August 2013 Video Tutorial: Digi-toons!

Digi-toons!



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What do Gary Larson, Scott Adams, and Gary Trudeau all have in common? None of them have ever heard of Gary Bouton, and they are all cartoonists. This month, Gary (Bouton) shows you how to create digital cartoons, beginning with a pen and ink doodle, scan it, auto-trace it, and use some of Xara Designer’s exciting new features to color your work ad make it ready for the web or for print. It’s serious business for the funny papers!

If you’re a “cocktail napkin doodler” or just love to sketch cartoons with physical media, stay tuned, because this month Gary covers the path from paper to Xara with your work. See how to make the best scan, how to import it to Xara and use the Bitmap Tracer feature, and finally, see how to color your work to completion. Also learn how to edit your drawing style, so tracing utilities give you exactly what you need.

Show us your best digi-toons here.

Thanks, Administrator!

Um, this month the tutorial runs about 16 minutes, which is long(ish). But I wanted to accomplish several things for people who draw physical cartoons on paper, show the proper way to scan cartoons so Xara's Bitmap Tracer can make vector copies, and how to use the Shape Painter (previously the Shape Builder) tool (previously the implement) (I'm kidding).

I think the pace is leisurely, so digest what you will, and I hope to see some of your own artwork in this thread!

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My Best,

Gary

I wish I could draw cartoons.
So, I really enjoyed watching this video.
Thanks, Gary.

Just had a chance to watch the video again and I loved it. Another excellently produced, entertaining and educative video, Gary. Thanks very much :thx

I love cartooning, I wish I had more time to devote to it. If I have time I'll doodle something and put it up for public ridicule :D

No one is going to ridicule anyone's work: cartooning is by its nature ridiculous, so there nyah, nyah-nyah! :)

And Rik doesn't have to feel left out of this month's tutorial just because he's not a pen and ink doodling kinda artist.

I want this month to be inclusive, not exclusive. The video was actually about drawing, scanning, auto-tracing, and coloring, sort of four inter-related parts, okay?

So if you'd like to work out with the new(ish) Shape Painter tool in versions 8 and 9, and come to terms with lighting, shading, highlights and all that good dimensional stuff while filling in a cartoon, I've attached four pre-traced works I've done in the past. The below are just thumbnails: go to the bottom of my post and download the Zip archive which has the native *.xar files.

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Fool Disclosure: some of these drawings appeared in CorelDRAW books I wrote in the mid-1990s, but because CorelDRAW artwork can be copied to the Clipboard and pasted into Xara, I thought I'd re-use art I own from the past, because it does me no good letting it sit around untouched on my hard drives.

Work on shading techniques, seriously! Many well-known cartoonists hire "colorists" and they only do the pencils, leaving the inking process to equally underpaid workers!

My Best,

Gary

Thanks for the vid, Gary. Well done.

I grabbed one of your images above. Unfortunately, XDP crashed a few times attempting to trace it so I used something else. I look forward to coloring it, then onto some of my own art. Going to be next week, most likely. I am leaving town for a few days to go camping.

See ya in the funny papers (someone had to say it).

Mike

@Mike—

Well,oops. Those thumbnails are far too small to use Bitmap Tracer, Mike. The attachment contains the cartoons, pre-traced, but here's an idea if you want to work through the tracing process: download the zip archive, pop it and load one of the B & W vector drawings. Export it to TIFF or PNG with no transparency at about 200 ppi or so (Xara calls it "dpi"), and then import the bitmap to a new document and use Bitmap Tracer.

Have a laugh riot, pal!

-g

Ok here is a little doodle from me, I quite enjoyed this month's video and I really like the slower more relaxed pace. Yes it took 16 mins but hey I poured myself a coffee and took a break and I learned something :)

I do have one question for you Gary, is there a reason you suggest drawing a shape then feathering it instead of using the softness setting on the Shapebuilder/painter tool info bar?

That's a lovely cartoon, Frances, thanks for joining in and submitting your Digi-toon!

After 20 months hosting the Xone and 18 video tutorials, I'm finally beginning to relax the pace, therefore lengthening the tutorial (!), and I was thinking this works for both me and our community. It helps if you do the video over the course of a few days. Many tutorials were conceived of in the morning, filmed in the afternoon, and edited and produced at night with the help of Folger's High-Test.

