Hand drawing

Has anyone here tried hand drawing clothing or other textures for SL. I'm a million times better at hand drawing than I am at using photoshop. I was wondering if anyone else has tried this and what the turn out was. I'm assuming I'll need to completely fill areas of color very dark and bold to really show up colorful through a scanner. Anyone else try this?

i think that would be cool!
print out the templates and draw on them scan em in and maybe add filters even in paintshop
ya never know it maybe a new hot fad in SL too

edit:
oh you would have to use paint to cut out the alpha too

Whatever program you use would have to support alpha channels and be able to save in a format supporting alpha channels...........such as .tga or .png

I agree natural media drawing for SL clothing is a cool idea, in theory. But I suspect that in practice it would be more trouble than it would be worth. I've never tried it, but I can think of some serious potential pitfalls right away.

The most immediate difficulty that comes to mind is per-pixel seam matching. Once you've printed the templates out, you've got no real way of way of knowing what amount of the page constitutes one pixel. As a result, lines that could well look like they match up on paper could end up being way, way off, once brought back into the computer.

You'd likely have to do so much cleanup work post-scan, it would completely negate any time savings you might have gained from drawing with natural tools instead of digital ones in the first place.

Also, there are a great many tasks that will inherently take far longer with natural tools anyway. The simple act of flooding a designated area with color can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours with natural media, depending on the size of the image and the type of media you're using, whereas to do so digitally takes just a split second. And of course, anything repetitive, like drawing/painting buttons on a shirt, for example, can be quite tedious to do with natural media, whereas it's just a simple matter of copying & pasting or clone-stamping in the computer.

I would highly recommend you focus your energies on learning to use applicable digital tools with comfort and confidence. Keep in mind, art is art, and a good artist is a good artist. Specific tools are interchangeable. Just because one may be more experienced with natural media than with digital, or vice versa, doesn't mean one can't get equally good with both. It's just a matter of discovery of technique, and practice. You've already got the artistic ability, right? The rest is the easy part.

It's super important to get comfortable with Photoshop, regardless. So you might as well use your present discomfort level with painting in it as your motivation to do acquire more experience. I promise, there does come a point where it clicks, and then you never look back.

Just so you know, if you want to replicate the hand-drawn look in the computer, there are several available programs for exactly that, from Photoshop plugins to stand-alone applications like Corel Painter.


All that said, if you indeed can make natural media work for SL clothing, more power to you. It would be awesome if you can pull it off. Just don't expect it to be easier than working directly in the computer. My guess is it will be significantly harder.

I often draw parts of things and scan them in then paint them on a layer over the scanned drawing. It works well for things I have a hard time just drawing with my mouse But for the typical clothing etc., I find it just as easy to 'draw' it right in my graphics program. I never tried to actually draw an outfit and use it just like that

What Chosen said.

OMG. I've actually done this many years ago. I found it to be quite fun.

The first thing I did was to clean up the wires. Only have as much as you need. Outlines, major edge-loops, and other important landmarks. Print it out.

While sitting down, I put a lamp between my feet and faced it straight up. Then laid a big piece of glass across my knees. Put wireframe print-out on the glass, then a blank piece of paper on top of the wireframe. Thanks to the glass and lamp, the wireframe would show through the blank piece and I could do whatever on the blank. Back then, pencils where my main weapon of choice. Then I would touch up the dark spots with charcoal.

Then I would scan it in using a flat bed scanner. Yes, a flat bed scanner and I sorely miss that monsterous piece of hardware. It was my other best friend for many years.

Then it was a matter of aligning, cropping, and various other clean-up. I never did anything terribly complicated or mission critical, so it really wasn't that bad. It was more of a fun and goofy exercise for me.

I've got this really awesome set of watercolour pencils sitting on my desk that I haven't used in years. I might have to bust them out and see if I can still work my traditional media magic. But I don't have a big glass pane or a flat bed anymore, so probably not.

Although, the idea of doing a face with watercolours kind of intrigues me. Hmm...

Okay, another installment of Just for Fun.

I pulled up the template in Photoshop. I laid a piece of paper on the monitor and lightly traced what I needed with a regular 2B pencil. Got out my watercolour pencils, coloured in some stuff, then washed around with a cheap brush.

I then laid it down on the kitchen floor and took a bunch of photographs with a cheap digital camera. I used various settings because I wasn't sure which settings would be best. This way I would have a few to choose from and hopefully at least one would be decent enough to use.

Back to Photoshop for some Free Transform and some Selective Colour. Other than some quick-n-sleazy tweaks with Selective Colour, no other post. Export, slap it on, and tada.

Several things to beer in mind. The paper that I used was a notch above newprint and completely untreated for watercolour work. Warped right up, but didn't seem to cause any seriously noticeable shading in the snaps. Also, I haven't touched watercolours for more than a few years (I used to dabble, but never really had the patience required for watercolours).

I did it very quick and on a shoe string impulse. Plus being extremely rusty at traditional media and lacking the proper materials (and patience). Total of maybe 30 minutes.

