Coloring in Flash: the Amazing Vin Rowe Method (aka the Decent Vin Rowe Method) lays out a simple and quick way to turn hand-drawn line art into colored vector art. I've used this for my illustration and animation with great results, and I thought I would pass it along. I remember first trying computer coloring years ago and how frustrating and labor-intensive it was, so my hope is that this will make it easier for someone out there. Attention illustrators, cartoonists, comic book folks and other artists: read carefully, and let me know what you think! -vin@vinsdojo.com
Part ONE
Coloring inked drawings in Photoshop is a great idea if you have lots of time on your hands and are very picky. Also, if you have a sketchy style of drawing/inking or use a lot of cross-hatching, Photoshop is really the way to go. BUT...................
If, like me, you often use flat, cartoony colors with crisp lines (or if you're lazy like me) Flash will make your job much simpler! With the right tools it is almost sickeningly easy and quick. And because these images are vector-based you never have to worry about the huge files sizes associated with raster images for print. Yes, these benefits do apply to Illustrator and Freehand as well, but Flash is, well, Flash! Once FLASHINITIZED, every drawing carries the immediate potential for animation or interactivity.
TOOLS:
- A real pen with real ink (I really like Sakura Microns and Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens [both inexpensive])
- Paper (I use really cheap computer paper or animation paper)
- A Scanner
- A vector convertor. I use Adobe Streamline, but you can use Trace Bitmap in Flash (which is not as good) or Live Trace in Illustrator CS2 (which is better).
- um... Macromedia Flash
You can download a fully-functional 30-day trial of Flash here. Adobe doesn't make or support Streamline anymore, so if you can't get that or Illustrator CS2, just use Trace Bitmap in Flash. I'm going to talk about Streamline for the conversion part of the process, but if you want to know about the settings for Trace Bitmap, here's the Macromedia TechNote. You should keep reading anyway, though!
1. So draw already!
I have a Wacom tablet that I use for graphic editing, but nothing beats the quality and precision of a real old-fashioned pencil when drawing. Here's the pencil drawing and the inked version right after it:
That text will make sense in a minute, maybe.
What say we scan our pictures?<<------ 1--------2--------3--------4-------->>
LET'S GO BACK TO VINSDOJO.COMThis is the official site of illustrator/designer/artist Vin Rowe, aka Vincent Rowe.
