Comic book lines

im doing a spot of artwork for my in game menus etc in my transformers game. also i like drawing comic book style drawing. does anyone know a good program or photo shop plugin for converting scanned line drawings into vectors or one that cleans up the lines for you?

Pete

http://www.blitzbasic.com/logs/userlog.php?user=645&log=614

Hmm, Adobe used to do a programme called "Streamline" which converted stuff into vectors, if a demo was avaialable that would be worth a try.

IPete2.

thanks mate ill give it a shot

Doesn`t Adobe Illustrator do this? May be worth checking out too. Nice art BTW.

Jason.

oh, ive just had a look on the adobe site and it looks like they have made streamline part of Illustrator now and thats a bit pricey.

im just trying vextractor looks like it does the same job

QuickSilva : Thanks im getting better my first few drawing were very poor.

This is the first link when I googled 'free bitmap vector'
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/bitmaptovector/

I love how none of those are free, despite the search term :P

Another link from further down
http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/02/28/autotracing_how_to_convert_bitmaps.htm

Their list includes an open-source tool
http://potrace.sourceforge.net/


Honestly though, this isn't a task that is really good for automating. You'd be better off tracing over your drawing by hand in a vector illustration tool. Also, what sort of cleanup do you need for your lines? They look pretty clean to me.

Scan, adjust levels, grab white space with magic wand, delete white space, 'blur' the black lines a small bit or not, whatever you like. No need for legit vector.

i dont know ive got very picky with my lines there abit wide and ive not got very steady hands. would you say Illustrator is the best program to use to trace manually.

thanks everyone

If you got Macromedia(Adobe) Flash, it's got the option to trace over bitmaps for you, works well on clean (high-rez) inked drawings.

Never tried any other tools though, so unsure how the competition fares.

@Pete, heard anything from Hasbro yet? with the new Transformers movie coming out, I would think they would go after stuff like they usually do.

Illustrator is the best tool for vector art out there. If you want a good line tool, it is the way to go... But it will enable you to color, ink, add effects and load of other comicbooky things... with ease..

You can stoke your lines with 'realistic' brush-strokes too...

If you are really picky and want a really powerful tool that can do a lot... then do it... but if you are worried about the price.. and you already have Photoshop... use the vector lines it has.... They are harder to use, and have limited stroke options... but they are there...

i will use the takara names. ive sent them a email to takara japan and they said its no problem if i dont charge for it. and hasbro licenced the character designs from them. anyway i dont think its going to bother them.

DampeS8N just downloaded the trial version it does look very good.

thanks

The threshold process in any half-decent paint package will do that for you - it's only going to work with line-art, though; not stuff that has already been coloured.

@Pete - sounds great! Hope it turns out well as I loved reading transformers original ed. when I was a young alpha prototype. (v0.3)

Inkscape http://www.inkscape.org/ can do it. It's an open source vector drawing proggy. Not as good as Illustrator, but still usable.

Ragnar

thanks for all your help. illustrator is so good i think ill save up for it. the trace function and auto fill with gap detection makes life so easy. i didnt even think of inkscape and i aready have it installed i will give it a go while saving. it does suck that i may have to use the jap names to avoid copyright. convoy doent really have the same ring as optimus prime. but its only for fun anyway.