This is the first cell from a huge flash project I am working on.



Yes, it is Witch Hunter Robin, for you anime fans. And this probably does fall under the "anime artist wannabe" category, but nevertheless, I do it.

The entire thing was drawn completely freehand in Photoshop, using my graphire3. I had reference images, but the image wasn't traced, because frankly, I don't think you can find a head-on shot of her like that

I know the background doesn't look all too snazzy, but I don't know what to do with it yet. Any suggestions welcome.

Feel free to flame, destroy, maim, whatever you like.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

The lines are a bit messy wouldnt you say?

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mir·ow ( V ) Pronunciation Key (meer-oh)
Someone or something that possesses unfathomable awesomeness

Steady hand isn't my best talent

I plan on cleaning up the lines in Flash, using its smoothing tool.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

I find the way I get the best lines in sketches is to free hand sketch it on paper, scan it, then create paths with curves in Photoshop then tracing and filling them with a brush tool.

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"Windows [n.]
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition."

I'm trying to stear clear of paper art. I've done plenty of that, and I really, really want to avoid it if possible. I think the flash method will work alright in the end, since it will allow me to do her lips also

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

You know you can turn down the sensitivity on your tablet, right? It helps to keep the lines smooth. Also there's a few methods using filters that will smooth your outline as well.

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</sarcasm>

Her face seems too pointed.

http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/htmltuts/digital_colorpart1.html
is a good tutiorial on fixing up line-art before coloring

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</sarcasm>

Nice, however the jaw is a bit too pointed, try rounding it out a bit more.


And I have illustraitor, and I'm not really working on any serious projects at the moment. So I'd be glad to fix up those lines.

Drop me a line on AIM / MSN.

gnmonaim
oberfeldwebel@hotmail.com

or, contact me via email

Oberfeldwebel@gtcom.net

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"Judging by the name of the author, and the name of the work, I'd guess it's an energy "beam". You know, like in the Japanese cartoons where those guys with big hair fly around, talk philosophy, and shoot fireballs at each other." - Hellequin

I appreciate the offer, but I'd like to learn myself, since this is just one frame of a very complex, and very long project.

Oh, and I just noticed I didn't explain my project too well! Here is the basis:

Flash Project, multiple flash files released over the course of this year.
This flash project will be a short animation on Witch Hunter Robin. Each episode is probably going to be about 10-12 minutes long, and contain detailed action scenes, text dialouge (unless I can find decent voice actors, since I need a man and a woman, and multiples of each ), and of course, and all new story.

The basis for the story is that it takes place 2 months after the fall of Factory. STN-J has resumed operation, but with a new target. Instead of hunting all witches, they hunt only those that break laws. Their new purpose is to supplement the police, and using Robin's ever-growing abilities, they apprehend the witches, something the police cannot do.

Since Factory is gone, a means of holding the witches was put under discussion for a long period. Although many crimes by witches were murders, some were simply bank robberies or the like, and the witches shouldn't be punished by death. However, how can you inprison a witch who can blow out walls?

This is where Robin's new abilities come into play. Through training she had been undergoing, she attuned her ability to see other Craft. But now she has the ability to control others craft, by removing a witch's power completely. She merely has to place her hand on the person's head, and their awakened powers are banished from them.

Through the first couple episodes, STN-J will go on as usual, capturing witches, and allowing Robin to remove their powers so that they may have a normal trial and imprisonment. But then reports come in of witches being killed, by some superior witch. They come to find out, by Michael's hacking into Solomon, that the witch originated from there. The Manager (the old Director from WHR, if you remember, is promoted at the end after the manager is killed in Factory) calls up Solomon, since Solomon and STN-J are on decent ground again. Solomon denies sending out another Witch Hunter, but they promise to investigate.

After a long investigation, and Robin actually running into the other Witch Hunter on a hunt, they discover that the other Witch Hunter is a clone of Robin, using old DNA kept at Solomon. They pursue the Cloned Robin, only to find that the Cloned Robin has no mind of its own, and only seeks out witches, with ruthless effeciency, and of course, with Robin's power.

