Line Drawing

[wizard509]

Always like a challenge Handrawn. 100% Xara, 10 minutes, didn't use the trace tool, Only Shape Editor tool & a mouse.

Very good Egg.

[gwpriester]

There is tons of cartoon clip art https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cartoon+clip+art I would avoid free clip art because often times the sites include unwanted software in the download some of which may install on your computer and might be very hard to get rid of.

[handrawn]

Paint seemed much easier to draw in for me. I'm just doing these basic line drawings, do SAI or Manga Studio offer anything that I might need for such basic drawings. Is there any sw out there that might have a library of figures and objects of the style I'm interested in? Any recommendations on software for creating a whiteboard animation video, want to animate the redraw of the object.

if you only want clipart suff not worth paying a lot for a program maybe

actually inkscape has a calligraphy tool that behaves more naturally instead of wobbling like xara's freehand tool does [ok there is a reason for that, but it assumes you draw like a tortoise and not a hare]

and it will be vector, and inkscape is free - but unless you use win 8.1 [assuming you use windows at all] you may have trouble getting the touch sensitivity to work properly [due to problems between the program libraries inkscape uses and wacom drivers]

in any event it may not pick up the tablet until you set it in input devices

[Egg Bramhill]

Cheers Handrawn. I cheated, there was no pen type tool, just normal lines. Basically instead of creating lines to match the drawing I created shapes and extracted one from the other.

Laguna, Paint is a bitmap (raster) tool that produces images using dots much the same way as a newspaper creates a photo of many multi-coloured dots. Xara is basically a vector drawing program that creates lines with a file saying draw a black coloured line with a width of 1.5 pixels from this point (x1,y1) to this point (x2,y2) etc etc etc. The two, raster & vector are entirely different beasts.

If your wanting something to use on a whiteboard application you really need to use a vector based program like Xara Designer or Inkscape. The SVG (scalable vector graphics) file you create from either of the two mentioned programs creates vector files which can be used in whiteboard programs.

I use VideoScribe which in my opinion has a quirky User Interface and is expensive for how often I use it. One further problem I have with it is that Xara generated SVG's come in at a distorted shape and I need to edit the SVG file in Notepad to remove all the Def tags to get it to import at the correct size (Never worked out whether this is a Xara export filter problem or a VideoScribe problem)

[laguna92651]

That is the animation effect I'm looking to implement, how was that done?

[laguna92651]

I have do have Inkscape and 8.1, it seems to work well, I'll have to plan around with it. I haven't used the Wacom or Inkscape much, so spending alot of time mapping the work area to inkscape and what pens/brushes work best.

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Laguna, I was just editing my post when you responded. I've finished editing it now so you may want to refresh your browser to see the edits.

By the way as well as agreeing with Gary re FREE clipart the majority of it is raster, not vector, so you're better off looking for free svg files.

[laguna92651]

How did you create the figure, using shapes?

I was going to use VideoScribe, but had the same reservations, I wasn't going to use it that often. Good to know about the distortions, Do you know if Inkscape is going to have the same distortion problem as Xara? I assume your animation was done with VideoScribe?

There is another program which is a one time purchase of $67, that I was going to try, VideoMakerfx, http://www.videomakerfx.com/. Doesn't seem as robust as VideoScribe, but haven't used it yet.

[handrawn]

@egg - ah - I thought you might have done something like that [knowing you] - using a pen/shape tool to get those lines with a mouse like digging with a teaspoon

@laguna - agree with egg, if you are animating this way vector best; inkscape and videoscribe has come up before here somewhere but I can't find it...

[Veeness]

Nice one Egg)

laguna 92651 here's another sketch line info tutorial used in Xara http://youtu.be/9zCbQOcgOrU

I use XARA for everything and I'm always practicing something new with tutorials. I know its not perfect but I made a simple swf with circles for practice which you can view here I'm sure one of the guys here can show you a simple form of line character as Egg has made that you can animate each segement of line to move as needed to create a whiteboard animation.



Egg I Challenge you to make that thing move now))...lol I'm now off to have a go myself.

ps laguna when you say redraw the object are you talking about each line being animated to draw to completed figure or object?
Are you asking if there are preset animated characters out there for free that you can animate by manipulating them into a new animation?