How do I create a 'rough' pencil drawing?

[ketchup]

Hi folks! I'm new to AS and love what I am seeing regarding both tools and supporting community. I remember trying Moho way back around 1999 or so... and seeing the potential for point / tween animation back then. The tool growth since that time is remarkable!

I come from more of a 'pose to pose' animation background and usually rough out keyframes to get timing figured out.

The problem I am having is, AS seems like more of a ' ink and paint 'substitute rather than a ' rough pencil / onionskin timeline ' replacement. The tools seem (to me )to address the 'finishing' part of the process, but not the conceptual. So, although I can bring key pose images in from Photoshop / Gimp, its not a very efficient workflow.

Are there any pre existing tools to rough out key poses? Something along the lines of a non-photo blue pencil used in traditional animation? I dig the vector toolset for finishing, just not for roughing out / timing.

I would love to find out I am overlooking a feature that addresses this type of production need.

Thanks
-K

[amanandink]

Hi Ketchup

I feel your pain and when we use ASP in production we use a programme called Ultimate Pen, its a mac programme for drawing on top of the screen and give the animators the ability to draw out any key poses and then they just match the poses with there Anime Studio model and do a blocking pass first, with all the poses on step keyframes.

I'm not sure this is exactly what you mean as we work from built models but the ultimate pen approach can be used to rough out character designs. And Ultimate Pen is a mac software but I'm sure there are other versions of similar software for PC.

J

[ThatsNotAllFolks]

Of course the other option, is to do a real pencil drawing on real paper and scan it. Use this scan as an image layer on the ASP canvas and then use the drawing tools to trace. I did this for my first project that I am still working on and it works wonderfully

[jahnocli]

Some time ago (years!) I remember a forum member developing a brush texture that mimicked pencil drawing pretty closely. Damned if I can find it though -- maybe someone with a better memory (or better filing system) can help you out...

[Ronbo]

ketchup, have you tried using the freehand tool with one of the natural media-type brush tips?

[slowtiger]

OK, time to sort out some confusion.
He's not asking for any "natural media" emulation. No brushes, no strokes. He's asking for a way to sketch fast in a frame-by-frame way. Unfortunately AS isn't made for that.

Ketchup: you're right with your observation. AS comes into the workflow when storyboard and layout are already finished. I've worked for several projects and they all had the blocking done in the storyboard stage, on paper or digitally, then timed in some video application, and the clips imported to AS. If I do that stuff myself I don't do much digitally, I prefer to scribble on paper and have my timing right in my mind. For more elaborate stuff I use TVPaint which is excellent for this.

[ketchup]

Thanks for replies folks! I will look into some suggestions. The reason I bring it up is I can visualize from my brain to my hand while I am in sketching or 'drawing' mode... but the workflow is different when building a model in vector 'point to point ' mode. Searching rather than Hunting for the next pose may be a good analogy.

At this point, 'exporting animation' on the desired keyframe into a program like photoshop sort of works, but has drawbacks like only showing the camera view and most importantly the extra time associated with going back and forth (most, most ,most importantly is time).

A simple 'concept sketching' tool within AS,that had more of a raster feel would be keen...especially when working on tablets or Cintiq. I will make this suggestion in the correct forum when Anime Studio R&D is looking for new AS10 features.

Thanks again!

[funksmaname]

http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/
This is free - you can use it for blocking... then you can import the sequence into AS.
Synthsin made me a script for doing this quickly - it's called 'Syn_ImageSequence' and is available from VIP section of animators forum.

[Yosemite Sam]

http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/
This is free - you can use it for blocking... then you can import the sequence into AS.
Synthsin made me a script for doing this quickly - it's called 'Syn_ImageSequence' and is available from VIP section of animators forum.

Funk,

Thanks for the software recommendation. Good program.

Also, how does one get that script? I'm a member of AF, but it won't allow me access to the VIP section.