Inkscape animevectoring tutorial

1)Inkscape 0.46 will be used here. I believe even ifyou are using another application you can get the basicidea of vector tracing from this tutorial.

http://www.inkscape.org/

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2)I'll be using lots of shortcuts here. All toolscan still be found from dropdown menus(file,edit,view,etc).

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3)I don't expect you to have experience with Inkscape,but I'm expecting you not to be a total idiot who can't figurelittle things out by yourself.

It might be helpful be familarize yourself with a few of inkscape's tools. If you are completely new to Inkscape you mightwant to go and play around a bit with Inkscape. This is not100% necessary but it should help you a bit.

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4)There are many ways to do things in Inkscape. Feel free to dothem the way you prefer.

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5)Also feel free to test other tools and options which I don't mention here.You can always undo(ctrl+z) your way to back.

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6)You can always check how I have done things from this svg-file.Note that you can't see the source picture (model.png) if you don't reimport it.

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7)If you have problems following this tuotorial because of yourInkscape is not in english you can do following:

Open notepad and write down following lines:

@set LANG=en_EN@start inkscape.exe

Then save the file to your Inkscapes installation directorywith name "inkscape.bat".

When you open your Inkscape with this bat-file it should bein english. If you open Inkscape with inkscape.exe it willbe in language it was before.

If this is not working or you are not using Windowscheck this link.

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Page 1

What to vector?

To get our vector started we need a picture to base our vector on.Since you are reading this you are probably pretty newto vectoring so I would suggest you choose a simple pic tostart with. You should also make sure the picture youchoose is as big and clear as possible. All lines shouldbe seen easily to make it as easy as possible.

I chose the following pic to vector for this tutorial.For this tutorial it would be a good idea for you to also use this since you can follow along.

Click the picture to see it fullsized.

Why did I choose this pic..?The main reason is that this pic has some things that I want to show you and how to deal with them.

It is also good because:-It is 1280x720.-Lines are very easy to see.-It is simple enough for this tutorial.

Remember that your source pic is the heart of your vector and to get good results your source pic needs to be good. I don't think this screencap would normally be worth vectoring but it will be vectored for sake of this tutorial :)

Screen capping

To get more pictures to vector you can take screen caps from animeyou like. Don't bother using the print screen button. Instead,you need to use your video player to cap your screens.

In VLC player the screenshot option is under Video -> Snapshot. In windows it should save your screenshots to your "my pictures" folder by default. I have found VLC player pretty bad for this because pause is a bit delayed and sometimes there are some strange artifacts.

In MPC(media player classic) the screenshot option is infile -> save image or the shortcuts shift+ctrl+S or F5.When using file -> save image you will be asked which directory to save your screenshot and in what format (png or jpg). If you use the shortcuts it will save the screenshot in the last directory used. So I recommend that you set a directory first by using the save image option before using the shortcuts.

In Mplayer the screenshot option is under Video -> Screenshot and theshortcut is just "S". I don't know where it saves the screenshots asI have never used Mplayer for screenshots.

If you are using a player other then the ones listed here then you willneed to find the screenshot option yourself.

Screen caps are not only source for vectors but it is the most common one. You can also vector your own sketchs, printsor pretty much anything you like if you are skilled enough.

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Page 2

Setting up Inkscape

After we have chosen what to vector we can start working withInkscape. First we will the open document properties withctrl+shift+d. Normally I would set the documet size to1920x1200 since I usually make wallpapers from myvectors but for now we will do a pure vector.

First we will set the background color to some color thatour source does not have. In this case I chose green. Youcan see HSL-values from the picture below. Doing thisis optional but it can be helpful while working on any whiteparts of the picture. I also unchecked all border optionsfrom bottom of the window. Now you can close the background color and document properties windows.

The next step is to import our picture to Inkscape. First wewill set up a layer for the pic. Open the layer window withctrl+shift+L. There should already be one layer there named Layer 1or something similar. Rename the layer to "Model" by clicking the old name. Finish renaming with enter.

Now we will import the source. Press ctrl+i and select your pic.After this lock the "Model" layer by pressing the lock icon nextto the layer's name. Now you can't accidentally move the pic.While we are already playing around with the layers we should create the other layers that we will need. You can create new layers with (+)-button at layers window. Create layers "Lines" and "Colors" and make sure that "Lines" is above all other layers and "Colors" is rightbelow "Lines". If not you can adjust the layers with the arrow buttonsinbetween to the (+)/(-) buttons.

