Recommendations needed for cartooning tools for student

DS
Posted By
Dan Serra
Feb 20, 2004
Views
539
Replies
6
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Closed
My son who is in high school has been enamored with creating cartoons for the past year. He prefers ink and paint and the traditional look of political cartoons. There is a type of shading that he has been trying to achieve that involves the use of diagonal lines or cross hatching with the regular hand inked lines. It is very tedious to do this by hand.

His art teacher told him that in the "good old days" they used a special board called duo-shade where you would paint a chemical onto the board and the diagonal texture would flow from the brush as it developed. He thought that there might be software out there that might be safer than the chemicals and less messy. He wasn’t sure if they still made this board anymore.

He thought that either Photoshop, Illustrator or Freehand might be able to create this flowing diagonal texture (or pattern) but he wasn’t an expert in any of these and neither am I. It’s too expensive to buy the wrong one and make a mistake so I would appreciate any recommendations you pro’s might have.

Thanks in advance

Daniel

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J
jenelisepasceci
Feb 20, 2004
Dan Serra wrote:

My son who is in high school has been enamored with creating cartoons for the past year. He prefers ink and paint and the traditional look of political cartoons. There is a type of shading that he has been trying to achieve that involves the use of diagonal lines or cross hatching with the regular hand inked lines. It is very tedious to do this by hand.

His art teacher told him that in the "good old days" they used a special board called duo-shade where you would paint a chemical onto the board and the diagonal texture would flow from the brush as it developed. He thought that there might be software out there that might be safer than the chemicals and less messy. He wasn’t sure if they still made this board anymore.

He thought that either Photoshop, Illustrator or Freehand might be able to create this flowing diagonal texture (or pattern) but he wasn’t an expert in any of these and neither am I. It’s too expensive to buy the wrong one and make a mistake so I would appreciate any recommendations you pro’s might have.
In the "good old days" I used letraset dry transfer for this purpose. I think it is still available. Look for Letratone dots & grids at: http://www.letraset.com/row/sitemap.asp

HTH, Peter
D
doctor9
Feb 20, 2004
Dan Serra …
My son who is in high school has been enamored with creating cartoons for the past year. He prefers ink and paint and the traditional look of political cartoons. There is a type of shading that he has been trying to achieve that involves the use of diagonal lines or cross hatching with the regular hand inked lines. It is very tedious to do this by hand.

At the risk of offending, I’d just like to cast a vote for the "tedious" method.

Cross-hatching, when done correctly, is not a uniform series of diagonal lines. The artist alters the distance between the lines and the thickness of the lines to show the varying shades of "gray".

Even if you did something like create a custom cross-hatch layer underneath the original art, and used a tool to make selected areas more or less visible, it wouldn’t look right, because the nature of cross-hatching is all about the subtlety of the penstrokes.

Dennis
F
Fox
Feb 21, 2004
Dan Serra wrote:
My son who is in high school has been enamored with creating cartoons for the past year. He prefers ink and paint and the traditional look of political cartoons. There is a type of shading that he has been trying to achieve that involves the use of diagonal lines or cross hatching with the regular hand inked lines. It is very tedious to do this by hand.

His art teacher told him that in the "good old days" they used a special board called duo-shade where you would paint a chemical onto the board and the diagonal texture would flow from the brush as it developed. He thought that there might be software out there that might be safer than the chemicals and less messy. He wasn’t sure if they still made this board anymore.

He thought that either Photoshop, Illustrator or Freehand might be able to create this flowing diagonal texture (or pattern) but he wasn’t an expert in any of these and neither am I. It’s too expensive to buy the wrong one and make a mistake so I would appreciate any recommendations you pro’s might have.

Thanks in advance

Daniel

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I’ll take it that the Filter/Brush Strokes/Crosshatch plugin (or Angled Strokes) is not adequate…

There are a couple of approaches that can be used:

1)
a) use a crosshatch brush
there are already several that come with PS that can be used… click on one of the paint tools (airbrush, paintbrush,…). Click on the brush pattern in the top toolbar… if you cannot locate an X pattern brush, click on the triangle at the top right corner and select Load Brushes… you should be able to locate Assorted Brushes from the file explorer dialog — the X-hatches are in that file.