The majority of the show goes on from there, on how they try to find Cloned Robin, try to defeat her multiple times, why she was cloned, and other such things that I won't bother spoiling for you all

But that's how the project is going to go. I do believe that this project will take a helluva lot of work, and I knew that going in. But frankly I believe time is on my side, since I have absolutely no set deadline for this project.

And thanks for the input so far!

Oh, and Compos Mentis: That tutorial didn't work for me, as adjusting the levels had no effect on my image. I think this is probably because they assume you scanned in a paper drawing.

I'll post an update in a few min


EDIT: Here's the update, with better chin, by popular demand. I just did a little liquify to show everyone how itll work, but I am going to redraw the chin completely in a bit. On a side note, I LOVE LAYERS!!!



BTW: Oberfeldwebel, is illustrator good for this type of art? I might have to try it out if it is.
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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

[This message has been edited by Cool Matty (edited July 09, 2004).]

Pros- Looks like the character, shows potential. Good work on the hair's shape.

Cons- Bad color choice, bad BG, shaky lines, big right ear, right jawline is curving in too much, eyebrows are very symmetrical, foreshortening on the right side of table is off, no shading, low detail on jacket, too thick of lines on parts of hair.

Hope that wasn't too harsh. I like that show's character design.

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My signature puts the 'hat' in 'phat'.

Oucho... well, can't say I didn't ask for it

My response:

Good: Thanks

Bad: Color choice - Hrmm, background only or overall? I think she looks okay, but I agree the BG is a lost cause. I am going to redo it.

Bad BG - As I said above, I am definately redoing it.

Shaky lines - already aware of it, just lookin for ways to fix it.

Jawline - I'm not seeing it, should it stay out longer before going in?

Eyebrows - Is that really a bad thing? And I am not seeing the symmetry... I'll redo them if it calls for it, but I don't see anything wrong with the eyebrows.

Table - Again, die BG die!

No shading - Well, there is shading, just not much. I'll work on more shading though, thanks for pointing it out

Low detail on jacket - that stems from me being unable to draw decent clothing. I can't seem to get the wrinkles correctly. I'll try working on it nevertheless.

Thick hair lines - See it, will fix.

Thanks for the indepth 3_Rats

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

Flash automatically makes your lines smooth, so you never have that shakey line problem.

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I made a thread, that turned into the debate, so I made a second thread, that turned into a debate, then I made a third thread, that caught on fire, burned down, got flamed, crapped on, bashed, then turned into a debate...but the fourth one, the fourth one stayed on topic!

I prefer Adobe Illustrator for this type of art.
I really like Illustrator. I've used flash and I just prefer illustrator because you can do so much with it. The only thing flash has that Illustrator doesnt, is the ability to animate



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*

Illustrator is much greater than flash for drawing. Then you can just import the images into flash to animate them.

Getting used to vector art is tricky, sometimes. It's what I'm currently working on (illustrator)

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</sarcasm>

Dont usually do this but hey, I was bored and needed to brush up on my flash skills, plus you said do what you want with it...

This took about 20 mins



let me know if you want the flash file to use

-Salvy
[edit] or i can delete this from the thread, up to you matty [/edit]
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"Count the Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums..."

[This message has been edited by JEDI-Salvation (edited July 10, 2004).]

Wow she cleaned up nicely

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...

I don't recall allowing anyone to mess with it, I wanted to know how to do that myself. I appreciate it though, since it really turned out great. Don't take it down

But what I want to know is your method for doing that. Did you just trace it in Flash? I appreciate doin that, but I want to know how to do it myself, so that I can continue to do so on the rest of my VERY large project. That is, unless you want to trace all my art

So, did you trace/color it in flash? If so, do you think it would be easy enough to do the backgrounds in flash also? I know Flash has that wonderful Ink tool, and I have been looking for something similar in PS, but have been unable to find anything. I like photoshop because its layer and transparency system is really nice, with translucency down to pixel-by-pixel basis, and the layering system being smooth as butter. Not to mention, my Graphire really works well with it


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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

0_o...uhh how did you make it that neat. I mean I can trace pretty good stuff in flash, but that is really nice. When I trace it's hard, because the picture OVERLAYS what I have traced, so i cant tell where my lines are..and they are never THAT straight.

