Hello,
Here I am again.
As you well know, I am not a cartoonist then I am always in search of some miraculous tools to help to pretend I can draw!
I was wondering if there is any kind of tool to help to apply shade effects into 2D plain colour shapes, like the ones we usually find in mangas.
I am not looking for something sofisticated as texture rendering, but just different colour shades steps to help me to give some volume to the shapes without the needing to work with 3D images.
Thank you!
Tool for 2D shade effect? It exists?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
When you create a shape style (the style palette) there are two drop down menus for fill effects; Effect 1 and Effect 2.
These are very powerful. One of them is called "Shaded". It allows you to specify a shaded color, an offset in pixels (I'm guessing) and the direction.
I use this on nearly everything. I love it. Very powerful.
For instance, since you have the option for two effects, you can have a dark color shade effect in one direction and a light colored shade in the opposite direction creating an almost 3D effect. I use this on skin shading a lot.
Another one that is really fun I just started to use recently is called Halo. It puts a soft edge (or not) sort of... stroke around the INSIDE of a shape.
When you start getting into using predefined named styles you will find that you can mix and match these styles. You can use styles on the actual shape and have styles in predefined shapes, so ultimately you could have 4 different effects on one shape.
-vern
These are very powerful. One of them is called "Shaded". It allows you to specify a shaded color, an offset in pixels (I'm guessing) and the direction.
I use this on nearly everything. I love it. Very powerful.
For instance, since you have the option for two effects, you can have a dark color shade effect in one direction and a light colored shade in the opposite direction creating an almost 3D effect. I use this on skin shading a lot.
Another one that is really fun I just started to use recently is called Halo. It puts a soft edge (or not) sort of... stroke around the INSIDE of a shape.
When you start getting into using predefined named styles you will find that you can mix and match these styles. You can use styles on the actual shape and have styles in predefined shapes, so ultimately you could have 4 different effects on one shape.
-vern
You can also use a bitmap image as a fill - I used a graduated fill image to simulate light falling on mechanical objects ... the result was like 3D.
One advantage/disadvantage is the bitmaps do not rotate with the object - that can work in your favour or not depending on what you are doing. If you add drop shadows or shading within the object as well, the effect is very pleasing.
There is also extra shading tools hdden inside the group layer folder: If you have several character layers (head, body then legs and arms layers) you can add a thickening line around the outline of the character automatically. This style is used on many animated characters but is taken to some extreme on the Mr Bean animated series.
You can also use bitmap objects and apply them to a line. If you make a curve, then add "leaves", you get a very natural looking seaweed-looking plant drifting in the water. You can make your own "brushes" as AS calls them, and add them to your AS stock library. Even though the bitmap is black, if you change the line colour, your leaves become green or whatever hue you want.
Oops, I might have to make a tutorial on that now I've suggested it.
Do as we all do, just go play with the tool toys and experiment. Just remember that any new look accidentally stunbled upon at 3am whilst drunk,stoned or whatever, are always written up as the technique you spent hours developing, refining and perfecting till you had what your minds-eye desired. Happy accidents, of course, never happen
Rhoel.
One advantage/disadvantage is the bitmaps do not rotate with the object - that can work in your favour or not depending on what you are doing. If you add drop shadows or shading within the object as well, the effect is very pleasing.
There is also extra shading tools hdden inside the group layer folder: If you have several character layers (head, body then legs and arms layers) you can add a thickening line around the outline of the character automatically. This style is used on many animated characters but is taken to some extreme on the Mr Bean animated series.
You can also use bitmap objects and apply them to a line. If you make a curve, then add "leaves", you get a very natural looking seaweed-looking plant drifting in the water. You can make your own "brushes" as AS calls them, and add them to your AS stock library. Even though the bitmap is black, if you change the line colour, your leaves become green or whatever hue you want.
Oops, I might have to make a tutorial on that now I've suggested it.
Do as we all do, just go play with the tool toys and experiment. Just remember that any new look accidentally stunbled upon at 3am whilst drunk,stoned or whatever, are always written up as the technique you spent hours developing, refining and perfecting till you had what your minds-eye desired. Happy accidents, of course, never happen
Rhoel.
Hey heyvern,heyvern wrote:When you create a shape style (the style palette) there are two drop down menus for fill effects; Effect 1 and Effect 2.
These are very powerful. One of them is called "Shaded". It allows you to specify a shaded color, an offset in pixels (I'm guessing) and the direction.
I use this on nearly everything. I love it. Very powerful.
For instance, since you have the option for two effects, you can have a dark color shade effect in one direction and a light colored shade in the opposite direction creating an almost 3D effect. I use this on skin shading a lot.
Another one that is really fun I just started to use recently is called Halo. It puts a soft edge (or not) sort of... stroke around the INSIDE of a shape.