Then, adjust the spacing of the brush to suit (try 66, 75, 125 percents for "irregularity") — use horizontal and vertical strokes of the graphics pen (or mouse).

b) define custome brushes (preferred)

open a new window (100×100 is good to start but dimensions can be irregular, e.g. 100×150, etc.)
select line tool
hold down the shift key and draw a diagonal (e.g. bottom left to top right) still holding the shift key, draw another diagonal through the center of the first line (exact placement is not necessary) Make this second line only half the size of the first line (draw from about 25% into the top left space to about 3/4 into the bottom right).

go to Layer/Rasterize/Shape

for a really good effect:

click on the mask icon at the bottom of the layer palette (small grayish rectangle with dash outlined circle)

select the gradient tool (black foreground/white background) and select the radial gradient option in the top tool bar [there’s a series of icons — select the circular pattern].

click in the center of the "artwork" and drag to the right edge and release. The extremes of the lines should be faded now (if you ended up with a radial gradient, then the Mask layer was not selected when you created the gradiant — undo, and click on the layer mask icon next to the main layer icon in the layers palette and try again).

go to Edit/Define Brush and give it a name (like 100 X-hatch)

you can now use this crosshatch brush in your main work [find it in the brush dropdown].

Some tips:
[for crosshatching solid color areas]

use freehand selection to create areas into which crosshatching will be done —

OR (better) — use Mask layers [created by that small gray-with-circle icon at the bottom of the layers palette]. These can be used 2 ways:

1) to create bounded areas in which can be rendered — painting into the mask layer itself can be used to "refine" the regions of crosshatching
[create an "overlay" layer for specific crosshatching areas with the
added Mask layer]

2] use the crosshatching brushes in a Mask layer to "white out" in crosshatch patterns [this can be used in combination with the previous tip to enhance the effect — it’s like using the crosshatch brush as an eraser, except the original layer artwork is not affected!]

——for a really kick### xhatch effect —

take the original image (fully rendered) in full color and change the blend mode to screen… create another layer below it, fill with white. select your crosshatch brush of choice — with foreground color set to black, start "painting" into the white layer in the crosshatches and watch the crosshatched image appear!
F
Fox
Feb 21, 2004
Dan Serra wrote:
My son who is in high school has been enamored with creating cartoons for the past year. He prefers ink and paint and the traditional look of political cartoons. There is a type of shading that he has been trying to achieve that involves the use of diagonal lines or cross hatching with the regular hand inked lines. It is very tedious to do this by hand.

His art teacher told him that in the "good old days" they used a special board called duo-shade where you would paint a chemical onto the board and the diagonal texture would flow from the brush as it developed. He thought that there might be software out there that might be safer than the chemicals and less messy. He wasn’t sure if they still made this board anymore.

He thought that either Photoshop, Illustrator or Freehand might be able to create this flowing diagonal texture (or pattern) but he wasn’t an expert in any of these and neither am I. It’s too expensive to buy the wrong one and make a mistake so I would appreciate any recommendations you pro’s might have.

Thanks in advance

Daniel

remove -1- to email personally

I’ll take it that the Filter/Brush Strokes/Crosshatch plugin (or Angled Strokes) is not adequate…

There are a couple of approaches that can be used:

1)
a) use a crosshatch brush
there are already several that come with PS that can be used… click on one of the paint tools (airbrush, paintbrush,…). Click on the brush pattern in the top toolbar… if you cannot locate an X pattern brush, click on the triangle at the top right corner and select Load Brushes… you should be able to locate Assorted Brushes from the file explorer dialog — the X-hatches are in that file.

Then, adjust the spacing of the brush to suit (try 66, 75, 125 percents for "irregularity") — use horizontal and vertical strokes of the graphics pen (or mouse).

b) define custome brushes (preferred)

open a new window (100×100 is good to start but dimensions can be irregular, e.g. 100×150, etc.)
select line tool
hold down the shift key and draw a diagonal (e.g. bottom left to top right) still holding the shift key, draw another diagonal through the center of the first line (exact placement is not necessary) Make this second line only half the size of the first line (draw from about 25% into the top left space to about 3/4 into the bottom right).

go to Layer/Rasterize/Shape

for a really good effect:

click on the mask icon at the bottom of the layer palette (small grayish rectangle with dash outlined circle)

select the gradient tool (black foreground/white background) and select the radial gradient option in the top tool bar [there’s a series of icons — select the circular pattern].

click in the center of the "artwork" and drag to the right edge and release. The extremes of the lines should be faded now (if you ended up with a radial gradient, then the Mask layer was not selected when you created the gradiant — undo, and click on the layer mask icon next to the main layer icon in the layers palette and try again).

go to Edit/Define Brush and give it a name (like 100 X-hatch)

you can now use this crosshatch brush in your main work [find it in the brush dropdown].

