Silhouette is now available for Mac . It's trickier to get it set up than Streamline or the new LiveTrace in CS 3 , but it does seem to work pretty well as long as the original drawings are drawn in a bold , clear clean-up line and scanned at high resolution. (similar to results you'd get in Streamline , but not as easy to use as Streamline was . )
Silhouette trial download
The LiveTrace version in Illustrator CS is not very good in my experience . The newest version in Illustrator CS 3 is great ! Very easy to use and produces good looking results .
Out of all the bitmap-to-vector methods I've experimented with the Illustrator CS 3 LiveTrace works the best , saves the images as EPS files , then import to Flash .
Another one that I've found which works well is a freeware app called Delineate , but you have to go through some extra steps with Delineate which are a hassle when doing high volume scanning and converting to vector .
Delineate only has one file format : SVG (scalable vector graphic) . The SVG conversions look good , but then you have to run them through Illustrator and scale them correctly before importing them to Flash.
First you use Delineate to convert the bitmap images to SVG files , then load the SVG files into Illustrator , then export them from Illustrator as EPS files to import to Flash . Unfortunately Flash does not have the ability to directly import SVG files. You have to convert them to EPS files in Illustrator first . The other major limitation about Delineate is that I haven't found a way to make it batch process a lot of scans at the same time. I have to do them one at a time, which isn't so bad for just a few drawings , but if it's dozens or hundreds of animation drawings it's not workable . Delineate is an Open Source software , so I suppose a "script" or whatever they call it could be written to allow it to batch process a lot of scans at the same time, but that sort of thing is beyond me ... I have no experience or inclination to learn computer scripting . I"m just a cartoonist.
Hey, Nick,
Did any of that stuff I linked for you work ok for vectorizing your drawings ?
Here's another one to try:
Inkscape
Inkscape is an Open Source , free app that will take a bitmap image and trace it to a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) file , which can then be taken to Illustrator
and saved as an AI or EPS file for import to Flash or ToonBoom (it would be so much easier if Flash or ToonBoom would support automatic import of SVG files , but that's another topic ...)
Inkscape is better than Delineate which I linked above.
Give it a try.
To me the best and easiest way is still the LiveTrace in Illustrator CS3 , but I don't think I can justify spending the money on it right now. (I have the demo , but it's going to run out at the end of 30 days. I have an older version of Illustrator CS so I can use that to process the SVG files from Delineate or Inkscape).
I wish Adobe would put the Illustrator CS3 Live Trace function into Flash . Maybe they did in the Flash CS 3 ? I have Flash 8 , and again, I doubt I can afford to update right now.
Anyway, try Inkscape. They have an extensive Wiki/User Manual.
Inkscape Wiki
Hi David,
I haven't yet had a chance to do anything with this film for a while...I was hoping that the version of Illustrator I had would work but it is only CS1 and it doesn't work to well with the vectorizing...I'll try some of those links as soon as I have a chance. Thanks for giving me all that info! You're a superstar!!
Post a Comment