When you start getting into using predefined named styles you will find that you can mix and match these styles. You can use styles on the actual shape and have styles in predefined shapes, so ultimately you could have 4 different effects on one shape.
-vern
That's great, this is one of the few programs that have this ability and simply didnt pay attention to that. CorelDraw and Flash, for instances, have not, and it bugs me a lot, because sometimes just one gradient is not enough to give THAT effect! I will take a closer look in that. Thanks a lot.
PS: I know that here is not the place for that, but I would like to keep recorded my "oficial" apologizes to you for everything. You are a great guy anyway - an proved that helping me right now after all that mess. I think that my temporary angry blinded me for a while.
Cheers!
Hi Rhoel,
Thanks for the feedback!
I am avoiding to use bitmaps because it will be exported to SWF format, and I have size limitations, etc, anyway, this is a LONG story!Rhoel wrote:You can also use a bitmap image as a fill - I used a graduated fill image to simulate light falling on mechanical objects ... the result was like 3D.
Hummmm... sounds good! I for sure will check it.Rhoel wrote:There is also extra shading tools hdden inside the group layer folder: If you have several character layers (head, body then legs and arms layers) you can add a thickening line around the outline of the character automatically. This style is used on many animated characters but is taken to some extreme on the Mr Bean animated series.
Hehe, I love such accidents! Several times in my life I just look at side to answer someone else question and move erratically my mouse, to just see a cool effect! The problem when it happens is to get what kind of SH** you did to be able to perform it again anytime you need! LOL!Rhoel wrote:Just remember that any new look accidentally stunbled upon at 3am whilst drunk,stoned or whatever, are always written up as the technique you spent hours developing, refining and perfecting till you had what your minds-eye desired. Happy accidents, of course, never happen
Thanks for the feedback!
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Víctor Paredes
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here is the thread link
http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6048
and you can see two more sang works in AS library.
http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6048
and you can see two more sang works in AS library.
Hi,
I just figured out something that made me soooo sad.
As you can imagine, the old Flash problem. When exporting an animation with shade effects to SWF format, guess what: no effects. Of course, I couldnt expect that it would be different, since Flash have not these effects.
Beside, I stayed playing around and making some comparisons between SWF generated by Flash and the ones generated by AS. The problem is that AS generates the SWF as it would generating a traditional movie (frame by frame), while in Flash I can take advantage of the tweens. The result is that a very small animation exported by AS got about 280K while the same animation made and exported directly by Flash got less than 2K.
I am a little frustrated, since I really was excited to use AS! However I think that at least at this time, will be better keep on Flash and go through the old technique to disassemble the character in smallet parts (arm, forearm, etc) and just tween them.
Anyway, I will let you know!
Cheers!
I just figured out something that made me soooo sad.
As you can imagine, the old Flash problem. When exporting an animation with shade effects to SWF format, guess what: no effects. Of course, I couldnt expect that it would be different, since Flash have not these effects.
Beside, I stayed playing around and making some comparisons between SWF generated by Flash and the ones generated by AS. The problem is that AS generates the SWF as it would generating a traditional movie (frame by frame), while in Flash I can take advantage of the tweens. The result is that a very small animation exported by AS got about 280K while the same animation made and exported directly by Flash got less than 2K.
I am a little frustrated, since I really was excited to use AS! However I think that at least at this time, will be better keep on Flash and go through the old technique to disassemble the character in smallet parts (arm, forearm, etc) and just tween them.
Anyway, I will let you know!
Cheers!
Like I wrote, use cartoon shading with layers of shapes on top of each other. That will export to Flash. I think Sang820 is a Flash animator as well. He just adopted his usual Flash workflow to Moho (now Anime Studio).
It doesn't always have to be complicated. Sometime an indication of a shading is enough, if you place it just right. See this girl, which is done without cartoon shading in the layer.
Sang820 has done something similar, only he has perfected the art. It was probably the way he did shading in Flash.
Edit: Although, I'm a very poor draftsman, I can manage to shade my character as well.
(source: cartoon_guy.zip)
I don't want to make you mad (again), but Anime Studio isn't developed with Flash in mind. It is created for television and DVD. You can create Flash animation, but up to a point. If you want to create a certain effect that is not possible in Flash (such as layer shading), you should let your creativity do what Flash lacks.
And BTW neither Flash nor Anime Studio are good tools to learn character animation. The best tool is still be far the humble pencil, because you're not hindered by technology, just by your drawing skills and your imagination. Natural media drawing on the computer can replace this up to a point, but if you lack essential drawing skills, the pencil is the best tool out there to teach you the discipline of drawing. I always find it humbling how poor my drawing skills are when I use pencil and paper.
It doesn't always have to be complicated. Sometime an indication of a shading is enough, if you place it just right. See this girl, which is done without cartoon shading in the layer.