Some tips:
[for crosshatching solid color areas]

use freehand selection to create areas into which crosshatching will be done —

OR (better) — use Mask layers [created by that small gray-with-circle icon at the bottom of the layers palette]. These can be used 2 ways:

1) to create bounded areas in which can be rendered — painting into the mask layer itself can be used to "refine" the regions of crosshatching
[create an "overlay" layer for specific crosshatching areas with the
added Mask layer]

2] use the crosshatching brushes in a Mask layer to "white out" in crosshatch patterns [this can be used in combination with the previous tip to enhance the effect — it’s like using the crosshatch brush as an eraser, except the original layer artwork is not affected!]

——for a really kick### xhatch effect —

take the original image (fully rendered) in full color and change the blend mode to screen… create another layer below it, fill with white. select your crosshatch brush of choice — with foreground color set to black, start "painting" into the white layer in the crosshatches and watch the crosshatched image appear!
WO
Wizard of Draws
Feb 21, 2004
Dennis Kuhn wrote:
Dan Serra …

My son who is in high school has been enamored with creating cartoons for the past year. He prefers ink and paint and the traditional look of political cartoons. There is a type of shading that he has been trying to achieve that involves the use of diagonal lines or cross hatching with the regular hand inked lines. It is very tedious to do this by hand.

At the risk of offending, I’d just like to cast a vote for the "tedious" method.

Cross-hatching, when done correctly, is not a uniform series of diagonal lines. The artist alters the distance between the lines and the thickness of the lines to show the varying shades of "gray".
Even if you did something like create a custom cross-hatch layer underneath the original art, and used a tool to make selected areas more or less visible, it wouldn’t look right, because the nature of cross-hatching is all about the subtlety of the penstrokes.
Dennis

While I agree with you Dennis that the artist’s hand gives character and life to a drawing, that doesn’t mean that learning a faster or technique isn’t worthwhile. When deadlines loom, you do what you have to to get the job done.

I don’t normally use crosshatching on my cartoons, but I know of a method using Photoshop. Briefly:
If you look at the comic strip ‘Rose is Rose’, you’ll see Pat Brady uses a single hatch at 45 degrees. There are a couple of ways to accomplish the effect, but I think he uses a combination of grays converted to bitmap mode. In the conversion dialog box, you are prompted to choose lines or dots. The density of the lines is determined by the value of gray you convert. You can either clone the areas you need to shade from a separate job window filled with the hatch value you need, or convert the entire grayscale artwork to bitmap as a last step.

Jeff ‘The Wizard of Draws’ Bucchino

"Cartoons with a Touch of Magic"
http://www.wizardofdraws.com
http://www.cartoonclipart.com
O
Odysseus
Mar 3, 2004
Dan Serra wrote:
My son who is in high school has been enamored with creating cartoons for the past year. He prefers ink and paint and the traditional look of political cartoons. There is a type of shading that he has been trying to achieve that involves the use of diagonal lines or cross hatching with the regular hand inked lines. It is very tedious to do this by hand.

His art teacher told him that in the "good old days" they used a special board called duo-shade where you would paint a chemical onto the board and the diagonal texture would flow from the brush as it developed. He thought that there might be software out there that might be safer than the chemicals and less messy. He wasn’t sure if they still made this board anymore.

He thought that either Photoshop, Illustrator or Freehand might be able to create this flowing diagonal texture (or pattern) but he wasn’t an expert in any of these and neither am I. It’s too expensive to buy the wrong one and make a mistake so I would appreciate any recommendations you pro’s might have.
FreeHand certainly has cross-hatched fills — going back quite a few versions now. But bear in mind that they will always look rather ‘stiff’ in comparison to hand-drawn shading, being much more uniform and regular. Illustrator and Photoshop (and FH as well) can fill areas with patterns or tiles; these can be set up to look more ‘handmade’ than FH’s automatic cross-hatching (e.g. by using a "brush" rather than the usual uniform strokes).

BTW, in case you aren’t aware of the distinction, FH and AI are primarily "vector" drawing programs (dealing in objects and groups of objects) while Photoshop is mainly a "raster" editor (dealing in pixels). The former allow much greater control and ‘after-drawing’ manipulation of the artwork they create, while the latter can produce more ‘natural’ textures, ‘soft’ contours, &c.


Odysseus

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