Say you draw a cartoon character on paper in pen and ink. Outlines only, no color. Like a platform character (Example: Sonic the Hedgehog) to be the new star in a game your going to create. How do you get this drawing into a digital format that you can use and animate in MMF2? Do you additionally need to use programs such as Macromedia FLASH and/or Adobe Illustrator in order to do this?
If you have a scanner, then you could scan it and svae it as a bitmap and manually erase the paper colors.
You would have to scan them.
A program like photoshop would be very handy (if not a must) to "extract" the character from the scans.
Another aproach would be to draw them digitally to start with using a drawing tablet.
Cool, Thanks to you both for the info. Any recommendations of a brand / model of drawing table to purchase for use with Win XP (USB) ??
I don't really use a scanner, but I would reccommend an HP printer/scanner. I usually take a picture of stuff I want in a game.
I've got an HP Photosmart C3180 printer/scanner, and it works very well. The only disadvantage is that it eats ink like popcorn.
I would recommend Wacom's drawing tablets (Graphire 3, Graphire 4). There are cheaper ones but they are also somewhat crap if you ask me.
I disagree. While I do think that Wacom create the best drawing tablets around, they are over rated. For someone who doesn't need to create professional design quality art, a Genius brand tablet for about £70 is a very good deal. I've had mine a year, it works great and with 1024 levels of pressure it gives out very good quality.Originally Posted by Isbeorn
I would recommend Wacom's drawing tablets (Graphire 3, Graphire 4). There are cheaper ones but they are also somewhat crap if you ask me.
I would however, stay away from Trust brand tablets, these don't have very good reliability. Oh, and buying a tablet with less than A4 (A5 can be fine though) in size is a bad idea. It's too small to do anything useful with.
A4 is too big for me. I don't feel I would have use of those big motions. :/
I second that about staying away from Trust - I bought one and it's not very good to say the least. I thought all the cheaper ones were as bad, but maybe I just made a bad pick then?
With my Trust tablet I have driver issues, it doesn't fit my hardware configuration all too well, the pen needs batteries, and it doesn't feel very precise when working with it. That doesn't sound very good at all does it?
There's no need in buying an advanced and expensive image editor like Photoshop for separating the outlines from the rest. You will do fine with the free Photofiltre or if you like an advanced I recommend The Gimp 2.
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