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- mikebshaw, on 10/12/2007, -3/+64Direct Link: http://www.illustratortechniques.com/imitating-a-scanner-darkly.html
- ReneRuiz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+58That's in Adobe Illustrator not Photoshop.
- zttrx, on 10/12/2007, -34/+1This is a dupe, but at least this time I don't have to correct you again on the title, which you correctly typed "A Scanner Darkly" this time instead of "Scanner Darkly" like last time. But this time, like last time, the effect is nothing of the kind.
- ilyag, on 10/12/2007, -9/+158Every single online "how to draw stuff" tutorial ever made:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a127/ironicpseudonym/Amastersguide.jpg - hppypnts, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17http://www.melissaclifton.com/tutorial-vector.html
Check out this tutorial for Photoshop version. - habitat2050, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2you can do this in flash as well, just import an image then use onion skinning to get a transparency, trace the outlines, fill with color, post guide on digg...
its a little more time consuming but when your done you can animate it if you wish - lonnieh, on 10/12/2007, -9/+21@ilyag: Amazing guide! Here is what I made after reading: http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/7337/monalisabq1.jpg
- ShiningToast, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9@ zttrx
What the ***** are you talking about? - JimV, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Damn that was a lame movie.
- gxcdesign, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I don't understand the movie title till this day:
A Scanner Darkly...are they nouns, verbs, adverbs?
What's a Darkly? - NickMcRump, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@gxcdesign
What does a scanner see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does it see into me, into us? Clearly or darkly? I hope it sees clearly, because I can't any longer see into myself. I see only murk. I hope for everyone's sake the scanners do better. Because if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I do, then I'm cursed and cursed again. I'll only wind up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too.
- hiskeyd, on 10/12/2007, -17/+2that's an awesome trick!
- PathDaemon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Agreed. Now, I'm tempted to make a comment such as "why the hell would anyone want something to look like 'A Scanner Darkly,'" but the result is truly awesome. I'm glad it's not just a bunch of filters, but the tradeoff is that you have to be artistic to pull it off.
- ucbmoose, on 10/12/2007, -12/+0very cool
- MLyzz, on 10/12/2007, -17/+3No way! (in Keanu voice)
- HiddenForce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10*bzzt!* I'm sorry, the correct response should have been, "Whoa! (in Keanu voice)"
In any case, I, for one, am glad this was linked. I've been wanting to use this technique on some photos I have using Illustrator rather than Photoshop.
- HiddenForce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10*bzzt!* I'm sorry, the correct response should have been, "Whoa! (in Keanu voice)"
- BionicBeefpile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Title is a bit inaccurate, as this details the method in Illustrator.
You can also do this in Photoshop using the pen tool and filling with blocks of color. The end result probably won't look quite as slick as this Illustrator version, and it takes a while (as the author of this tutorial points out, he took ~4 hours to do this image).
The end result is nice, so it's probably worth it for certain situations. - TheNik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoshop
That's the program that was used to created the Rotoscoping in both A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life. It should be noted that most of the art would have been automatically generated via advanced tweening.- ImTheDarkcyde, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2actually they had custom made the software because there was just so much on screen at once
- TheNik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Somebody commented about it below. Rotoshop is that custom software.
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4wired did a cover article on ASD.. covers Rotoshop, the producers/directors, making of, and all that good stuff..
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/scanner.html
- urpwnd, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2additionally, this is a tutorial for illustrator, not photoshop.
- FUElitists, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This isn't bad. Illustrator has some auto paint tools that will do this as well, but it's frowned upon in the Vector art community.
- petroK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+37I love these types of tutorials. They should start out:
1) come up with 8 hours of free time
2) have artistic talent...
but they never do...Still fun to try'em - bgii2000, on 10/12/2007, -32/+2I did a tutorial for this a while ago.
http://www.thebradplace.net/wakinglifetutorial/scannertut.htm- PathDaemon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+39I'm really, really sorry, but.... your tutorial sucks, as does the result.
- spr33, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Ewww.
- coldstatue, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I wouldn't say the result sucks, just if you are trying to approximate waking life and a scanner darkly.
- carbonetc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3That's... umm... yeah... ugh.
- fasm, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5this is hardly new, the title might as well be.. "how to use illustrator"
- elitexero, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Damn, it would seem that the casino chips are blocking the tubes to this site :/
- bigdt87, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10its called a vector.
- febryle, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3Now, if you could make a tutorial called "How not to make sucky movies", then I'd digg it.
- SystmBetatester, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3amazing... i finally got the dvd and watched it last night wondering how they did it with photoshop or what not, and then this comes up... although i found the movie very odd... about druggies.. looked cool though.
- PabloMac, on 10/12/2007, -14/+1Uhhh...the OP's results didn't even come close to looking "like it came from the movie, A Scanner Darkly."
Buried for being lame.- PabloMac, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Please bury my above post. I was referring to bgii2000's "tutorial."