Some tips:-When you are using shortcuts be sure that your layers window is notactive because if it is you might be end up creating new layer.

-You can move around your document vertically with mouse wheel andhorizontaly with shift + mouse wheel. Zooming can be done quickly with alt or ctrl+mouse wheel. If you want space + left click to pan around like in Photoshop/Illustrator open the Inkscape preferences window with Shift+Ctrl+P and check the box that says "Left mouse buttonpans when Space is pressed". Because you can move around with out thescrollbars, you might want to hide your scrollbars with ctrl+b. This is of course optional. If you like scroll bars just keep them.

-You can zoom to 1:1 quickly by pressing 1. And now for example you shouldnot have layers window active :) Numbers 2-6 also have somepreset zoom options.

-You can move objects to other layers by selecting the object and pressingshift+page up/page down. For example if you would somehow have your source picin your "Lines" layer you could move it to the "Model" layer by selecting the pic andpressing page down twice while holding shift. If you want to move objectsfrom a locked layer you will need to unlock that layer first. If you want to do theopposite (move an object from a unlocked layer to a locked one) you do not haveto unlock the other layer.

Now we will save the document. Remember to save often. Sometimes Inkscape crashes. If a crash occurs Inkscape will try to saveyour progress but that doesn't work everytime.

After saving, your inkscape should look something like this.

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Page 3

Starting to draw lines

Now make sure that you have the Lines layer selected. Wewill start vectoring the hair so zoom in to the partover the forehead (the bangs). Select the Bezier curve tool. The shortcut for this is shift+f6.

I find the hair drawing style of this series to be verysimple. If you look at the pic above, you should see lots of V-shaped lines in a row. The left side of the shapes always end at "nothing" and right side of the lines always end at another line. Hair is not always this simple but you can usually break them up in to smaller, simpler parts.

Now we start tracing these V-shapes one by one. Lets start

with left side of the shape which will be the sharp/pointy end.Start drawing the shape by clicking at the end of that line(Imarked this spot as '1' in the image below. Continueby clicking at the corner point of this line('2' in the pic).Follow the numbers in order. When you get to the 5, click onthe first point you made to close/end the shape.

Tips for bezier tool:-You can delete last node drawn with backspace. DON'T tryctrl+z. That will just remove whole shape.

-You can put the last node where ever you want by pressingthe right mouse button. This will result in an open shape.You can continue shapes by pressing start or end node with bezier tool.

-You can freely use your operating system in middle of drawingbezier line. So if you want to change track from your musicplayer during drawing a long shape you can do it withoutinterrupting drawing.

Now we will curve and adjust the shape we just drew. For thisselect node editing tool (f2). Now simple hold your mousebutton on one of the lines and drag it to the spot it shouldbe.

Do this to all lines. Sometimes lines overlap other linesso it might be hard to grab the line you want to curvebut it doesn't matter since you can curve lines in anyorder you like. Your result doesn't need to be perfect for now.After you have curved all lines select all nodes (the diamond shaped points) with node editing tool. Now we can see all the handles.

Now we will start adusting the shape. Remember that our goalis to get the line of the original pic to be in the middleof our shape. Now you will probably need to move some nodes.When moving a node be sure that you dont have other nodesselected. If you clicked on a line of your shape instead of a node you will have both nodes around the line selected.

Try to get your shape to match the image below.

Now we need to remove stroke and put a fill for the shape we justdrew. There is several ways to do this but I have foundInkscapes statusbar the easiest way to do this. The status baris located at very bottom of Inkscape. If you can't see thismake sure that your Inkscape is maximized and you don't havestausbar hidden(View -> Show/Hide -> Statusbar). Now make sure thatyou have the shape we drew selected and right click the black in your color palette and choose "Set fill".

Now right click on the black next to "Stroke:" and choose "Remove stroke".

Now you can do some more adjusting to the shape if it doesn'tlook good to you. The result I got looks like this.

Now continue drawing these V-shapes until you have drawn allof them. Remember to hide the blunt ends of the shapes behindother shapes like in the picture below. Also remember thatsome shapes have 2 sharp ends and those wont need to be hid.

