The Art of Scanning
So I’ve gotten better at drawing things – significantly better. I still wouldn’t say that I’m “good”, but I want to start scanning things in and experimenting with color. I’ve come to a few conclusions:
1. scan as lineart. having a “beige” background is a real bear to work with. black and white is your friend.
2. Ink. Pencils are great, and give you a lovely “baroque” feel, but unless you really want that “sketch” quality to
your drawing, it’s best to ink.
2a. that said, if you DO want that “sketch” quality, DON’T INK. it’s gone forever once you do.
3. erase pencil lines. Even though you may not be using bristol board yet, those little grey suckers come out as nasty black lines you have to edit out with the graphics editor of your choice.
3a. the graphics editor of your choice can be a really annoying topic if you use linux. the GIMP and Photoshop are just different enough to be really difficult to go from one to the other, and 99% of people out there who know that they’re doing don’t use the GIMP. They may not use Photoshop either, but that’s another story and I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.
4. make sure you scan and deal with your graphics at the right resolutions. this one really threw me for a while. Howard Tayler again came to my rescue and offered the following advice:
“You still want to work at 300 dpi or above. When you’re done coloring it, resize it (probably with “resampling” or “smoothing” enabled) for the desired screen resolution. The jaggedy bits will automatically get aliased into pixels that are a blend of the colors on either side. If you zoom way in on one of my strips you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
