Outlining a Character

[mutantboss]

Hello all,

I have been scouring the net for videos on drawing comics to get a better understanding of some of the popular techniques used to make comics in flash. I found
this video by Brad Fritzpatrick where he draws a character and I followed along with my own drawing to get use to some of flash's drawing tools.



The last few frame of the video stump me though. At the very end of the video he adds an outline to the outside of the character in what looks like just a few steps. He highlights everything, increases the line weight and bang, the outline is there leaving the inside lines intact. I thought maybe he was just creating a copy and pasting it behind the original, but I tried that and the option to arrange the pasted in place version was grayed out. The only way I was able to do it was to put the copy on a new layer below the original. It doesn't appear that he does this.

I know that I can manually change the outline, but I just didn't know if he was using some sort of stroke command like in Photoshop that I can not find to create the outline in just a few clicks. Any help with what this technique that still leave an animation friendly drawing would be appreciated.

[Memown]

hey not bad, looks very nice. and you canged it to your own character. looks cool

[mutantboss]

The character is not used for anything, I was just drawing along step by step to see how he used the pencil, did shading and the like. But its that last step that is throwing me. I also tried doing a drop shadow and that actually worked to do an outline, but the problem is that the drawing needs to be a MC and in the future I would like to keep them graphic so I can animate them on the time line. Another problem with the shadow technique is that as hard as you make the shadow it still has a fuzziness on the edges that I don't really like.

[Ranoka]

Deja vu

Um, I believe he is copying the original weight version into the clipboard. Then selecting what's on the stage and then making a new layer and pasting in place the original version on the new layer above. I just tried it out and you get the same results. Or, another way of doing the same thing is to not add another layer, and paste the original on top and group it before you deslect it.

Note that a shortcut to deselect everything is ctrl+shift+a, I use this instead of clicking on the stage to de-select (which I think is clumsy). ctrl+a being the shortcut for select all.

[mutantboss]

Thats what I'm thinking too. I guess this technique would be ok for an illustration but if you were going to animate it it would be better to just manually adjust the outline weight to keep the model lighter and avoid duplicate points when animating.

[Ranoka]

Yup.

People who use Flash to illustrate and render out raster images don't need to be as careful as someone who is rendering out as .swf. Animators need to be even more careful and spend more time planning out the structure and organization of their project than illustrators. Animators who are publishing on the web need to be even more careful than animators that are rendering out to video since they also have to keep in mind the cpu performance and size on hdd and in ram.

But it's a bit like if someone is doing a 3D animation for video they don't need to be as worried about polly count and performance as someone doing animation for a character in a 3D game.

[WayToon]

I agree with Ranoka.... the way I did this character was I copy all the body parts made it black and have the stroke bigger... here is the file if you want to check it out

[swf width=400 height=400]http://waytoon.com/keyframer/nice_walk_GOOD.swf[/swf]

[mutantboss]

Cool WayToon,

I will take a look at the file when I get home from work. I like how the outline effects the arm as it moves across his body, that is a nice effect.

[WayToon]

it was a long while to find a good system to create that style...

[mutantboss]

Thanks again for sharing the file with me, Its alway very helpful to see how other artist have achieved their work.

[spybeetle]

Nice... Waytoon... I wonder who showed you that technique...

I usually have a layer with the character and a layer with the character with a heavier line weight.



For this illustration, I used a filter to create my thicker outer line...

[swf width=400 height=400]http://www.spybeetle.com/keyframer/karatekid.swf[/swf]

I think these were the settings...
Drop Shadow
Distance: 0
Strength: 1000%
Blur X: 10
Blur Y: 10

It doesn't give it the cleanest line, but I am still experimenting....

[WayToon]

lol... sorry my Jedi... you know these padawans are still too prideful

[alex]

I think the best and fastes way to do it is adding a filter like spybeetle said. I use a glow filter with 1000 strenght and works very good. You can have your entire walkcycle or drawing and covert it intro a movieclip, than just add the filter! : )

[sarah3585]

I think the best and fastes way to do it is adding a filter like spybeetle said. I use a glow filter with 1000 strenght and works very good. You can have your entire walkcycle or drawing and covert it intro a movieclip, than just add the filter! : )

Doesn't this turn it into pixels so you lose the crisp vector lines? Making upscaling for zooming in limiting.

[alex]

"Doesn't this turn it into pixels so you lose the crisp vector lines? Making upscaling for zooming in limiting."

- Nope, only in the flash enviorment , when you export your movie you will still have that clin crisp look