The Simpsons & Futurama Fanworks Central

[Binky]

I just learned (well not really, I've thought about this before) of  a more efficient way to clean up drawings. Rather than doing a rough sketch, scanning, then spending a really long time (possibly hours) tracing the drawing in Illustrator or Flash, I tried drawing using a blue col-erase pencil, then tracing it over in pencil. After scanning, and channel subtraction in Photoshop (or any other graphics program), it'll give you a perfectly clean drawing. Here's an example:

The original drawing:


Blue channel isolated in Photoshop:

(Don't mind the crappiness of the drawing; I did it in a couple of minutes, and I'm not that good at tracing yet)

I know a lot of people probably already know this, but this is the first time I've tried it and I'm very pleased with the results. The only other way I know of cleaning up drawings is by using a light table, and that's not very convenient. And of course, there's also doing it directly on a computer, but that's very tedious.

[Marco]

Yeah, i tried that thing once, and afaik, most professionals around the net use the same method too. In theory, it has great advantages.

But i don't know why, i still feel at ease with drawing with pencil only. Mostly because of an equipment issue... i don't have colored pencils, only crayons... and i'm too used to draw with my mechanical pencil.

If there were colored leads, even 0.7 ones, it would be good to try, but i didn't find them around where i live. Do they even exist?

[Archonix]

They do, I managed to get hold of some a while back, but the ones I got weren't too great.

[Cherokee]

I don't draw matt groening stylie I do my own style to create futurama and simpsons characters

[Black_raven]

channel sub what?  I am bad at computers
it's taken me 2 years or more to use paintshop pro
I'm pathetic at these "methods"

[Binky]

Oh sorry, I never moved my old drawings to my new server. It should be there now. And wow, what a bad drawing of Lisa.

[Morpheus306]

Actually, Bink, there is an easy way to do it.  There are many people, like me, who use different colored pencils to draw with.  This is where you do your preliminary sketch.  Then you can choose to draw over it with a black graphite pencil to flush out the details.  Now what I do to clean up my drawings is take a new piece of paper on a light table and trace my sketch using a light fine black line.  Then i'll go in with a thicker lead and flush out the line wieghts to add depth.  Of course you could also use a ink pen or marker, which ever you prefer.  I included a page from my portfolio to show you my process.  Of course everyone has there own style, so try out lots of different things to see what's right for you.