Right side of the pic is Inkscapes outline-mode. You can toggle it with ctrl+numpad 5.

After I vectored all V-shapes my pic looks like this.Dont worry about the source being transparent. I just temporarylowered the layers opacity.

Now we will trace the other lines of the hair. Just placenodes along the line like in the example above. You shouldbe able to do these on your own.

Now there are 2 spots of the hair left. The long line at top and the hair clip thing above her forehead. When tracing long lines its good to put some additional nodes to the middle.Draw the shape like this:

Now adjust the shape, trying to follow the original line.After that choose the 6 nodes in the middle of the shape and make them smooth(see pic below).

Click for larger one.

Now handles of those 6 nodes have been locked to 180 degrees sothey are looks nice and smooth. Now adjust the line so that it looksgood to you. Remember to set the fill color and remove the stroke.

Next we will do the hair clip part. First trace the 2 horizontal linesaround the yellow thing. After this trace the rest of the lines. Youshould make them a little bit longer then in the original. We will get rid of the extra parts when we color the pic.

Now your Inkscape should look something like this.

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Page 4

Rest of the lines

After we have finished the hair we can move on to the clothes.You should be able to draw rest of the lines on your own. Start by tracing the edge of her face because many of the other lines end there so it is good to have that line as soon as possible. For now, igonre rest of the face and focus on clothes.

Here is a picture to show how I did the nodesat her chin. With these locations I nearly got a perfectline by just smoothing without any preadjusting.

One more thing before you start. When you are tracinga line that goes behind another object just draw the wholeline and delete unwanted parts later. To do this, draw 2 shapes like in image below and be sure that you draw green one last. Select both shapes and press ctrl and minus. This should remove the green shape and the parts of the black shape that were inside of the green one. This is called 'difference'.

If you get a different result then you have probably drawnthe shapes in the wrong order. Undo(ctrl+z) difference and select the green shape and press home. This moves it to the top where it should be. Now try again.

There is a similar spot on the other side of the pic. Try todo that on your own. After that trace rest of the linesof the clothes.

Next is the face. Lets start with the ear and eyebrows.As usual the ear looks pretty strange. You can fix that ifyou want. For now I will trace it as it is.

I don't like how the eyebrow or eye are showing though the hair. So I will delete parts from the eyebrow that I dont want to beseen. Again, this is optional. This is similar to the wayI did it before but this time I'll surround areas I want tostay instead of the areas I want to remove. You can see the 4shapes in picture below. Even though they are not connectedthey are part of same object/shape. To get separated shapes tobe the same object you can select those shapes and hit ctrland plus. You can also add to a selected object by holding

shift while starting a new shape.

Now we will do intersection. Select eyebrow and the shape we just made and press ctrl+*.

Playing around with difference, intersection, and union(ctrl and plus)can make your result much better with less effort.

Here is pic to show how I did the shapes below eyebrows. Youcan add new nodes to shape by double clicking the spot whereyou want to add it.

The next part is the nose. There are many ways to do this but this is a good method. First open your Fill and Stroke window andselect "Stroke style"-tab. Then follow this:

1. Draw a line.2. Set its width to 2 px and change 'Cap' to Round cap.3. Curve it a bit and convert it to path(ctrl+alt+c)4. Adjust it. Here you might want to delete some nodesbut keep sure that your nodes are still smooth. You need tosmooth some nodes again if you delete other nodes.

If you were smart enough you did this over the originalnose. Otherwise you need to move and maybe resize it.This can be done with select/transform tool(f1).

Now only the mouth and eyes are left. Both are verysimple parts but I'd like to say something about the mouth.In this pic the line for the mouth is broken (there is a gap between the lines at the bottom of the mouth). I don'tlike this so I'll join them. You can make it discontinued if you want. Here is how I did this.

Remember to draw that short line locatedat left side of her mouth (the tounge).(and don't mix this up with the shadow's edge)

If you deciced to make a continuous mouth you need to draw oneshape inside of the another. Remember that you will need to holdshift when you start the second shape.