I had no particular reason for showing the Shape Painter (Builder)'s Softness feature; something had to give in this 16 minute coverage, so this feature lost, but thank you for pointing that out.

Actually, the Softness feature with the Shape Painter is a Feathering function. Draw a line with Softness cranked up. Deselect the stroke (hit Esc). Then select it with the Selector tool, and lo and behold, you can see the Feathering slider on the Infobar cranked up and a tremendous value in the NumBox. You can make your soft stroke hard-edged by the Feathering slider—I'm not sure there's a different way to change the edge softness other than Feathering, so I went with Feathering in the tutorial.

My Best,

Gary

Thanks Gary, I've had a bit of time off this afternoon so here is another digi-toon! This one was inspired by my little Shih Tzu The word "treat" is not uttered in our house without him appearing from nowhere lol

That's a nice example of some of Xara's features, Frances.

You put a lot of detail into your 'toon!

Three thumbs up!

Gary

Ive run out of time to finish today - maybe tomorrow.

This is Wally the Toad. He's a frequent visitor on my terrace. I took a photo pf him a couple of nights ago so I just drew him from that photo :

• the photo
• the sketch
• the outline drawing
• the scan, white background removed

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To be continued... :thx

Great tut Gary, gotta upgrade to XPGD 8. Man, how long have I been doing it the hard way !!!!!

Hi Jim—

I'm not sure after version 9 came out you can upgrade to version 8, but I can dig the sense of your remark, yes indeed! Glad you got something out of this month's tute!

@Big Frank—

Thanks so much for posting your progression, from photo to rough, and so on to Xara! Artists who have come to Xara with little or no help in learning physical art media (I'm marking my age here) can appreciate the workflow you've shown.

And I was serious about pencil sketching being one way to get your 'toons into Xara. I was lent a very early tablet from Wacom, never got around to adopting it, but I've seen fantastic work done with a digitizing pen and tablet.

I'd like to make this following month a round table discussion all about any stage of the digi-tooning pipeline:Xara's tools, lighting, scanning, the whole deal.

My Best,

Gary

Here we go. Almost 4 in the morning, but enjoyed doing it so it's worth it!

The final result :

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Colouring the drawing in stages using only the Shape Painter :

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Frank, your attachments appear to have gone AWOL. Can you try attaching them again please?

I've been in hibernation I think.

V9 upgrade might well be my Fathers Day present next week, or will it be socks...............

Here we go!

The final result :

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Colouring the drawing in stages using only the Shape Painter (and rubbing out with the Shape Painter + Shft):

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It's wonderful, Frank, and more of an illustration than a cartoon.

And I'm glad you mentioned the shortcut to undo a Shape Panter stroke because I neglected to. Holding Shift in effect acts sort of like the Eraser tool.

-g

Thanks Gary :thx

I agree, it's less of a cartoon and more of an illustration.

Here's some cartoons I did earlier :thx

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Frank I couldn't open any of them.

Here you are again

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I love the high-tech busker, Frank!

We call them "street musicians" in New York, same thing.

The guitar reminded me of the YouRock guitar synth they get $250 for:


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You Tube video of You Rock guitar synth

Now THIS you'd get a LOT of donations if you knew how to play it! :)

My Best,

Gary

Gary it is a great video, I always like those intro ideas at the beginning :D

Also good to see already them together on Youtube, once could be done a TV series teaching children to vector/bitmap graphic things. Or a DVD beside of a future Xara product, however maybe in the other thread you mentioned that they take quite a big space :)

Anyway the length is not an issue at all, no problem even that would be an hour. I will give a try on the weekend, now just wanted to express that definitely Like it :)

I did another one :) I'm not very good at cartooning, but I do find it fun to play around with these.

Looks to me like you're very good at cartoons, Frances :thx

I agree. It is a nice cartoon.

Thanks Frank and Boy! :)

Here is a cartoon I did to illustrate a joke in this week's Good Morning Sunshine :)

It seems like you are also developing your own style!

Very good, Frances. Moving onwards and upwards :thx