Tips on drawing/inking for scanned backgrounds?

[Janik]

Hi,

I just tried scanning a quickly drawn background image into photoshop to colour it, and the results were, well, not too good. I tried to follow the tutorial atÃ,  -Ã,  http://www.sylpher.com/kafka/tutorials/curves.htmÃ,  Ã, -Ã,  but my lines ended up kind of choppy.

Do you have any hints on how to draw a background that will look good once scanned and digitized? I want to avoid having to re-trace the lines in photoshop. I'm going for a cartoony look, 640x480x16 bit color.

What kind of pencil do you use for the initial sketch? What kind of pen for the inking? How thin should the lines be? And so forth.

Thanks!

[Evil]

Well, there's no real way to getting a really clean look in photoshop without retracing the lines. As for the drawing, a regular pencil is fine, but keep it light. I usually make a light sketch, then make a photocopy with high contrast, then use a tracing sheet to ink. That way I can keep my light origional in case I need to fix some things. I use some nice ball points for inking, but I know people who use fountains. All maters about the effect you want. The same goes for line thickness.

[Albert Cuandero]

I draw with a normal HB pencil and ink with a black fineliner.

After erasing the pencil lines I scan in full-color.

I then clean scans in photoshop mostly with the magic wand ( selecting the white areas, tolerance 50 - non continguous). Then I fil the selcted areas with pure white, inverse selection and fill it with pure black. (that's four mouse clicks so far ) After corrections with pancil/eraser(pencil mode) toll I select all black parts and copy them to a new layer I block. Then I erase the original layer and give each individual part I color a new layer bellow the outline layer so I can change things easier.

This takes whole scan/clean process takes me about 5 minutes. But the paper originaly used must be very clean, also after the erasing - this needs some practising.

[MrColossal]

That's my tutorial so maybe I can offer more help

by choppy do you mean like this:



how big are you drawing the backgrounds originally? I recommend drawing them bigger than your original size, not super big but just a little bigger, that way you can not only paint in the computer on a bigger image and add in details easier but then you can scale it down to your desired size and the choppiness is taken care of.

Also, I recommend using levels now instead of curves... Levels makes a little more sense when you think of it how this one tutorial pointed it out



Panel from a comic of mine



Levels, see the large collection of black on the right side? That's all the paper colour and junk that I don't want, so move the slider over so it blocks all that stuff out. Also move the other slider on the far left to make your darks darker



as for inking, it depends what you want to do. if you want consistent line widths then just use any felt pen. I wouldn't use ball point pens because sometimes they act weird and felt tips give a nice solid line and line colour every time [unless they're running out of ink of course]

if it's a big drawing you should trace it or find a way to get your hands on a light box, very handy they are, put your original smudgy drawing down, put a fresh peice of paper over it, tape them down and then trace it either with ink or with pencil again and then ink the new clean one.

also paper matters, if you have absorbent paper it's just going to suck the ink out of your pen and bleed all over it. Bristol board or card stock or anything heavier than standard paper I recommend, something that won't eat the ink and make it bleed and something that won't repell the ink and make it bead.

For a pencil I use a mechanical pencil but that's just preference, it's "My Drawing Pencil" so I always use it, I wouldn't say I think it's lucky or anything, I just know it.

evil: I think you can get very nice lines without retracing in photoshop, it's all in what you do before you scan, If the drawing is clean the scan will be clean.

Albert Cuandero: Try using levels like I described, what you do with selecting and deleting and all that might be easier by just using levels.

[Janik]

I then clean scans in photoshop mostly with the magic wand ( selecting the white areas, tolerance 50 - non continguous). Then I fil the selcted areas with pure white, inverse selection and fill it with pure black. (that's four mouse clicks so far )

That's a good idea! Do you do that at the final resolution, or at a higher resolution and then shrink back down (presumably using nearest-neighbor interpolation to keep the lines black)?

if it's a big drawing you should trace it or find a way to get your hands on a light box, very handy they are, put your original smudgy drawing down, put a fresh peice of paper over it, tape them down and then trace it either with ink or with pencil again and then ink the new clean one.

also paper matters, if you have absorbent paper it's just going to suck the ink out of your pen and bleed all over it. Bristol board or card stock or anything heavier than standard paper I recommend, something that won't eat the ink and make it bleed and something that won't repell the ink and make it bead.

Don't have a lightbox, no - hopefully I can get away with erasing the pencil lines?
But how do you use bristol board with a lightbox? Doesn't it block all the light?

[Janik]

Ok, I made a vary simple potted plant, I inked it with a Sharpie Ultra-Fine point (which I think isn't fine enough - it kind of "bled" very fast). I scanned at 200 dpi and adjusted levels, then I also used albert's Select, Invert, Fill with black trick. 200 dpi is roughly 3 times too much resolution for this image. So...

On try 1, I resized to 30% using nearest-neighbor, which gave thinner lines but some missing points. I filled with color (just a plain color for the purpose of this example, and I didn't draw the earth either), but had to work it into the tight spots and some white spots near the lines.




On the second example, I filled the image at the 200 dpi resolution. This was actually easier than at lower resolution. Then I flattened the image and resized to 30%, this time with the standard bicubic interpolation, giving some anti-aliased look:



And I think this is much better looking than the first try. The lines look much more hand-drawn, more cartoony, which is what I'm going for

I think that's the trick - make the whole background at 3x or so the resolution, and shrink afterwards. Or is 3 times larger too much?

[fovmester]

I always do it twice as big as the end product. That's enough for me. Don't make it too big because then you'll paint details that won't be visible after you've shrunk the picture.

[James Kay]

If you're using Photoshop to fill in the scanned lineart, experiment with your brush's ink settings. Ignore "normal" and try "darken" and "overlay". I forget which, but one of these will keep your black outlines in tact but eradicate the anti-aliased white jaggies so common in digitally painted scans.

[Janik]

I always do it twice as big as the end product. That's enough for me. Don't make it too big because then you'll paint details that won't be visible after you've shrunk the picture.

Or, as I like to see it, any mistakes I make that are smaller than a couple of pixels won't be visible after I shrink the picture. 

[MrColossal]

Don't have a lightbox, no - hopefully I can get away with erasing the pencil lines?
But how do you use bristol board with a lightbox? Doesn't it block all the light?

Nope, works just fine. A lightbox isn't that necessary so don't think it's super uber needed.

[Eggie]

I use a waste paper bin with a desklamp inside and a sheet of perspex on top as a light box sometimes.

[veryweirdguy]

Regarding lightboxes:

A simple lightbox isn't actually that hard to make yourself for (relatively) mega cheapness. I made one with materials adding up to around £50. It may not be high tech (doesn't have a rotating disc type thing, which I miss muchly) but it's functional. It's basically just a slanted box, clear plastic top ( I heard later that it was better to use something called "milk glass" or something, but meh) with a flourescent light underneath, connected to the mains.

It suits an amateur like myself just fine. Plus I had the satisfaction of being all hard n manly as I did some DIY.

So, yeah, if you are considering getting a lightbox, making a simple one is always an option.

[Mr_Frisby]

Hey thats pretty helpful - I've been doing it the long way for far too long - but it's fun anyhow.