Now we only have the eyes left. You can do this by yourself,but first check how your project should look like. I changed the shape of lower part of theeyes a bit.<-- Previous - Next -->

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Page 5

Coloring your vector

Now our lines are ready excluding that small partI was going to take care of when coloring. So letsstart with the hair to get the last part of the linesready.

Now you should select the "Colors" layer. Remember thatif you click on some object on "the Lines" layer youwill get that layer selected and all shapes youdraw then will go to that layer. If this happenstry to recall how to move objects to other layers.

One way to avoid this is to lock the "Lines" layer butI wouldn't do this for 2 reasons. As I said before, the lines are not 100% ready yet so we would need to unlock it just a bit later. Also you might notice that you have some error on your lines or you just want to editsome lines a bit and you would need to unlock the layer.But because it is easy to move objects around layersthis is VERY small issue. Just do whatever you feel themost comfortable with.

To start coloring, start drawing shape around thewhole hair. Now it is important to keep edges of your shape in the lines. Don't get confused by theshirt which have same colors as the hair(like I did).

Click for bigger image.

After you have gone around all of the hair, we need toselect a color. This will be done with the color picker

tool(f7). Be sure you have the object you just drewselected. Now hold mouse button over a place wherethere are lots of ONLY the hair color around and dragyour mouse a bit. You should see a circle after youdrag your mouse. Be sure that there is nothingbut hair color in this circle. After you releasemouse button your object will be colored withaverage of the colors inside the circle. Removethe stroke of the color object.

While still having the hair color object selected, draw a shape around the ear(hold shift while starting this).

Now your pic should look like this.

Now it is time to take care of last lines. Drawa shape like in the image below. It might be hard to seewhere the line goes but if you check where the nodesare you should get it. Basically it just goes aroundthe only part of the hair we did not color. Makesure that none of the vertical lines stops beforethey have gone over the shape.

Duplicate this shape with ctrl+d.

Now select all of the vertical lines inside theduplicated shape and do a union(ctrl++). After thisselect the shape we just duplicated. Now do intersection(ctrl+*). After this you need tore fill the created object with black, remove stroke and you will need to move it back to "Lines" layer.

Now select the object we have left here and fill itwith the hairs color and remove the stroke. You can also colorthe gap we have here. It is quite hard to pick the colorwith picker tool so I just made the color by myself.(ctrl+shift+f to open Fill and Stroke window for choosinga color. Remember to remove the stroke!)

Result:

Now go and color the clothes. Remember that you can have manyshapes in one object. Just draw all white parts to oneobject and all will get colored at once. And again...Remember to remove the strokes! Avoid picking colors fromshadows for now. You can also color the face, neck and earwith the skins color. Now we have multipe color shapes meetingwithout help of lines at the hair clip. Select thefaces color object and send it back by pressing end.

Now color the mouth and ignore the shadows. Note that youcan hide the "Colors" layer when picking up a color. Justmake sure you still have object you want to color stillselected.

This is the result thus far.Note that I have fixed a little coloring error at her rightshoulder with the hair I did earlier.

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Page 6

Shadows

Now it is time to make the shadows. There are (again)many ways to do this but the following technique is howI normally do it. Now we will use the "Lines" layer asa temporary drawing layer for the shadows. We will do thisbecause we need to have "Colors" layer hidden to seewhere the shadows are.

So hide the "Colors" layer, select "Lines" and start tracing the shadows as a single object until your vector looks like this:

Now color this shadow object like before (with the color picker), remove stroke and move it to the "Colors" layer(shift+page down). It should disappear since it moved to hidden layer. Now you canshow the layer for a sec to see how it looks. You can also adjust the shadow now if you think some points might need adjusting. After that hide that layer again.

Now do the shinny part of the hair and rest of the shadows with the same

technique. Remember the following places need shadows: mouth, nose, ear, and neck.Also notice that there are shinny-things on the side-burn parts too.

Now when we are only missing the eyes and blush, our pic now looks like this:

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Page 7

Eyes and blushes

There are quintillion different ways to draw anime eyes.Luckily there is a simple one way to do them.Lets use the same technique we used with the shadows and keepthe "Colors" layer hidden.

Lets start with the white part. Draw 2 shapes like I didin the image below. Duplicate the black shape and do intersection(ctrl+*) with the red and another black one. Now select the bigger shape and pick up white color from the image, remove stroke and move the shape to the layer below. After that, select the smaller shape and pick a color for it, remove stroke etc.

