Another print illustration done in Anime Studio

[heyvern]

I have often mentioned that I prefer using Anime Studio than other vector based illustration applications for doing my illustration work.

Below is the latest project. A play poster for my brother. I tried doing this in Adobe Illustrator, but I was in a hurry, and find the process to be so much slower in AI. I find the limited complexity and ease of curve control and also the incredibly easy variable widths in Anime Studio is much more conducive to the artistic process for me. Adobe Illustrator "gets in the way" with difficult to select points and curve handles, unusual behavior of the curves when moving points. Of course all of these things can be avoided or worked around, but that workaround process gets in the way of the creativity.

There was a bit of editing in photoshop but not a ton of it. I could have gone back to Anime Studio to make those edits but since the final project is photoshop anyway, there wasn't any point. Any changes made in photoshop could have been made to the original Anime Studio artwork.

The process:

I drew a very rough pencil sketch, scanned it in and used it for tracing in Anime Studio.
I created a group layer for masking the various "flame" layers of the sun.

Exporting:

Usually I would export animation to PSD files, but because of the masking I couldn't do that. PSD export only creates separate layers for top level layers. Instead I simply turned layers on and off and just did quick preview renders and saved as png. I wanted separate layers in photoshop so I could "tweak" things in the final poster layout. The Moon, sun, flames (over and under flames) were all saved out of single frame renders to transparent png and composited in Photoshop.

The silhouette of the people on the bench was handled differently. Since it was very simple straight forward vector fills, I exported a single frame to SWF. I opened that SWF in the Adobe Flash player and printed it to a PDF. I then opened the PDF in Adobe Illustrator, cleaned up unwanted boxes and crap from the PDF and then placed it as a vector shape fill layer in Photoshop.

I prefer using vector as much as possible so I don't have to worry about resolution and scaling. For this poster the sun and moon had a lot of soft edge and gradient effects so saving out to SWF for conversion wasn't an option.

Some of the edits I did in photoshop to save time:
I placed the moon behind some flame layers so it wasn't floating entirely over the sun. As I said, I could have done this in Anime Studio but when I decided I wanted to do it, I didn't have time to go back and render everything out again so just did it in photoshop.

I added some additional drop shadow and inner shadow filters in Photoshop to "punch up" the effect. I did have them in Anime Studio but after exporting I felt it needed some more.

I tweaked values of the face features strokes on the sun (eyes, brows, lips) and painted in some highlights. I could have done highlights in Anime Studio (some are done that way) but at that point it was easier to just paint them on with a brush in Photoshop.


The final result:




The original untouched render from Anime Studio:

[neeters_guy]

Really nice professional work. Thanks for sharing your art workflow.

[Yosemite Sam]

Great stuff Vern! And thanks for sharing the process. I also really enjoy drawing in AS as well.

[Pinesal]

It looks amazing. I think my lack of drawing talent really holds me back from being as good as many of the artists here.

Can you go into more detail about how you made the flames seamlessly blend into he sphere of the sun?

[Danimal]

Very excellent work. I too would like to know a little more about the flames. I'm guessing the "glow" was a blurred layer perhaps?

[heyvern]

Ah yes the flames!

Very very very simple actually. Just basic masking with a soft edge effect on a fill shape

The flames are strokes with two shapes with different widths. The darker lower shape has a soft edge effect. Each flame vector is duplicated and rotated 30 degrees around a center point (I use a large vector circle around the flame shape for rotation). I then duplicated the final flame layer and rotated the whole thing 15 degrees (spitting the difference of the other flame layer) and scaled it a bit creating the final overlap shape of the flames.

(uh... Something like that... uh... the rotations may involve some additional offset splitting of the rotation angle to overlap the flames.)

There are 4 layers of flames; 2 above the sun face and two below. They are scaled and offset rotated to create the overlapping flames that blend in with the face.

The two top layers of flames are masked with a simple circle filled shape with a soft edge this shape is offset to be within the shape of the face slightly. This creates the "blend" into the face below the two top flame layers.

The face layer shape has a soft edge effect so it fades and blends into the two flame layers below it.

The moon face is above everything and hides the outside soft edge fill of the face.

Below is an animated gif showing the basic layering and how they composite:



The highlights on the sun face are simple soft edge fills.
There is also a radial gradient and shading effect on the face shape.

[Pinesal]

Haha it never occurred to me that the sun might have a soft edge. Well done.

[pihms]

Beautiful work! I'm happy to hear someone say what I have felt for some time, how much easier it is to work with the manipulating vectors and the creation of them in Anime Studio. Illustrator is a great program, but AS simplifies the process.

[heyvern]

Thanks for the great response.

To be honest, at first I did try to use Adobe Illustrator. After doing the basic tracing in Anime Studio, I saved out the sun and moon vector as SWF from Anime Studio, and converted to pdf to open in Adobe.

As I was working with the shapes in AI I realized how slooooow it was going. It isn't a matter of performance or knowledge of the application, it's just the way things are done.

For example adding variable line widths. In Anime Studio it's very logical (if not perfect). You grab a point, increase the width. Bing bang boom. Easy peasy.

