Moho Forum

i want it for these following purposes so i want to make sure i can do this all well.

my brother is good at drawing 2d manga style pictures by hand. he usually then scans them into photoshop and colours them.

im wondering if this program supports importing of scanned images or photoshop projects and if so how does the program actually differentiate from the drawing and blank paper in the background when it animates.

im just wondering also, is manga studio any good, for preparing and colouring the images my brother scans in? or is it overkill and should he stick with photoshop.

hope you can answer my questions. i am looking forward to using this program (did tutorials in the demo and it looks brilliant, a great compromise of brilliant features with a not so daunting interface.)

Greetings,

grechzoo wrote:im wondering if this program supports importing of scanned images or photoshop projects

Yes - but read on.

grechzoo wrote:how does the program actually differentiate from the drawing and blank paper in the background when it animates.

Basically you have to do some work beforehand before using the character in Anime Studio.

Delete the background in Photoshop.

Still in Photoshop, cut your character up into parts - torso, limbs, head, etc.

This may need some either redrawing or repair of some body parts e.g. parts of arms/legs hidden behind the torso or other limbs, where the joints overlap, etc.

Export the pieces to PNG files with transparency. (32-bit PNG or 24-bit + alpha/transparency).

You could do some of this in Anime Studio using masking, but it's probably easier to do it first in Photoshop (or some equivalent software).

You end up with a "shadow puppet" or marionette style character made out of the pieces. See, for example, Tutorial 4.1 in the demo.

There's an example in Flash (not AS) here - AS is similar but uses bones instead of pivot points.

Note: you don't have to completely chop up the limbs into upper and lower pieces, you could use some image warping to bend the limbs - see Tutorial 4.2 but apply it to limbs instead of a whole character.

Alternatively, you could trace/redraw/colour the scanned characters in Anime Studio using its vector tools rather than in Photoshop. See Tutorial 1.3 and the entire tutorial 2 set. Load your scanned drawing as an image layer to trace over it.
This allows for a lot more flexibility with rigging for animation, as multiple bones can affect different points, so you can draw a single limb shape and bend it using bones. See Tutorial 3.4 for an example.
This also allows you to use individual point tweaking and other useful techniques.

grechzoo wrote:im just wondering also, is manga studio any good, for preparing and colouring the images my brother scans in? or is it overkill and should he stick with photoshop.

I don't use Manga Studio myself - but I believe it does have a time-limited trial available to download.

Regards, Myles.

thanks so much for the very helpful reply. i cant wait to finish all the tutorials off.

i think maybe tracing would be the easiest way to do it, as cutting the limbs up and redrawing in photoshop seems just as complicated as redrawing the whole character (using a trace layer). plus the character that is scanned in is not coloured anyway, so its only the outline i would need t recreate, then i could colour anyway i want within AS

are the colouring options in anime studio sufficient for say three tone colouring though?

seems good, i just hope we can get a good and quick workflow going. we are planing to do one picture each day (drawing (bro will do that , scanning and redrawing, colouring, animating) may be ambitious but we will see hwo it goes.

thanks again

I'm not really sure if I understood what you want to do.

Do you want to make animation? Then AnimeStudio is good for you.

Or do you want to produce a printed comic? Then AS will not be of any help for you.

its an animnation. im definetly sure about this program after using the trial. looks brilliant.

have another question though.

i have a wacom graphics tablet. does anime studio suppport this device.

as it would be much easier tracing my brothers drawings by hand on the tablet than doing it with the keyboard and mouse.

am am definetly not wanting to use the photoshop limb cutting thing, i want a fully rigged character and know that requires everything to be drawn fresh within AS.

fingers crossed i can do that with the wacom

cheers

Yes you can use your Wacom - I use nothing else. AS is a brilliant piece of software as you know from the demo. Look forward to your animation

as i look forward to making it.

im actually doing computer games design in university, so i should really be spending my summer learning the more compicated sections of maya, but AS is much more fun

another question (seem to have many )

my first picture i want to redraw in AS and rig will be kind of a 3 quarter profile from the right of the character. obviously it is easy to set up bones and stuff for front on pictures but is it MUCH more complicated to have a 3 1/4 for my first project (not counting the tutorials )

its probably only the head and hair (in the wind kind of thing) that i will be animating in it anyway as the character will be sitting.