I HAVE HAND DRAWN ART AND WANT TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE COMPUTER GFX

[rackoon]

OK here is the deal. I have some real nice drawings that I want to look like a computer cartoon for my cocktail Bezel. I have named it the Molotov cocktail table and have such drawings as donkey Kong breaking a Molotov over Mario's head and space invaders dropping digital molotovs and even centipede crawling around molotovs instead of mushrooms. I even have a Russian logo with some Cyrillic letters and olives and martini glasses instead of Os and Ts.

I have a mac and a PC and I was hoping that there was a program or way to scan them and make it all look more modern with shading and stuff. I also would be willing to pay someone who already has experience with this because I was thinking of having flames around the bezel also. 

If anyone is interested I would be willing to pay ahead for one piece of the work and we could go from there.  Or is there a program I could get? 

[Neilyboy]

I think you can use Adobe Illustrators 'Live Trace' feature. Adobe used to have streamline but they discontinued it with the newer versions of Illustrator coming out..

http://www.adobe.com/products/streamline/index.html

Neil

[malelanct]

the live trace feature is used to convert vector into raster (pretty poorly at that)

it sounds like you want someone to trace over your hand drawings and then add color+shading,  this is a manual process, you'll need to find an artist, or check out some tutorials on this, this is a pretty complex process, and if its your first time doing it, its probably not going to look as good as you'd like it to, first run through.

[hng]

I like the fact that people around here are into vector artwork, but not everything needs to be vectorized. Sometimes you get better results if your final resolution is not what is considered "optimum"

You can just scan them at a high resolution, and play around with filters and effects  in Photoshop. It will produce some rather large files, but technology has progressed quite a bit from floppy discs, so you should be okay.

Good luck with the flames... they're like advice... there is a ton of 'em out there, but mostly they stink.

[Neilyboy]

malelanct. uhh.. i may be wrong but im pretty sure illustrator has just what he is looking for..
Read the "tracing an image" section of this pdf.. http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/pdfs/creating_vector_content.pdf

specifically 'Hand Drawn Sketch' For converting hand-drawn sketches into vectors.

I dont know where you are getting your info from but when I took an art class some-time ago we were taught to use streamline which is no more. they have since shifted their support towards live trace in illustrator which produces traced vectors.. have you tried live trace on a hand drawn scan yourself? The results are not half bad with a bit of tweaking for a 'quick' and 'easy' method.

Neil

[zorg]

I like the fact that people around here are into vector artwork, but not everything needs to be vectorized. Sometimes you get better results if your final resolution is not what is considered "optimum"

You can just scan them at a high resolution, and play around with filters and effects  in Photoshop.

thank's 

[malelanct]

malelanct. uhh.. i may be wrong but im pretty sure illustrator has just what he is looking for..
Read the "tracing an image" section of this pdf.. http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/pdfs/creating_vector_content.pdf

specifically 'Hand Drawn Sketch' For converting hand-drawn sketches into vectors.

I dont know where you are getting your info from but when I took an art class some-time ago we were taught to use streamline which is no more. they have since shifted their support towards live trace in illustrator which produces traced vectors.. have you tried live trace on a hand drawn scan yourself? The results are not half bad with a bit of tweaking for a 'quick' and 'easy' method.

Neil

based on the comment below i was under the impression he wanted to clean up the art, and add coloring and shading, he uses the word modernize, which doesn't really specify anything

I have a mac and a PC and I was hoping that there was a program or way to scan them and make it all look more modern with shading and stuff. I also would be willing to pay someone who already has experience with this because I was thinking of having flames around the bezel also. 

however; i was almost certain he did not want to convert the art into vector, as there are a million posts about this in the forum, and he does not specifically mention ANYTHING about converting it to vector.

therefore i was simply pointing out the fact that the advice you gave him (to use live trace) is probably NOT what he is looking for , since he did NOT say anything about converting to vector

i apologize if i offended you in any way, but the general consensus on this forum is that if you are interested in vectorizing something, that using a trace program such as live trace is NOT the answer, which is why there are mulitple tutorials posted here to explain how to manually trace something

with this in mind, i guess the real question is, i'm not really clear what the poster even wants. the term modernize is just too vague.

[hng]

when doing your artwork, You have to ask yourself three questions:


What is the printing process that will be used for production?



If the process will be silk-screen, dye-sub, or individual color foils, then you will want to limit your colors because colors=money, plus the more colors you add, the greater likelihood of mis-alignment.  Also, you won't be able to do any shading. You'll  want to use Pantone Colors, so you'll know what to expect when printing is done.

If it is on a CMY machine (commercial production equipment: news press, package manufacturing), up close, you will be able to see the individual color dots, and shading will vary depending on the quality of the machine.

For stuff like marquees and bezels, they can be done on "regular" large format ink jets. Pretty much unlimited colors, and shading isn't an issue. Of course this depends on who is doing the printing, and what equipment they are actually using.

What will be the final production size?

from Mamemarquees:

"Artwork you create must be the correct size and it should be at least 200dpi, but 266-300dpi is preferred. Leave the document in RGB mode which has a broader color range. Do not create a file in a lower dpi and then convert it to 300dpi, this only makes the file bigger and does not enhance the resolution. It will still come out blocky and actually worse then if you left it at a lower dpi. Start creating at 200 or 300 dpi at full size, in other words, if you are creating a 300dpi marquee that will print at 26x8” create it at that size."



Did he fire six shots or only five?

Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

I felt lucky, but I wasn't. Or at least completely...

When I printed out my marquee and CP, the resolution was a little on the low side, because the tiling image I was using for my plaid was just a little gif I found online. I knew the Marquee would be okay, because it was being printed on a large format ink jet. It actually worked to my advantage that the resolution was a little on the low side, because it made the plaid appear to have stitches, instead of smooth computer generated artwork.

On the other hand, my original CP was printed on styrene, on a CMY machine. Because it was a different process and different color profile, the colors did not match. Also, because of the design limitations of that machine, my shaded areas were banded, not smooth gradients.



I kinda lost my way here, but I think what I'm trying to say is: it only needs to be vector if its going to be big.  Also, know what your color limitations are.

[Neilyboy]

malelanct, didnt upset me man.. I was just throwing out my $0.02. I think he is wanting to eventually use this in his cab artwork. So by using live trace to 'digitize' his artwork he will then be able to import it into pshop or keep it all in illustrator and touch it up and allow for color.

take care,
Neil

[Felsir]

it sounds like you want someone to trace over your hand drawings and then add color+shading,  this is a manual process, you'll need to find an artist, or check out some tutorials on this, this is a pretty complex process, and if its your first time doing it, its probably not going to look as good as you'd like it to, first run through.

If that is what you want, check out Deviantart tutorials there are plenty good tutorials on that topic. You will notice it takes a lot of skill to do the modern "comicbook" coloring- oh and the right tools: if you don't have a tablet connected to your computer then don't bother trying to do this.

[rackoon]

Wow, thanks for all the info guys. Sorry I didn't reply for a while, i had some friends from out of state stay with me in my computer office/spare bedroom. 

Regardless, What I was looking for was similar to what Felsir pointed out in photoshop. My largest piece of art is 4"X4" and already drawn to size. I don't want it vectorized or traced over.

I was hoping that I could scan and send it to someone more qualified than I to use a computer to color, shade and print my cocktail bezel.