Sang820 has done something similar, only he has perfected the art. It was probably the way he did shading in Flash.
Edit: Although, I'm a very poor draftsman, I can manage to shade my character as well.
(source: cartoon_guy.zip)
I don't want to make you mad (again), but Anime Studio isn't developed with Flash in mind. It is created for television and DVD. You can create Flash animation, but up to a point. If you want to create a certain effect that is not possible in Flash (such as layer shading), you should let your creativity do what Flash lacks.
And BTW neither Flash nor Anime Studio are good tools to learn character animation. The best tool is still be far the humble pencil, because you're not hindered by technology, just by your drawing skills and your imagination. Natural media drawing on the computer can replace this up to a point, but if you lack essential drawing skills, the pencil is the best tool out there to teach you the discipline of drawing. I always find it humbling how poor my drawing skills are when I use pencil and paper.
Rasheed,
Yes, in fact the showed samples are exactly what I had in mind at first place (the cartoon shading). About to open hand of technology and pick up a pencil, I am really not the guy for that, since I have not this kind of skills. As I have told here a few times, I am not a cartoonist at heart, but just a guy that have lots of ideas and that likes to do a bunch of cool things even when have not the talent to that.
Anyway, now I am thinking again about the nature of the project. Since I need to animate two characters in several different poses (what means a 3D simulation), I decided to stop for a while and put in the balance the cost and benefits of the different techniques.
If I decide to go by the drawing art, I will need to make the "artists" pose to me in several positions using some kind of program like Pose or DAZ, and then draw over that. The disadvantage is that there is a LOT of drawings, shades and disassembling to do and not the absolute certain if the final effect will be ok (a lot of time with risk of just waste it). The advantage, though, is that I will have several animations with a real small disk space.
If I decide to go by real 3D animation using Poser or DAZ, the advantage is that it will be VERY easy to create the animations and poses, and the shades and such already will be generated automatically by the program (then I dont need to worry about that). The disadvantage, though, is that I dont have a proper machine to process heavy render like that and will need to spend a good money with at least a decent graphic card beside the investment with the software (Poser/DAZ). Beside, there is still the fact that my animations will be too much more huge in disk.
As a third option, I can find a good animator that would like to join the project and become a partner.
And, of course, there is a fourth option that is give up the project. however I really wouldnt like to do that, since the idea is great and after it is done and working ok, I have a couple of possible investors in USA that could put money to bring it to the industry.
The idea is very cool and unique and I couldn find similar product in the market, but will take about 8 monthes to 1 year to be concluded, and I dont want to start on it before to have the right approach, to avoid waste money, work an time.
I dont know, I think I will stop for a while and spend the rest of this year just comparing and balancing the options before to start. At first sight I am starting to think that the best options till now, are the second (use a poser software) or the third (find a partner).
Let's see what happens.
Cheers!
Yes, in fact the showed samples are exactly what I had in mind at first place (the cartoon shading). About to open hand of technology and pick up a pencil, I am really not the guy for that, since I have not this kind of skills. As I have told here a few times, I am not a cartoonist at heart, but just a guy that have lots of ideas and that likes to do a bunch of cool things even when have not the talent to that.
Anyway, now I am thinking again about the nature of the project. Since I need to animate two characters in several different poses (what means a 3D simulation), I decided to stop for a while and put in the balance the cost and benefits of the different techniques.
If I decide to go by the drawing art, I will need to make the "artists" pose to me in several positions using some kind of program like Pose or DAZ, and then draw over that. The disadvantage is that there is a LOT of drawings, shades and disassembling to do and not the absolute certain if the final effect will be ok (a lot of time with risk of just waste it). The advantage, though, is that I will have several animations with a real small disk space.
If I decide to go by real 3D animation using Poser or DAZ, the advantage is that it will be VERY easy to create the animations and poses, and the shades and such already will be generated automatically by the program (then I dont need to worry about that). The disadvantage, though, is that I dont have a proper machine to process heavy render like that and will need to spend a good money with at least a decent graphic card beside the investment with the software (Poser/DAZ). Beside, there is still the fact that my animations will be too much more huge in disk.
As a third option, I can find a good animator that would like to join the project and become a partner.
And, of course, there is a fourth option that is give up the project. however I really wouldnt like to do that, since the idea is great and after it is done and working ok, I have a couple of possible investors in USA that could put money to bring it to the industry.
The idea is very cool and unique and I couldn find similar product in the market, but will take about 8 monthes to 1 year to be concluded, and I dont want to start on it before to have the right approach, to avoid waste money, work an time.
I dont know, I think I will stop for a while and spend the rest of this year just comparing and balancing the options before to start. At first sight I am starting to think that the best options till now, are the second (use a poser software) or the third (find a partner).
Let's see what happens.
Cheers!