If you did that right you eye should look like this ifyou just show your "Colors" layer:

The next part is the iris. First draw a shape like the one selected inthe image below. Duplicate this and do a dynamic offset(ctrl+j).Now there should be only one 'node' in this object. Make thisshape smaller by dragging the node in to the eye. If you lookat the example you should see what we are doing with this.After you have resized the shape you can convert it to a path(shift+ctrl+c).

Now drag the corner nodes of this object up sothey will be hidden behind the eyelashes. Adjust some more if you feel like it.

Set the color of bigger shape to black, remove stroke and move it tothe layer below. Do same to smaller one, but color it with the eye color.

The rest of the eye can be vectored easily. Just rembemerthat you can move objects up and down with page up or page down.

Home and end also works as well. They'll just move the object to the very bottom/top of the stack of objects in the current layer.

My finished eye looks like this:

Now go and vector the other eye too. Copy colors from the finished eyeso they look as similar as possible.

After that is done we can move to last part of vectoring. I thinkyou are not suprised if I say there are many ways to do this. We willuse blur because there is something I want to show you.

First draw some lines like in the image below. We want them to be in sameobject so remember to hold shift when starting a new object.

Now open the Fill and Stroke box (ctrl+shift+f) and set the color to somethingclose to mine (aa0000ff). Feel free to use that.Also my stroke width is set to 3 px. You should move this to the "Colors" layer if you haven't done that yet. Blur is located in Fill and Stroke box,it is the second to last option. Set the blur to 10.

Now your blush should look like the following pic:

It might look like fine now but actually the blur covers some ofthe hair. It is hard to see because the hair is also red but it stillis noticeable. Now we will draw a shape like in the image below.

Now we will clip the blur. This will hide any of the blur thatis outside of shape we just drew. Select the blurred object and the shape just drew and go to Object>Clip>Set.

After this our vector is finally ready.

Some tips for blurs:-Your computer can get very slow when you are working with blurs.To prevent this you can go to Inkscape Preferences (shift+ctrl+p) andthere go to filters and select lowest quality for gaussian blur display.

-You can also work in outline mode(ctrl+numpad 5) to avoid slowperformance. Outline mode also allows you to see the original shapesof blurred objects.

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Page 8

Exporting

When the image is finished, the last thing we need to dois to export it.

First hide your model layer.

Second, do the following things like I did in the image below.1. Turn Alpha value to 0 for background. This will makeour image transparent.2. Open the Document Properties window and check 'show page border' and 'border on top of drawing' options3.Select all objects of the image and click "fit pageto selection" button.4. Now you can add few pixels to width and height to getnice even numbers. Close Document Properties window.

If you don't like the sight of thousands of dashed linesyou can group the image by selecting all objects andpressing ctrl+g. Now move your group of obejcts a bitdown. Try to place it so that the ugly looking bottom isbelow edge of the page.

Now we will export this vector. Press ctrl+shift+e.Select 'page' from the top if it is not already selected.Then set the path where you would like to save your file and afterthat enter the name of the vector. When you are done press the Exportbutton. Exporting should be pretty quick but sometimeswhen you have lots of blurs and stuff on your vectorsexporting can take a while.

After this we will reopen the document properties and multiplythe width and height by ~4. Then select your vector and resize itwith the select/trasform tool while holding ctrl. Holdingctrl locks the aspect ratio of the object you are resizing.When it is big enough, fix its placement and export it witha different name. Now you have a basic and high resolutionversion of your vector.

And here is the finished vector. Click image to see hi-res.

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End

Congratulations. You are now finished with this tutorial.I would like to welcome you to the world of anime vectoring, where you can't even watch a single episode without trying to find some nice screencaps to vector ;)

Links

Me:More about me as vector tracer: http://ropedy.deviantart.com/Straight link to my gallery for blockheads: http://ropedy.deviantart.com/gallery/

Inkscape:Inkscape's homepage: http://www.inkscape.org/Inkscape tutorial: http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.co/Awesome screenscasts about inkscape: http://screencasters.heathenx.org/

Please send feedback to jjaaba@gmail.com.

Character in the vector is Katsura Hinagiku from Hayate no Gotoku.

Thanks for reading.

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