Hi everyone,
this is my firt post, even tough I've been reading and learning a lot here!
I am a belgian 2D-animator. For the moment I haven't got many things online because, or, it's too old stuff, or it hasn't been released yet.
What I do is animating existing illustrations and drawings from other people.
These drawings weren't made for animating, so, I need to cut them in pieces myself.
Therefor I use Adobe Photoshop.
For the animation I use ASP of course/
So here's my question;
Are there tools who can make the cutting-part easier, because it can take a long time?
software for "cutting"?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
Your task is divided into two parts. One is to extract the object from background, the other is cutting the object into parts and eventually add some drawing to those parts. The second is easily done in Photoshop.
The first one, the extracting, is the time-consuming part. You didn't mention if you draw on paper or totally digitally. If it's paper, the extracting gets easier with correct scanning. Ideally you'll have some drawing on uniformly coloured paper. Your options are:
- select the paper colour and erase it. PS does have several tools for that, the magic wand, and the colour selection. There are PlugIns available for this job, but they're quite expensive. I never have used one of those, but if you, say, work with a lot of photographs, they might be worth their money.
- erase around the object by hand. You can use the eraser tool, or the lasso select tool. Doing this fast and exactly requires a graphic tablet!
PS can be scripted in a way that it saves every single layer as a separate PNG file. Don't ask me how, my girlfriend does stuff like that a lot.
If you draw digitally, it should be easy to keep your artwork on separate layers to preserve transparency around it.
The first one, the extracting, is the time-consuming part. You didn't mention if you draw on paper or totally digitally. If it's paper, the extracting gets easier with correct scanning. Ideally you'll have some drawing on uniformly coloured paper. Your options are:
- select the paper colour and erase it. PS does have several tools for that, the magic wand, and the colour selection. There are PlugIns available for this job, but they're quite expensive. I never have used one of those, but if you, say, work with a lot of photographs, they might be worth their money.
- erase around the object by hand. You can use the eraser tool, or the lasso select tool. Doing this fast and exactly requires a graphic tablet!
PS can be scripted in a way that it saves every single layer as a separate PNG file. Don't ask me how, my girlfriend does stuff like that a lot.
If you draw digitally, it should be easy to keep your artwork on separate layers to preserve transparency around it.
Thanx for the fast answer!
It seems I didn't explain my job well enough.
My job is animating existing illustrations. So existing books with drawings (of other people!) I don't draw myself for this job. After the first release I will be able to show some animations.
So I recieve the illustrations. Untill now, after a time of asking, I got the digital plates that were ready to print. So no scanning problems.
Then I cut the figures in pieces and, indeed, I have to draw some more extra (the pieces you don't see on the picture, but you will see when it's animated).
The way I do it is just like you describe it.
But now there are "rumours" that there are existing tools to cut them faster. More I don't know... maybe it's a bluf...
Maybe I'll gain some time if I can convince my boss to buy a good tablet...
It seems I didn't explain my job well enough.
My job is animating existing illustrations. So existing books with drawings (of other people!) I don't draw myself for this job. After the first release I will be able to show some animations.
So I recieve the illustrations. Untill now, after a time of asking, I got the digital plates that were ready to print. So no scanning problems.
Then I cut the figures in pieces and, indeed, I have to draw some more extra (the pieces you don't see on the picture, but you will see when it's animated).
The way I do it is just like you describe it.
But now there are "rumours" that there are existing tools to cut them faster. More I don't know... maybe it's a bluf...
Maybe I'll gain some time if I can convince my boss to buy a good tablet...