Moho Forum

It's been years since I've been on here, so hello again. I was wondering if anyone has achieved a really good pencil line look?
No matter how much I tweak my line widths or brushes, it still looks like good ol' vector by golly. I even downloaded some pencil brushes for Photoshop and converted them into pngs but I think the way AS handles the brushes is the real problem.

Define "good pencil line look" ...

I've tested this for myself, some years ago. My goal was to get a line like a pencil drawing on rough paper xeroxed or scanned in, so I built some brushes. Looks decent enough, but I skipped experiments then because AS' abilities in that part were too restricted.

AS has 2 problems with brushes:
1. you can only use 1 image per brush - TVP, in comparison, can use hundreds, with more control over sequence.
2. it's always the same number of brush copies between any 2 curve points. Again, TVP has more and subtle controls about spacing and direction. In AS I just add more points where necessary.

So what you can achieve is a line with a fuzzy edge, getting thicker and thinner at points where you adjusted line width, and, combined with "noisy outline", gives a reasonably good imitation of a pencil line after xeroxing.

I've never heard of TVP.

As far as my definition of pencil look I think you're pretty much on the same page with me. I'm tired of my stuff looking so vector-perfect, yet the trade-off of scanning rasterized stuff in doesn't seem feasible at the moment.

Do you have an AS file (I'm still running 5.6) that you feel comfortable with me using as inspiration?

Maybe we should post some image examples of our ideal line?

I have to search for those old files first, and they're 5.6 as well.

AlanPS wrote:I've never heard of TVP.

It's TV Paint, you can find more details at http://www.tvpaint.com - but don't give up on Anime Studio just yet!

I'm thinking the rough look of 101 Dalmations, http://disneypixsite.com/101.htm
Winnie the Pooh, the Rescuers, any of the less refined looking Disney animation.
Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice, American Pop, etc.
That style where you can almost see the pencil sketch underneath the ink job, sometimes barely over the ink job, or if not you can still see the lines have texture in them where maybe the lead wasn't laid down as deep into the paper as the rest of the line.
Even the backgrounds are rough looking. Looks like pencil or ink roughly sketched and water-colored.
btw, I'll have to look at TV Paint. thanks