Alpha-channeling, otherwise known in Photoshop universe as quick-masking, modeled by the ever-so lovely Ollie.
The original drawing. See all the crinkles in the paper? Faint sketchy lines around him? This is what alpha channel eliminates. Believe me, this is a pretty clean drawing compared to some I've cleaned up. This also prevents the problem of the background showing through a character when you're compositing(this is a whole other ball-park though and too convoluted to blog).
Start out really broad and big in the quick-mask mode(Just drag a selection box around something and hit "Q") and then start refining with the brush tool.
More refining.
Here's the finished piece. The white is what you want, pink is canceled out. See?
When you hit the "Q" key again you get this very specific selection box.
The finished drawing. This is just one---I do this for every drawing in about 85% of my film. Just put on some good tunes and keep trying to beat your own record of "How many can I finish in an hour, but still stay clean"
21 days to go! Plan on blasting through a lot of alpha-channeling this week(I'm estimating around 6 scenes to go---which is around 200-300 drawings....or more) until then---time for some kind of activity that's less pink. haha
1 comment:
Wow, thanks for explaining this technique! I'd always wondered how you guys singled out the character from the rest of the paper to get them over the background without that translucent effect. Cool!
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