How do I... ?

[iPete]

I am a character designer, and up until this point, I've done everything on a piece of paper. I'd like to try my hand at digitizing my artwork, so I have a beginner questions.

I usually work in Pen and Ink, and so my work is always in black and white. I was wondering, after scanning my work, how I go about taking out all the slight variations in black and white (sharpie streaks and smudges), and making the scanned piece a very graphic black and white?

The first link is something I've done. Notice all the variations in black, grays, and white.
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/iEatPowder2/HWProject2-untitled-PenInk-145x9in.jpg

This is an idea of what I'd like a finished product to look like. Everything is very graphic and true black and white:
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b2/iEatPowder2/Edward.jpg
[credits to Edu Francisco for this piece]


Any suggestions/tips would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Falkner]

Nice flicks...

Good job on the drawings iPete! Anyway, what I would do before anything is remove the frame & excess white (unless you want to keep it). You can do this by going into photoshop, using the quick selection tool, select all of the outside objects around the art & delete it. For tutorials on how to use the quick selection tool go here:

tinyurl[dot]com/quickselectiontooltut

After that, I would make an overlay layer so I can add color to the objects. To do this, make a new layer, right click the layer, go to blending options & select overlay. After that, make sure the brush is black & color over the selected areas.

I would try this myself, but this is your image.

Good luck!

- FALKNER