I imagine an entire skin can be done if tackled like photo-sourcing. I won't be trying it any time soon, but I'm sure I'll be doing some more experiments. I actually have one of those big Barbie heads - I might try painting on that and photo-sourcing it. Or something. I don't know yet.

I think it would be absolutely cool if somebody else out there tried similiar experiments and posted the results.

edit:

Just took inventory of what traditional materials are still around. Good range of acrylics, but I've never used them before. I'll save the acrylics for later. Chaulk pastels, but they smudge way too rough for my tastes. Now, I never really did like oil pastels, but they actually blend fairly well with some Goo Gone or similiar. I think oil pastels are next, and I think I'll be giving Pygora's head unwrap for a spin.

The next time I go to the store, gonna have to get some fan brushes.

Come on. You know you want to take a break from the purely digital and have some fun mixing in some real traditional. Have some fun goofing around and experimenting. If there is anything I'm good at, it's goofing around and trying silly things.

Oil pastels and smearing with Goo Off.

For some idiot reason I insisted on using ink even though I knew I was going to be smearing with Goo Off. Atrocious over-sight.

Then, for some reason, I couldn't get a decent snap. The one that I settled on needed some serious Curves and noise reduction.

Not a completely failed experiment because I did learn a thing or two. For example, not using ink and figuring out how to use better lighting and camera settings (I so miss my flatbed).

Well, back to my Mad Laboratory. But I'll be sure to poke my head back in if I come up something really cool.

Well Abu, those examples certainly are interesting, but the resault is pretty much what I expected. Cool to see, none the less, so thanks for sharing. In fact, this has given me a few ideas to try for bumpmaps and such.

I have done this and I have to say Chosen I think it is really the opposite. For those of us that are true draftspeople and painters, it's much faster and easier.

I took Robin's templates, stroked an outline around them, printed them out 10x10, and went to town. When I was done, I scanned them in at a high resolution and simply resized them down to 1024x1024. Only very minor adjustments were necessary along seams. As far as filling in areas of color, that was really not an issue. I was working in gauche and it went very quickly.

I ended up with some interesting results. However, since I focus on realism in the clothes that I am now making, I work almost exclusively with photosampling. In addition I have become much more adept at using me tablet.

I see absolutely no problem with this idea - I mean why not? You could really go nuts with it to and use found material and even different media to mix it up. I think it is a great idea. Although the use of a scanner is probably recommended and you would need to scan at a high resolution. As long as you stick to the templates as a guide and use your digital program to create the alphas - you should be good.

Have fun!

P.S. - Would love to see some of the outfits

When I first started making clothing in second life, I actually DID do this. My husband got me a tracer for Christmas and I printed out the templates and worked free hand since I have much more control than using a pen tablet. Sadly I never got too far but mostly because I didn't have a scanner at the time. However, we have one now and reading through this, i'm tempted to have another go at this idea. Like someone else said, you never know, maybe it'll be a new fashion trend. lol

I hand draw everything. I have made a group of "tool" shapes that I use to cut necklines and backlines. I havent perfected them yet but Im slowly getting there. I have tried premade stuff but I like making it myself much better. I do look for ideas in creating my clothing though.

Got sucked into another project that is very good. No real chance to play with these things since my last post, but I've definitely been paying attention.

Please, by all means, show a screen cap or something. I am most interested in seeing what someone far less rustier than I am has done.

Please?
Pretty please?

I'm pretty sure this is the case for everyone. If you greatly prefer the hand control over using automated tools (and I don't blame you), a worthwhile investment would be a Wacom tablet. These can be had for under US$100 in most places. If you need it to be mobile, Wacom tablets are available as standard factory equipment on the X and W series Lenovo Thinkpads (on the X series, it's a transparent layer over the screen itself, and on the W series, it's a more conventional trackpad-looking drawing tablet built into the palmrest).

I use hand drawing al lot for clothing. I mean in photoshop, with mouse or stylus rather than actual paper and paint!

I've done tops, shorts, dresses, a leotard, swimwear and underwear, all with satisfactory results.
I've even done trainers and boots - which are semi-prim designs - the uppers being a painted texture on the 'shoe' layer, with soles laces or boot legs as prims. With a bit of care these can look good, and can be made to fit ones normal feet well.

I haven't done jeans though - all my jeans are photo-texture freebies I've picked up - and they are difficult to improve on.

I draw with hand indeed, but i do it on the computer. Due to the fact i have a graphic education (communication and multimedia design) I use my write/ draw pad with digital pen to draw. I dont use this for clothing though but it can be quite fun instead of a mouse indeed. I never tried this on clothing. Fact is I hardly make clothing. I just give my input here. But for those who use it, I would love to know the results.. Wonder if it makes it more realistic if i could draw clothing by hand with the write/draw pad

I think you'll find that many (most?) people who do serious clothing design for SL use a tablet and pen. Do a search through the archives of this forum, looking for keywords like "Wacom" or "tablet." You'll find very rich discussions on the topic.