In Adobe Illustrator... it too is still a basically simple process, the variable line widths in Adobe Illustrator are a welcome feature but it's not logical or straight forward to edit those "width points". I spend as much time simply trying to SELECT a "width" point to edit in AI as actually adjusting it. 9 times out of 10 I accidentally add another width point that basically mucks up the whole shape. With enough effort I can get what I want... it just takes longer and is not a smooth artistic flow of creativity. When I am drawing having to stop for 5-10 mintutes to figure out how to select a stubborn width point so I can make it thinner.... it breaks the flow.

That is just one example.

Moving points with curvature.... oh boy.... that's another pet peeve of mine in Adobe Illustrator. Select a group of points and translate them. The curvature handles angles of these points stay put. They don't adjust as you move the point. So.... you end up moving a bunch of points... but then you have to adjust all the curve handles of each point you just moved. Not very convenient. Another slow down in the creative process.

The same thing in Anime Studio? No curve handles. Moving a point automagically adjusts the curvature based on the other points. It takes a minimal fraction of the time to move points to adjust a shape in Anime Studio. When you slide points around in Anime Studio... it just is faster.

The other thing that saves a ton of time and effort? "Shared edges". In AI every shape has to have unique edges on all sides. This means a ton of duplication and also a lot more trouble trying to select shapes for movement and alignment. Anime studio can have shapes that share edges, or a single end point can be connected to another fill shape instead of just "floating" over shapes. Because of this, layering is often simpler to handle in Anime Studio than in Adobe Illustrator. In Anime Studio, less vector shapes, less points.

That is one of the many things I LOVE about Anime Studio... fills and strokes are completely independent of the vectors. Vectors can be "connected" to other vectors "non linearly", like connecting an end point to the middle of another shape. When using Adobe Illustrator I really really really miss that feature.

Basically, Adobe Illustrator has a bazillion more features that are awesome... but... all that awesomeness can get in the way of free flowing creative output, at least for me. Sometimes simple is faster.

[Little Yamori]

Hey Vern,

Thanks for that breakdown of AI vs AS. I'm looking forward to getting into AI in the near future, and I had always been thinking that it was just me that found it sort of a clunky unintuitive application with as many disadvantages as advantages. Since you have experience with them both, it was helpful to see what your outlook on the two was, and the actual work you created.

Thanks for sharing.

LY

[drichird]

thanks heyvern for sharing your illustration I very much like the artistic style and how you designed the merging of the two faces/lips is excellent I thought, and you pay attention to a million important details that makes the overall quality excellent, like the highlights on the sun's face, the shading on both sun and moon to give them a 3D feel, especially all the work you did on the flames on the sun (thanks for sharing your workflow on that and on comparing with AI), the title font/lettering goes very well with the design, it all fits together very nicely, just my own personal taste esthetically I might have brought the sun flames (hair) down a little farther over her forehead but then again that would clash with the nice crescent shape of moon? Anyways, great job keep it up!

[heyvern]

thanks heyvern for sharing your illustration I very much like the artistic style and how you designed the merging of the two faces/lips is excellent I thought, and you pay attention to a million important details that makes the overall quality excellent, like the highlights on the sun's face, the shading on both sun and moon to give them a 3D feel, especially all the work you did on the flames on the sun (thanks for sharing your workflow on that and on comparing with AI), the title font/lettering goes very well with the design, it all fits together very nicely, just my own personal taste esthetically I might have brought the sun flames (hair) down a little farther over her forehead but then again that would clash with the nice crescent shape of moon? Anyways, great job keep it up!

Thanks for compliments!

I agree, you are right. I like the idea of more flames further down on the forehead. I don't think it would effect the moon that much. Unfortunately... with my brother calling me... "Where's the poster? Where's the poster?" I just have to go with what I have.

Originally the entire sun/moon was going to be "centered" and all the flames fully visible. I was going to have the type on a curve around the sun moon. I tried this but it used up so much space and the title was very difficult to read.

I shifted the whole thing over and off the right side with the title "stacked" on the left and it really worked well and left space for the two people on the bench to the left under the title. Unfortunately I lost most of the fancy flames off the right side.

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I've been doing these posters for my brother's community theater for almost 15 years for free. it's community theater and if they break even or make a little profit, it's a huge success. I would like to make some money for the posters but... would still do them for free because it's so much fun.

I usually only do posters if my brother is directly involved as director, actor or writer (the plays he writes are HYSTERICALLY funny and often very strange). Because I don't get paid, I insist on complete and total creative control. Whatever I decide to do is what they get. If they want to art direct the posters they have to pay me. It seems unfair... but thems the rules baby!


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A few times I have done posters for other directors who specifically asked me.

The only time I had trouble was with one director who really did not like what I had done at all and wanted a new design from scratch... I basically said she had two choices; take what I did for free... or pay full price for a new poster. Once I quoted the time and cost involved to do a new poster based on her concept the director suddenly really liked what I had done very much and changed her mind.

Below is the poster described above.
This one was also drawn in Anime Studio then exported to Adobe Illustrator (using the SWF/print PDF technique) and then composited in photoshop as AI Smart Object layers.

Most of the character illustration was done entirely in Anime Studio except for the "framing" flowers and the feathers and flowers in the hat. The flowers and hat feathers were custom art brushes created in Adobe Illustrator. Some of the older posters I did years back, there were "size" issues which is why I tended to lean towards vector. Now days, size is no issue with fast internet.

The director wanted a new poster with the characters in a garden sitting around a table with a gazebo over them... I didn't see much difference in the overall concept so didn't see the point in redoing it.