Saturday, October 15, 2011

I Wish There Was a Good Drawing and Inking Program


AN UNFINISHED LOAF
I can't seem to find a single drawing program that has all the fundamental tools you need to do good clean finished drawings in it.

I have to use at least 2 programs to get a clean drawing done and then I have to spend a ton of time fixing up details. - There oughta be quick and easy clean up tools in the drawing programs.

The way I'm doing it now is I import my rough drawing into illustrator and then ink the lines

But the brush tool in illustrator, although smooth is full of irritating quirks.

I ink with a thick and thin pressure sensitive brush but the ends of the line are always pointy. That means I have to overshoot every line that crosses or touches another so that where they cross they are sort the same thickness - but even that doesn't quite work.

Then I am stuck with all these extra overshot lines that cross each other and I need a simple way to cut them off. The eraser doesn't work and is too time-consuming.

In Harmony, they have a nifty tool that you can just click the overshoot and delete it. Too bad Toonboom doesn't make a drawing program.

So after I have inked a drawing in Illustrator, I export it to Photoshop - while keeping the layers (and turning "anti-aliasing" off)

Then I have to manually go in and clean up all the overshot lines. The eraser tool is too clumsy for that and takes too long. I have to zoom way in close and use the pencil tool at 1 pixel size and draw an extra line to cut off the corners. Then I use the wand and select the overshoot and delete it.

Too many steps!!

You'd think someone out there would make a program that was truly artist friendly and that had all the essential drawing and cleanup tools in one simple toolbox.

Each program seems to have some good ideas for tools, but they only half figured them out.

But they all have millions of random non-essential menus, tools and gimmicks that I can't imagine more than 1% of the artist population would have any interest in.