Drawing & Scanning

[Soul Tech]

Hello everyone, thanks for reading.

I'm tired of relying on external art and I always had the ability to draw by hand so now im planning to draw by hand all the art of my next project, hand drawn and scanned.

I would like to know about the experience of freelancers and users who have already done so, specifically advice on tricks or where to start.

Where start with respect to the measurements, that is, I plan to draw on blank sheet and i can resize it after scanning but it is something I would like to avoid to keep the edges of the draw intact ... I would like to know if anyone knows the physical measurements in cm./pixel for what are battlers, charasets and facesets, I have mastered an editor that I used for years.

That's all I'd like to hear about your experiences about drawing art by hand and scanning it.

P.D: moderators excuse me if there is already an open topic about this, please close this topic if that is the case.

 

[Harrumi]

I've done this a few times, but I haven't really scaled the art. Typically I scan, it turns into a PDF, then I screen shot the PDF and paste it into Paint Shop Pro... from there I edit away, and scale if I need to. For some Battlers I've created, I hand drew 6 different monsters on one sheet of printing paper, I didn't re-scale my battlers images, and they turned out a decent size. You can find links to them by clicking on the signature picture.... I'm not sure if this helps you at all... but it's a start.

 

[mlogan]

I've moved this thread to Resource Support. Please be sure to post your threads in the correct forum next time. Thank you.

 

[TheoAllen]

I've done drawing and scanning a lot of time. But most of them are for pure art, not meant to be used in game. An in game art like faceset, bust portrait, does not really need a hand drawn from pencil. I can just make them straight from the digital and done. But maybe, something like cutscene art, that may require some hand drawn image since it's easier to draw a dynamic pose from it. Granted, I don't have drawing tab. I have no experience on making battler this way, so I could not say anything

As for scaling, I don't think there is such thing as cm / pixel or so. You could scale it as long as it fits with your game engine. You can even start from huge resolution image because you like to draw in huge resolution, then resize it to fit 640x480 resolution.

 

[Soul Tech]

I've done drawing and scanning a lot of time. But most of them are for pure art, not meant to be used in game. An in game art like faceset, bust portrait, does not really need a hand drawn from pencil. I can just make them straight from the digital and done. But maybe, something like cutscene art, that may require some hand drawn image since it's easier to draw a dynamic pose from it. Granted, I don't have drawing tab. I have no experience on making battler this way, so I could not say anything

As for scaling, I don't think there is such thing as cm / pixel or so. You could scale it as long as it fits with your game engine. You can even start from huge resolution image because you like to draw in huge resolution, then resize it to fit 640x480 resolution.

Yes i understand what you say, i not have a drawing tab, but the point is i want to draw the graphics by hand & with the scaling I want to avoid pixelation of the edges in the drawing.

 

[Sharm]

Basic rule of thumb for scanning things in is to do it at least double the size you want the finish product to be. No matter how clean your line work, there's always going to be some strange quirks to the edges of your lines because of scanning, and if you scan big and shrink down it gets rid of a lot of those problems. Some things aren't going to look that great scaled down, but that's because some of the stuff in RM is just really tiny and there's not enough room to have enough information to make the drawing look as good as you want. Remember that people aren't going to be looking at it all zoomed in and just focus on getting stuff looking right at the size it will actually be seen at.

Try to be consistent with the size of your drawing across all the things your making, but go ahead and draw them all at a size that you're comfortable at. When scanning things in to be used like this it's more important that you have a drawing that you like than it being made to an exacting standard. You might actually want to start out with a quick and simple dummy doodle to test things like size and line weight and so on, instead of just going right in for your main project's needs. That way you don't feel bad about scrapping something you don't like and trying again until it's right.

You're going to want to start with the cleanest image you can get. I've found that scanning stuff in was much easier when I used paper with very little tooth to it. Bristol or printer paper are both really nice for this. My normal sketchbooks didn't work out well, the paper grain kept showing up in the scans and I'd lose finer details. Either make sure your pencils are nice and clear or ink and clean up before scanning.

Get really familiar with the adjustment tools of whatever image program you'll be using. I recommend something made for editing images like Photoshop or GIMP. Levels are especially useful in tweaking an image to be clear and well contrasted. It's not as intimidating as it seems, just save the image before and then you can play around and see what you like or don't like with no worries about losing anything.

The actual pixel dimensions for everything are in the help file. Some things don't have a fixed size, and with those you'll just want to do whatever size suits your project best. I've found screencaps and mockups to be very useful in this situation.

 

[Soul Tech]

Basic rule of thumb for scanning things in is to do it at least double the size you want the finish product to be. No matter how clean your line work, there's always going to be some strange quirks to the edges of your lines because of scanning, and if you scan big and shrink down it gets rid of a lot of those problems. Some things aren't going to look that great scaled down, but that's because some of the stuff in RM is just really tiny and there's not enough room to have enough information to make the drawing look as good as you want. Remember that people aren't going to be looking at it all zoomed in and just focus on getting stuff looking right at the size it will actually be seen at.

Try to be consistent with the size of your drawing across all the things your making, but go ahead and draw them all at a size that you're comfortable at. When scanning things in to be used like this it's more important that you have a drawing that you like than it being made to an exacting standard. You might actually want to start out with a quick and simple dummy doodle to test things like size and line weight and so on, instead of just going right in for your main project's needs. That way you don't feel bad about scrapping something you don't like and trying again until it's right.

You're going to want to start with the cleanest image you can get. I've found that scanning stuff in was much easier when I used paper with very little tooth to it. Bristol or printer paper are both really nice for this. My normal sketchbooks didn't work out well, the paper grain kept showing up in the scans and I'd lose finer details. Either make sure your pencils are nice and clear or ink and clean up before scanning.

Get really familiar with the adjustment tools of whatever image program you'll be using. I recommend something made for editing images like Photoshop or GIMP. Levels are especially useful in tweaking an image to be clear and well contrasted. It's not as intimidating as it seems, just save the image before and then you can play around and see what you like or don't like with no worries about losing anything.

The actual pixel dimensions for everything are in the help file. Some things don't have a fixed size, and with those you'll just want to do whatever size suits your project best. I've found screencaps and mockups to be very useful in this situation.

Thanks so much, is all what i wanted to hear or at least what I wanted to read.
I will do what you recommend, I thank you for the help!