CartoonContest 2004.04.08 (The Making Of)
Since it was so fun, I just thought I'd share how I created this cartoon. (Low bandwidth users might want to pass on reading this.)
First of all, I'll mention that the software I used to make the cartoon is MS Paint. If you're not familiar with MS Paint, it's on any Windows computer; you can use Start | Run | "mspaint" to see it. It's a very rudimentary paint program, so it's a bit of a challenge to produce any redeeming images with it. (Side note: I just found there's a community for artists who do just that: mspaint.)
Anyhow, I had an idea the other day for an art technique and was curious how it would look. At the last minute, I decided it'd make a fun CartoonContest.
If you look at the picture I created, you'll notice that the picture features wavy lines and a lot of curves that appear almost hand-drawn. MS Paint has no such capability-- it can only really draw straight lines and simple shapes. (For instance, I use a lot of the rounded-squares in my cartoons.) The wavy lines and blur you see in the picture are a side-effect of the approach I took.
I drew this picture in layers. I created a quick (read: terrible) sketch with each section numbered for the layer it'd appear. I started from far away and moved up the z-order with the numbers. Thus, I began by drawing the sky:
Notice the straight lines-- these are the very same lines you see at the top of the original cartoon and around the edges. The horizon's the same, too. They eventually evolve into what you see in the final cartoon.
I took this picture and printed it out on my photo printer. I then took that print-out and scanned it back in with my flatbed photo scanner:
As you can see, the printing and scanning loses a lot. You see more waves from the not-completely-flat matte paper, and an added thickness to the black lines. (I really like the color gradient produced in the blue.)
I then loaded-up the scanned image in MS Paint and drew the sun on top of it as the next layer:
I repeated this process of printing my drawing-with-sun and scanning it back in. I did this for all of the remaining layers: I printed, scanned, and then drew the next layer on the resulting image. The hope was that this would blur the coloring and outline of items in the distance, while the 'nearer' layers would appear crisper and clearer.
It didn't happen as distinctly as I hoped, but I did end up with a bit of the 'crayon' look-and-feel I was looking for in the early layers. One fun aspect that I didn't expect was the amount of color bleeding that occurred during rescans. I expected early layers to be a duller color, but didn't expect colors to change so sharply.
This resulted in the most 'interesting' aspect of the contest picture: the green cow. The cow wasn't supposed to be green-- it evolved. You can see this from layer six:
Clearly, the cow's back legs began as a brownish-gold color. You can already see the effects of the color bleeding from the grass in layer seven. Here's the cows evolution through layer nine:
It wasn't long before the entire cow was green. (Poor cow.) The windows of the house also started as silver and evolved into a pinkish color.
I planned it to only have eleven (11) layers, but I added an extra layer to blur out the stick figure from the word balloons. Thus we have twelve (12) layers in all.
Anyway, I wasted a lot of ink and time. Yet, despite the silly looking bushes and funny-looking cow, I really do like the picture.
First of all, I'll mention that the software I used to make the cartoon is MS Paint. If you're not familiar with MS Paint, it's on any Windows computer; you can use Start | Run | "mspaint" to see it. It's a very rudimentary paint program, so it's a bit of a challenge to produce any redeeming images with it. (Side note: I just found there's a community for artists who do just that: mspaint.)
Anyhow, I had an idea the other day for an art technique and was curious how it would look. At the last minute, I decided it'd make a fun CartoonContest.
If you look at the picture I created, you'll notice that the picture features wavy lines and a lot of curves that appear almost hand-drawn. MS Paint has no such capability-- it can only really draw straight lines and simple shapes. (For instance, I use a lot of the rounded-squares in my cartoons.) The wavy lines and blur you see in the picture are a side-effect of the approach I took.
I drew this picture in layers. I created a quick (read: terrible) sketch with each section numbered for the layer it'd appear. I started from far away and moved up the z-order with the numbers. Thus, I began by drawing the sky:
Notice the straight lines-- these are the very same lines you see at the top of the original cartoon and around the edges. The horizon's the same, too. They eventually evolve into what you see in the final cartoon.
I took this picture and printed it out on my photo printer. I then took that print-out and scanned it back in with my flatbed photo scanner:
As you can see, the printing and scanning loses a lot. You see more waves from the not-completely-flat matte paper, and an added thickness to the black lines. (I really like the color gradient produced in the blue.)
I then loaded-up the scanned image in MS Paint and drew the sun on top of it as the next layer:
I repeated this process of printing my drawing-with-sun and scanning it back in. I did this for all of the remaining layers: I printed, scanned, and then drew the next layer on the resulting image. The hope was that this would blur the coloring and outline of items in the distance, while the 'nearer' layers would appear crisper and clearer.
It didn't happen as distinctly as I hoped, but I did end up with a bit of the 'crayon' look-and-feel I was looking for in the early layers. One fun aspect that I didn't expect was the amount of color bleeding that occurred during rescans. I expected early layers to be a duller color, but didn't expect colors to change so sharply.
This resulted in the most 'interesting' aspect of the contest picture: the green cow. The cow wasn't supposed to be green-- it evolved. You can see this from layer six:
Clearly, the cow's back legs began as a brownish-gold color. You can already see the effects of the color bleeding from the grass in layer seven. Here's the cows evolution through layer nine:
It wasn't long before the entire cow was green. (Poor cow.) The windows of the house also started as silver and evolved into a pinkish color.
I planned it to only have eleven (11) layers, but I added an extra layer to blur out the stick figure from the word balloons. Thus we have twelve (12) layers in all.
Anyway, I wasted a lot of ink and time. Yet, despite the silly looking bushes and funny-looking cow, I really do like the picture.