Crosshatching - any thoughts?

[madrobot]

Let me start by saying I draw like a chimp using his foot to hold a crayon.

I am about to start on a scene background - a living room interior.

I was thinking I'd play with some gradients to try to shade the walls, ceiling and floor a bit to try to give it some depth. But what I'd really like is to somehow use crosshatching to emulate a look along the lines of Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Robert Crumb cartoon interiors.

I was going to try things like the splotchy effect maybe, but am I riht in thinking that will move with the camera? (I would like to have the camera move in some of these int shots.)

Maybe draw the crosshatching with vectors and then use masking with gradients to fade it out? Can you mask with gradients? Else obscure with gradient of the background colour I guess.

Has anyone got any experience or thoughts on this, how to achieve it and what to look out for?

Thanks

[chucky]

Try drawing with your hand

[chucky]

Rough sketch
Whaddyareckon? you want it with added vector lines I assume?
You know even though i did this just with images, methinks maybe, and ironically, that obj. with texture might be easier???
MSN me, Adrian, this might need some discussion, you probably want wonky shaped rooms too?.

[madrobot]

Wow dude
That looks pretty amazing for a "rough sketch"

Haha that's funny to think might head down obj in AS
Mind you, Lightwave modeler is OK
It's everything else which does my head in

Will msg soon
Thanks

[toonertime]

i used to love gilbert shelton
he really made me laff!

and r crumb has a special place in
cartooning history as well

[slowtiger]

For crosshatching a vector program like AS is definitely the wrong tool. I'd recommend you do that on paper and scan it in. If you own a cintiq and have a decent bitmap drawing program, you may try to do it digitally. But from my own experience I know that crosshatching is best done on paper.

[human]

I would like to caution you before you invest too much time in this. Motion graphics is a different medium from static graphics, just as sculpture is from flat art. Composing for motion graphics means that you have to draw the eye's attention somewhere in order for the viewer to process the scene. Too much detail and the eye doesn't know where to go. In addition, video doesn't handle fine details in motion well because they jump across pixels and cause annoying twinkling. If you only want to show this in 35mm film, maybe you're okay; otherwise....

[chucky]

Human has a good point there, for some reason on my quick test, there does seem to be a flicker.
This must be due to the contrasting pixels in proximity.
Although it may be the gif?

If I'd used the wacom instead of a filtered gradient as I did just for the test, it would be almost indistinguishable from paper.

This issue is actually very interesting in regards to the ASPRO rendering that I may do some follow up tests using proper hatching and different renders.
Not to prove or disprove anyone but just for interests sake.

Over to you robot.

[madrobot]

Thanks heaps everyone for your thoughts

Chuck looking forward to talking more with you about any crosshatch testing

Human thanks for the caution.
If crosshatch doesn't look like it will pan out I can live with that
and use gradients to shade up the room.

Thanks everyone for the interesting discussion
Cheers

[chucky]

bit late putting this up and it was rushed but anyway there you go robo.
obj+png texture map+vector lines.