Moho Forum

I currently switched artists for a project I'm working on. The original artist drew everything on paper and scanned it, and the characters had a certain "grunge" look due to this process, and obviously it was all done as raster within AS.

The new artist I'm working with does all the artwork in flash, which results in a very "cartoony" look - much less grunge. I have been intending to import the vectors into photoshop, make a few changes with filters, etc. and then import into AS as raster instead of vector...

but I'd like to know if anyone has some techniques that have worked, getting the vector characters to look a little more "traditional."

Is it an animation?

If so you could import the animation into After Effects or some other software that allows you to apply a 'pixellate' or 'mosaic' feature to make the vectors a bit rougher.

Alternatively, experiment with BRUSHES in AS. There's a thread here somewhere that explains exactly what you're trying to do... the result was the guy made a cool 'grunge' brush that roughened up the edges in AS to give a more hand-drawn kind of look.

If you are looking for those "sketchy" lines around the edges you might want to try using Vector Noise in the layer properties vectors tab.

Don't animate the noise, just add some subtle "static" noise to the outlines and/or fills, maybe throw in some extra lines.

You can subdue this effect by having multiple copies of the character layer and applying the noise to one layer with reduced opacity. Maybe use some custom paint brushes on the strokes to rough up the edges.

The results would of course depend on the imported files. Vector noise can behave differently depending on the number of points in the mesh.

http://www.lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/sketch.mov

-vern