New web banner and print illustration done in Anime Studio

[heyvern]

Well, once again I find that Anime Studio just works for me with print and illustration work. And again, I just don't learn from past experience and tried to use Adobe Illustrator but said the heck with it and switched back to Anime Studio.

Been working on this on and off for a few weeks. It's a new company in Philadelphia doing "photo sarfaris" or tours. You sign up, bring your camera, and a professional photography takes you on a tour of the city and helps you take better pictures while also experiencing an historical tour of Philadelphia.

This illustration is being used as a web banner and also will be on t-shirts. I am also creating a much smaller "simplified" version in "black and white" as a "logo". Still working on that one. Doing a very bold stylized "wood cut" type effect.

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There was some photoshop work done, mostly due to "easier" color shifting and levels adjustments. I can tweak colors and contrast with adjustment layers much easier in Photoshop than in Anime Studio. I would say 96% done in Anime Studio, and then about 4% tweaked in Photoshop... shifting layers around... modifying colors. I also brushed in some highlights and painted over some edges of shapes that didn't blend perfectly. Very minor fixes.

For example the clothing on the character in the center was a totally different color. I created and rendered a "mask" out of Anime Studio to create two adjustment layers with gradients in photoshop so I could fiddle with those colors quicker.

Everything was done primarily in Anime Studio, all the shading, gradients, all done in Anime Studio. Photoshop was really only used for "fixing" and shifting colors that were already done.

The "LOVE" statue was done using an extruded 3D vector layer. I couldn't figure out how to make the extrusion shadow a different color so I did mask that area and colorize it blue in photoshop. However it's so easy to create "masks" to use in photoshop.

Another "trick" I used that helped out a lot, was to export the layers from anime studio separately and place them as smart object layers in photoshop. As I was working some layers or items were quite done yet in Anime Studio, but I could render it for placement, then later render the same layer and replace the smart object in photoshop and it is instantly updated.

[ddrake]

Nice! Excellent work yet again. I love the showcasing of how effective AS drawing tools CAN be with some familiarity with them.

Not sure how easy or practical it is to try to ANIMATE art with this style and level of detail, but is surely inspirational to think of the possibilities.

[Danimal]

Looks awesome, most especially due to a tip of the hat to Rocky! Great work!

[Little Yamori]

Hey Vern,

Nice work again. I had a question on the overall file for the image, is it now a vector file? I re-drew some raster based art I had done because it has plans to become a T-shirt and needs to be converted to Vector. I had done "Live Trace" in Ai, but it never comes out quite right, so I redrew it in Anime Studio and it came out spot on, but I can't export it as an Ai file, so I'm trying to find a way to render it without it becoming pixelated again. I tried to follow what you had mentioned on you other poster (saving as SWF and printing as pdf to photoshop) but I think I missed a step. Any Ideas to get it to a higher resolution?

Thanks for all the examples you give

LY

[Yosemite Sam]

Great job, Vern, that looks awesome.

[Yosemite Sam]

Hey Vern,

Nice work again. I had a question on the overall file for the image, is it now a vector file? I re-drew some raster based art I had done because it has plans to become a T-shirt and needs to be converted to Vector. I had done "Live Trace" in Ai, but it never comes out quite right, so I redrew it in Anime Studio and it came out spot on, but I can't export it as an Ai file, so I'm trying to find a way to render it without it becoming pixelated again. I tried to follow what you had mentioned on you other poster (saving as SWF and printing as pdf to photoshop) but I think I missed a step. Any Ideas to get it to a higher resolution?

Thanks for all the examples you give

LY

I'm curious as well.

[heyvern]

Hey Vern,

Nice work again. I had a question on the overall file for the image, is it now a vector file? I re-drew some raster based art I had done because it has plans to become a T-shirt and needs to be converted to Vector. I had done "Live Trace" in Ai, but it never comes out quite right, so I redrew it in Anime Studio and it came out spot on, but I can't export it as an Ai file, so I'm trying to find a way to render it without it becoming pixelated again. I tried to follow what you had mentioned on you other poster (saving as SWF and printing as pdf to photoshop) but I think I missed a step. Any Ideas to get it to a higher resolution?

Thanks for all the examples you give

LY

Thanks for all the comments!

The "T-shirt" will be full color, either silk screened or photo transfer.

I am now working on a "black and white" or single color line art version. This is major reinterpretation with a sort of stylized woodcut type look.

This will be used for smaller print versions and also t-shirt type usage.

For the "high resolution", I rendered each layer from Anime Studio to transparent PNG and assembled in Photoshop. I rendered to around 5000px width to get the high resolution. No vector for this one.

Basically it can be printed at 17" at 300 dpi. It's pretty huge.

[Little Yamori]

Thanks,

I'll try rendering at high pixel counts and see how I do

LY

[heyvern]

So as the story continues...

I wanted to do a black and white sort of stylized scratch board style. I could of course just draw this by hand with my Wacom but tried to come up with a way to do this "easily" in Anime Studio.

My first attempt used multiple single stroke shapes. This wasn't practicle. It didn't save any effort than simply sketching by hand.
What I came up with uses the Curve Profile feature with a sort of "curved" shaped. I use several different types of shapes for different areas. It works out pretty well. It allows me to quickly add the "shading" strokes and curve them, adjust the alignment etc. I like it.

[Danimal]

Very interesting. And of course humbling as you once again make it look simple

[heyvern]

Oh one more thing to pass along...

The black "shading" is done using the shading fill effect with threshold setting. It works really well to create those funky rounded edge shadows. It isn't "perfect". It can be difficult to get the shading to go exactly where you want it.

[heyvern]

Dagnabbit!

Found a much better way than curve profiles. Should have thought of this before.
Brushes. I created a single curved stroke brush assigned to a stroke shape. I adjust the spacing to create the cutout effect.
The reason this is much better, I can adjust the point width to change the size of the stroke effect.

Will keep you posted.

[heyvern]

Here's a sample using brushes.

Brushes are much faster and more... "interactive". I can see and edit the final result much better. It's going well.

[Little Yamori]

Wow,

Looks fantastic

[Pinesal]

Thanks for telling us bout stuff you figure out, It really helps get the gears turning in all of our heads.