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I made a thread, that turned into the debate, so I made a second thread, that turned into a debate, then I made a third thread, that caught on fire, burned down, got flamed, crapped on, bashed, then turned into a debate...but the fourth one, the fourth one stayed on topic!

Ok, well, get ready for a long post then...

First of all, Illustrator is a great program. Its vector tools are unmatched (assuming you all know what vector is); however, for this project, the simplicity of Flash's tools will make it go by much much faster and give you less headaches.

Now, if you've not taken the built in tutorials flash has availiable, stop everything and do so now. 70% of everything I know about that program came from taking to the time to read through those.

Ok, so youve got your rasterized cell all sketched out in photoshop. You can import that into flash as one layer, then trace over th contour lines using a layer above it. remember to lock the raster image layer to prevent any headaches.

When tracing use a very bright color not used in the picture, my favorite is bright green, dont worry, youll make it black later. Use a combination of the tools to get the right shape. I used the Line and Pencil tools the most for this. The line tool is good for large areas where you need nice smooth curves like her hair strands or the lines on her face where you can draw straight lined then bend them to shape with the arrow (youll learn how in the tutorials). I used the line tool for about 90% of the whole thing. The pencil tool is great for areas where its ok to be a little rugged like most of her hair, the hair bands, and the outside of her jacket. Stuff like that would take much to long using the line tool. I rarely use the pen tool, though it can be helpful at times. Once you get comfortable with the program you just have to use your best judgement.

As far as coloring, i just used the inkdropper and filled in the lines. If you try to fill in an area and it wont fill, check to make sure the lines are all connected and that it is truly enclosed (can be tricky).

For your backgrounds, im not very familiar with much anime, but i think itd be cool to see a rasterized background with a vector character on top of it. Maybe sketch them out on paper without the character then you can scan and plug the character in later.

With you first work in flash i can promise you your file size will be tremendous and ugly. Im sure youve seen flash cartoons all over the net, so once you learn more about the animation functions of flash, be sure to look at those to see what they are doing as far as grouping out different parts of the head and moving them independantly. I remember doing a cartoon character in flash just for practice, and his head had about 12 different movable parts to it.

Well that should get you started. If you decide to go straight into flash and skip the photoshop part, make sure to pay close attention to shape and proportion of your characters. Most animators will make one head for each character they use and just reuse that head over and over, changing the outfit if they need to.

Keep at it, youll get the hang of it fast, and good luck let me know if you have any more questions.

-Salvy

PS>Also, some good research can be done here> http://www.flashkit.com you can download peoples source files to learn how they did some effect you may like. Kinda like legal reverse engineering.

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"Count the Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums..."

Thanks for the indepth tutorial, I'll have to try it out myself

As for animations, that won't be difficult, since this project is going to be done frame-by-frame, with little to no tweening. This is for multiple reasons:

A. Tweening does not give you as much control over the animation.
B. When multiple things are moving onscreen, it can look very unrealistic, very fast.
C. While redrawing each frame can be tedious, the end result is much more professional, and using Onion Skins, you can get a very good grasp of where the action should be going.


I also have a small question. Is it possible to make something translucent? I have been looking all over in the program, but I can only find gradients, and full transparency.I want to do fade-ins, and it doesn't seem to like it.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

Transparency/translucency can only (I believe) be achieved on objects that are symbols. Select it, and in the properties box there's a dropbox called 'Color.' Set that to 'Alpha,' (the other ones can get you cool effects too), and a little percentage box will be on the right, with which you can set the transparency of your symbol.

Looks like you've got the drawing skills, but I think frame-by-frame is going to be hell.

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The Devious Server

Thanks. I hate symbols, but I guess I'll deal with it.

As for the hell bit, yeah I realize its gonna be hell, but I figure the end result will be VERY cool. I've nearly completely reproduced the non-drawn portion of the Witch Hunter Robin intro from the show already, frame by frame, and it looks NICE.

I may break the episodes up more, if not to make it easier on me, than to at least make sure the episodes come out more often. I realize this project will probably be bigger than anything else done in flash (I KNOW its bigger than anything I've seen so far), but I hope it'll be great also. It's all about time, and I think it'll be a learning adventure for me, as well.

