Learning Gimp

[RCgothic]

I'm beginning to learn to use GIMP, and I've created a few floating logos from scratch.

Over the last two days I've been trying to colour a picture drown with black lines, but the lines aren't perfectly black, when i fill areas there are white pixels left around the edges. Is there a way I can extract only the blackest parts to use as borders for the area fill?

[Legacy]

The white lines are anti aliasing errors.
If you wan to use then as masks for a simple fill, i recommend either using a treshold filter to make the whole thing BW or raise the contrast a lot (which actually has the same effect)
Other way is to simple use a better selection tool then just a fill.

[Mark]

are the black lines on seperate layers? if they are you could just reduce brightness and increase contrast...

[RCgothic]

Thanks Legacy, Threshold filter worked like a charm.

[RCgothic]

Ok, here's my first attempt at colouring a line art.
Original can be found here:
http://redstring.strawberrycomics.com/coloringbook.html
#1. I like this comic
#2. She's hot.

[MLeo]

Very nice!


I know for sure I can't draw/fill.

[RCgothic]

I can't draw (yet). But the filling is really, really easy.

Here's a really good tutorial for filling/shading. Use the fill tool or a paintbrush.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jklenz/GIMPtutorial.pdf

[MLeo]

You know, I want to officially thank you for ruining my excelent score list (minus that one 6 out of 10); and a couple of 7's). Red-string is rather nice to read.
Though, why isn't there a usefull RSS feed? I've subscribed to the Mailer list instead (hoping that contains the images, or links to, as well).


One thing (or rather, a couple of things) I would like to draw, ...



Only trespass when you know the risk of a possible thread hijack and sheer boredom.





Sorry, for the extra lines, [spoiler] doesn't appear to work.





are these Dragon idea's in my head. (I apologize in advance for partly hijacking this thread, I won't mention it again unles provoked ;) )

In this "world" there are several elements and sub elements (mix of 2 adjoining elements, so the "high" and the "low" elements). They all have an opposite. The elements are (ordered in pairs and are opposite in the element "circle"),:

Code: [Select]

Fire, Wood, Thundra, Water,    Air,   Mountain, (Fire)
   Barren, Meadow, Ice,  Lightning, Sand,     LavaAnd each element has a Dragon "phenotype".

All Dragons are bimorphs, they have 2 natural shapes, one that really looks "Dragon" and one that looks Human (this is the root cause of some, if not all of the conflicts in that world, fear when real "Humans" appear, did I mention there aren't just Dragons?).

Aside from those, there are the transcendal elements, Light and (lack of better word) Darkness.
In this world Darkness isn't the "lack of Light", it's seperate.
And you've guessed it, there are dragons for these elements as well.
They are known as the Dual Dualities (4 Dragons, 2 for each element).
There are a lot of dualities, if you haven't noticed before.

Now, the transcendal dragons look the most like Humans in their Dragon form, but they are atleast twice as long as Humans, and have wings, and not so human heads. And walk on their toes. In fact, they (both) are more or less a mix and match of all the other elements.
And another interresting feature of these Dragons, phenotypes of opposite elements look alike. Mostly some specific features (for instance, Water Dragons have "film" between their toes and fingers, they also are more streamlined and can even breath underwater when in Human form. Fire Dragons on the other hand, look more like your "casual" Dragons (mostly red) and in their human form they can resist Fire, I mean, any fire, so they can stand in a big blaze, very usefull after a "successfull" witch hunt).

I really have to try drawing something in the vacation.



Now I'll shut up and I'll enjoy the rest of the thread.

[RCgothic]

You know, I want to officially thank you for ruining my excelent score list (minus that one 6 out of 10); and a couple of 7's). Red-string is rather nice to read.

Haha, glad you like. I wish I could do artwork like in some of these comics.

[Legacy]

Ok, here's my first attempt at colouring a line art.
Original can be found here:
http://redstring.strawberrycomics.com/coloringbook.html
#1. I like this comic
#2. She's hot.

Very good job, soft shadows and lighting.
My only point is that you're leaking colors.
Usually when coloring an image, we separate the lines in a separated layer and paint it in layers bellow it, one for each area, like skin and clothing.
Also, i recommend you to make a selection of each area when doing the base painting, and make it going all the way to the middle of the black lines, so you're sure that your not leaking through them, neither leaving whitish spots near it.

[RCgothic]

I had a different layer for the background, skin, clothes, hair, jewlery, flowers and lines in that order. I may not have had 'Keep transparency' on though.

I'm not quite sure about how to do the painting to the middle of the black lines though...

[Legacy]

I think i may not explained it right...
I mean that the black lines do have some thickness, right?
When you make the selection that will determine the boundaries of each area, don't use a magic wand or any automatic selection tool, use a polygonal lasso and make the points of the selection to be right in the middle of the black lines. As you're painting bellow it in the stack (behind) there's no need to make stuff match perfectly, just match enough so you don't have an under or other leak.

Hope this made it more clear.

[RCgothic]

Ok, here's a second attempt. Shading was done with far more shades than previously, I used Legacy's advice and also 'kept transparencies', which combined prevented the colours leaking.

I also deepend the background, I think this is a vast improvement over my first attempt.

[Legacy]

I think this is a vast improvement over my first attempt.

So do I. It looks pretty.

[blaXXer]

a lil hint on how I do it: I have the lines on a seperate layer, as LC already suggested. Then I transform them from vectors into a raster layer, blur them a very little bit to get rid of those anti-aliasing errors. and then I select aeas I want in the same color with the wagic want tool (yes, I do it - all the time...so sue me ) then I create a layer underneath the lines use feather until my selection is roughly in the middle of the lines (as LC already so eloquently described) and fill it. tadaaa, no anti-aliasing errors, no overlapping color fields and best of all very very very little manual tweaking.

Basically like I did with this little fella:



adorable, isn't he?