Preserved Topic: Comic book lines

Does anyone know how I can trace a path so that it looks as if it's been inked (like a comic)? Thin at the beginning, thick at the middle, and thin again at the end? I know that there are other styles for lines, but what about just that one? A method so that I do not have to change fade settings for every single path I'll be tracing?

Anyway, thanks for any help/tips that can be offered.

-D

i have been trying to do something like that myself...oh-yeah! i once did it with my sig
sorry don't know how i did it, i just did, im so USELESS






[This message has been edited by Dark (edited 07-28-2001).]

You know, it just came to me, that maybe this would be a job for Illustrator or some sort of vector package more advanced than Photoshop's paths. Any comments from someone that has both? Or has managed that particular effect in any package/plugin?

-D

I did something along those lines ( ) in Illustrator, but it was a long time ago.
(It might even have been back when I had a tablet...)

As for lineart you ought to use Illustrator (IMHO). Then you get a scalable image that you can open in PS and edit away....



-nimraw
If you can't convince, confuse!

The trick is to use the pen tool in illustrator with the line set to null, letting the fill do the work. Same as filling a path in photoshoppe, but better. Too many people underestimate Illustrator.


dilute+your/!dreams

I think part of the prob is that people just dont know what i can do. I've got a decent working knowledge of Illustrator myself, but i know there's so much that I just don't know how to use int it. The massive resources that we have for PS aren't really available as readily for people to learn. Wouldn't be a bad think to start doing on GN if had a guru who really knew their way around Illustrator. Just thinking out loud...

Chris

KAIROSinteractive

Never played with Illustrator, but I did do some comic stuff a long time ago in Painter. Pleasing enough results, but Painter isn't exactly my forte.

Though Illustrator is a very broad and powerful app, it doesn't quite have the applicability of photoshoppe, hence it is used much less. It is just as useful and as powerful as photoshoppe but on a different level in a different world of design. I forgot what I was getting at. Damn.


dilute+your/!dreams

Netmosis, can you elaborate on the whole "null line, let fill" concept?

Well in illustrator use the pen tool. On your tools pallete look at the bottom. The hollow box with a color is the stroke color. Set this to nothing. The solid box with a color set to the color you want your comic book lines to be. Now zoom up real close and draw/trace your comic book lines out. This way you don't get just uniform lines. Sometimes while tracing it gets hard to see the way illustrator works with fills to instead switch it to just stroke and outline your comic book line with a really thin stroked path and then switch it to just a filled path.


[dis]contempt+[.org]

I've had a fair amount of Illustrator experience. Seems the ideal way to do this would be to stroke your paths with the brush tool. Then you get the small-big-small effect. Also, creating your own brushes is maaaad easy in illustrator so you get all the variation you want.

net: I'm not quite sure what you're getting at ... do you mean to actually outline the lines themselves? so each line is a whole filled object unto itself? Seems that would work, but maybe a little bit too much work.

Illustrator is truly a great program, says me .... ask me why, I may tell you.... one of the things about illustrator is that it embodies a whole differnet design mentality from Photoshop, I've found. In fact, after almost solely using illustrator for a couple of years (designing posters) I've found it difficult to switch back to the photoshop mindset... but maybe that's just me.

Anyhow, I'm a big proponant of Illustrator. Someday, when I grow up, I hope to be able to effortlessly move between Illustrator and Photoshop to create amazing ... um ... creations to rival the gods, just like my father, Superman.

ahem.

- 310D

I'm in a job now where Illustrator is used just as much as Photoshop by my fellow employees. I'm halfway decent with Photoshop but a complete novice with Illustrator ... I picked up the Illustrator manual the other day and spent a couple hours just going over the basics. The key to Illustrator is that art created in it is completely scalable because it is vector based. You can make your final product as big or as small as you like without losing quality ... something that I don't think can be done in Photoshop as easily. Also, my co-workers also really harp on a tool call "autotrace" that comes in handy when you need to scale something that can get kinda rough looking otherwise. They use autotrace on fonts all the time in order to perfectly adjust the letters and scale them and such ... blah blah blah.

So anyways ... Illustrator is powerful and useful in its own right, don't knock it till you really give it an honest look-see. This coming from a real Photoshop fan!

BeeKay
Murphy's 50 Laws of Combat Operations
11. Try to look unimportant -- the enemy may be low on ammo.
23. When in doubt -- empty your magazine.

Which, I guess, brings me to my next question:
where can I get Illustrator cheap, or a similar, free version of it (sorta like Gimp, PSP instead of PS)?

If you have PS already you can get Illustrator cheap, like i think mine was $189. I've also got Freehand (got up with my Flash 5 upgrade) and I honestly have no idea what to do with it I open it and just kinda sit there...

Chris

KAIROSinteractive

Chris ~ That's odd, what with Freehand's superior ability to work with Flash and your strange obsession with Flash... I would've thought you would be all about Freehand.

Illustrator (on a PC anyway--I'm perfectly happy to use it on my Mac machines) is a bear and eats up resources. Especially when printing, when it's true demons show through.


s t e p h e n

Steve, that's exactly why I got it (after hearing Todd Purgason and a few other high profile Flash designers rave about it and after seeing a Macromedia seminar demo). It just hasn't clicked for me, I find the whole thing oddly unintuitive. I need to prob drop 25 bucks on one of those quickstart books and figure out what everything does...

Chris

KAIROSinteractive