And of course, if anyone wishes to help, all the better! But be forewarned, it'll be long, and it'll be a hard ride. But right now I'll take any talent I can get, even artists. But if anyone would like to help, this is where I need it the most:

1. BG artists. Anyone good at doing building art, or cityscapes would be awesome. Most of this show will be based in a city, and the rest of the show will be in a park, which will be rendered in Bryce. (I am thinking of doing renders for most of the background, since it'll produce a much cleaner, and easier background, that I can manipulate easily.

2. Sound Effects - Anyone who can do sound effects. This can range from simple door closing, footsteps, etc, to voice actors. Out of all the jobs, this will probably require the least work on the person's part, since there won't be that many sound effects to do, and most can be reused.

3. Flash Artists - Those good at frame-by-frame animation especially. I doubt I'll get anyone to do this, and I'll probably do most of it myself, but either way, this will most likely be the hardest job, as every step will be put together here.

4. Webmaster - If someone would like to make a site for this project, that'd be awesome. I have the ability, but not the time. If I don't have someone make one, I'll probably throw something together just to supply links and have plot summaries. Hosting is not required, as it'll be on my site.

I think that's about as far as I can go right now. But I think I'll make a poll for ya'll:

Would you download a flash file that was at least 30MB in size? This is the current size I am shooting for. The file will have a loader, which will allow you to preplay the animation before it finishes, but keep in mind, each episode will be at LEAST 8-10 minutes long, not counting the minute and a half intro sequence (Which I may only tack onto the first episode, or maybe downscale as a loading screen). This flash animation will also feature full sound effects and music track (most from current, recognizable songs, and stuff from the anime series, but only in clips so as not to be illegal. Not to mention the clips will be flash quality, not MP3 quality, so I doubt I'll have any pressure from RIAA about it). I already have the show planned out to about 12 episodes, and have full dialouge and cues for about 3 episodes. Other than that, I think that sums up this post. Sorry about the huge babbling no one cares to read

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...
Make Sorrowind Worthwhile... join it! http://sorrowind.net

2. Sound Effects - Anyone who can do sound effects. This can range from simple door closing, footsteps, etc, to voice actors. Out of all the jobs, this will probably require the least work on the person's part, since there won't be that many sound effects to do, and most can be reused.

<-- I just got a brand new mic and it rocks PICK ME! sajn_master@oscempire.net just e-mail me waht you need.

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I made a thread, that turned into the debate, so I made a second thread, that turned into a debate, then I made a third thread, that caught on fire, burned down, got flamed, crapped on, bashed, then turned into a debate...but the fourth one, the fourth one stayed on topic!

Sound effects u say? I did just get a new mic and tho I just started voice acting so i dont have much of a talent for it but i could do door closings (bumps etc.) and i can edit sounds with goldwave. So talk to me if u need any help with that. I also have flash and know basic actionscript etc. so i might be able to help u there. It does look like it would be good in flash tho.

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You have to look at the big picture. We (as a country) spend more tax money dealing with MS blunders than we do on the software itself. And guess who MS's largest customer is? You guessed it, the government! - Brian
My Personal Site | Remnant Temple Part A | A work in progress

woopsies just go on.

[This message has been edited by Prince Xizor (edited July 12, 2004).]

You can do that kind of line art, but BETTER in Photoshop with a few easy steps....To bad im to lazy to post my method x_x

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<GothiX> Jenny = goddess
* GothiX <3 Jenny
----------
Projects:
-The Matrix Unplugged: http://ut2k3net.com/cazor

Companies:
-Hi-Fi Entertainment: http://www.hifi-entertainment.com
-Capcom USA: www.capcom.com

lol @ jenny....

OK...1 - frame by frame versus using tweens, learn to do it correctly and you wont notice the difference, trust me. Otherwise you are going to be hating yourself for even thinking about doing this project (ive been there)

2 - transperancy without using symbols. Use the color mixer in the tool bar to the right, it has its own alpha setting. Only catch here is what you want to be faded needs its own layer instead of symbols which can be on the same layer.

3 - symbols are your friend. They cut filesize down tremendously

If you need to see my credentials for whatever reason, my site is
http://members.accesstoledo.com/sev0193/
all done in flash

-S

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"Count the Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums..."

[This message has been edited by JEDI-Salvation (edited July 13, 2004).]