Mythical Drought Solutions

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Comment by William (Toonos of Mythos) on March 10, 2013 at 2:43pm

Thanks, Sarah.

Comment by Sarah Kelly (Oodilong) on March 8, 2013 at 3:22pm

love love love love!!

Comment by Maddy Madsen (Minotaurus Rex) on March 8, 2013 at 11:34am

OMG thanks! I will definitely try that! Thanks for the time!

Comment by William (Toonos of Mythos) on March 8, 2013 at 10:05am

OK, Maddy, here is the information as promised.  I'll start after I completed the drawing and inking process. First you want to scan the image as a pure black and white file (tiff or bmp is formats I work with).  This allows you to set the white to be transparent.  So once you have scanned the image in, open PowerPoint and click on the "insert" tab on the ribbon and add the picture you scanned.  Don't re-size the image too much larger that it defaults to, because it will become pixelated or grainy.  Click on the format tab in the ribbon (the picture must be selected or this tab won't show up) and click on the recolor option. You want to do two of the options under the recolor feature, and it doesn't matter the order, but you will have to select the recolor option twice.  Select the transparency tool (the last tool listed) and click on any white area on your picture to set it to transparent.  Then under the recolor option select one of the "light variations" to change the black lines to another color based on your preference.  The reason for this step is when you start building custom shapes to provide the color, you won't be able to see the outline of the shape with a black line on a black line (you'll see).  Based on the colors in the background, you made need to change the "light variation" to ensure the image lines stand out from the background.  Now comes the part with few directions, but MANY steps.  On the home tab of the ribbon, select the free form option from the shapes menu.  Then build a shape to fill in the colors to your image.  For example, using your mouse, trace the lines around the perimeter of a shirt and when you are done, you will see the areaa of the shirt is blue, and now you can recolor that shape (add gradients and shadow options, whatever you want) and that will become the fill color of your shirt.  Once you have built each shape required to color your image, make sure you bring the image to the front to have the lines on top of all the colored shapes.  My recommendation is start with your background options first and work your way forward, and once each section of the picture has shapes built, bring the picture to the front.  To bring the picture forward or backward right click on it and you'll see Bring to Front and Send to Back with arrows pointing to the right.  Those arrows will allow you to bring forward or bring to front and send backward or send to back, which means you can send an object to the top or bottom of what you see or you can send it back a "layer" at a time.  When you are finished, PowerPoint save options include the ability to save the file as an image, and you should so you have a picture file you can share or post anywhere.  If you research how Pixlr and Photoshop color images you'll find they make the process even more painful than this.  Yes, you can use programs like MS Paint to color images with the pain bucket a heck of a lot quicker, but the overall quality isn't as high because of the lack of gradient coloring and shadowing (just to name a few options).  Have fun with it, you'll be surprised of some of the results you can get.  I'll post a picture I made using this process where I was able to delete the drawing completely and what was left blew me away.

Comment by William (Toonos of Mythos) on March 8, 2013 at 5:47am

Check out more of my 'toons.  Like "The Lockups" on Facebook.

Comment by Maddy Madsen (Minotaurus Rex) on March 7, 2013 at 6:35pm

That'd be awesome! I'm always looking for new ways to digitally draw! Thank you so much! :D :D

Comment by William (Toonos of Mythos) on March 7, 2013 at 6:06pm

I'll post details in the morning, if you'd like.

Comment by Maddy Madsen (Minotaurus Rex) on March 7, 2013 at 6:02pm

Hm. Thanks Imma have to try that. :D

Comment by William (Toonos of Mythos) on March 7, 2013 at 5:13pm

Draw by hand, then scan and use PowerPoint of all things.  It has features that make coloring it easier than Pixlr or Photoshop

Comment by Maddy Madsen (Minotaurus Rex) on March 7, 2013 at 4:50pm

what program do you use?