The OP's link won't load for me, but if the direct link posted by mikebshaw:
http://www.illustratortechniques.com/imitating-a-scanner-darkly.html
is what we're supposed to be looking at, then yes, THAT is a cool technique.
- PabloMac, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Please bury my above post. I was referring to bgii2000's "tutorial."
- camkerr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1This is one of the many roto tutorials that actually looks good, most of them make the image look like anus.
- ReaperUnreal, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Picture of Goatse or Tubgirl in 3... 2... 1...
/vomit - iniquity2007, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Good luck trying to replicate the look of "A Scanner Darkly"...
The animation was accomplished via the process of rotoscoping using Bob Sabiston's own Rotoshop software, a process employed in Richard Linklater's earlier movie, Waking Life. First shot in live-action, the footage was then painted over, with attention to stylistic consistency — a lengthy undertaking that, even with warnings from Sabiston, the producers underbid causing the film to miss its initial September 2005 release date by an entire year.- mcduckov, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3I found the animation to be annoying and unnecessary. It made the movie feel like a cartoon.
The digg down button is that way ---> - Shaft0rz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This may seem obvious, but I thought the point was exactly to make it feel cartoony, and by extension, somewhat surreal.
- mcduckov, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3I found the animation to be annoying and unnecessary. It made the movie feel like a cartoon.
- offput, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Step 1: Be Awesome
- tuxthepenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Live Trace tool does a ***** jobs on complex images
***** move this down one comment
- tuxthepenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Live Trace tool does a ***** jobs on complex images
- xatx, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1there are a couple of ways to do it where it can be done in one click, but im not going to share. your results were very good though.
- PabloMac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You work for Flat Black Films, don't you?
http://www.flatblackfilms.com/Rotoshop.html - smb3d, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I'll share it for you, it's called "Live Trace" and takes about 5 seconds instead of 5 hours. I can't believe that's how long he spent working on that image.
- Hellmark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3smb, tracing often doesnt produce results that look well enough like that. for the coloring and such, yeah you can shortcut things there, but often a lot of hand work is required for the outlines.
- WiretapStudios, on 12/25/2008, -0/+1Go ahead and live trace an image and see if you get the same effect. Not as nice huh? Next!
- PabloMac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4You work for Flat Black Films, don't you?
- ShBm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You can do something similar to this in Flash, too. You could probably do it in anything that allows layers, though the outcome will probably vary depending on what other options you have.
- edru, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4are you people really bitching about being good at illustrator? Of course you gotta have some skill in it...
You want awesome ***** put in your time. - hppypnts, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2edit: digg down
- coldstatue, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1now if they could just figure out how to emulate "Waking Life".
- Zero2aHero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ummm, as it is the same creators I would assume it was made the same way....
I believe the only difference is a bigger budget and fewer artists. On Waking Life they had different artists draw each scene in their own style, which is why from scene to scene there are noticeable artistic differences. They wanted A Scanner Darkly to feel more coherent so you don't see that kind of visual disparity. - SelfAbortion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1/sarcasm?
- Zero2aHero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ummm, as it is the same creators I would assume it was made the same way....
- wedges, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1more ***** that tricks people into thinking they are "talented" "graphic designers" who "know how to use" adobe software.
- hppypnts, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Wow someone sounds really bitter. Maybe it's because they have a hard time "tracing" images.
- tuxthepenguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Perhaps you would like to show us your work?
- etx313, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"How to trace"
That's great.- cdahlkvist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Holden: Sorry about him, he's dealing with being an inker.
Alyssa: Oh... you trace - WiretapStudios, on 12/25/2008, -0/+1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMwhZryRUr4
- cdahlkvist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Holden: Sorry about him, he's dealing with being an inker.
- DenDen, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2This is silly. There are programs that can convert images into art like this with no fuss. Thank god I still have the old Macromedia Flash 4 and Micrografx Designer 7, both have a tool that does this flawlessly.
- bleutuna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Uh...no, actually. I had the same discussion with an up and coming graphic designer who was freaking out that his skills were becoming obsolete, now that LiveTrace in Illustrator was so "good." I pointed out that Flash has been able to do extremely detailed traced bitmaps for years, but that doesn't make them any good.
You don't trace every line, every curve, every aspect. You have to be able to step back and see the work as a piece of art, know which colors are important and which aren't. Where detail is a good thing and where it's a bad thing.
What Illustrator or Flash or Photoshop can do 'automatically' is pitiful in comparison to what a trained artist can do. - carbonetc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Stuff done by the machine looks like it was done by the machine.
And it gives back cluttered, bloated geometry.
- bleutuna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Uh...no, actually. I had the same discussion with an up and coming graphic designer who was freaking out that his skills were becoming obsolete, now that LiveTrace in Illustrator was so "good." I pointed out that Flash has been able to do extremely detailed traced bitmaps for years, but that doesn't make them any good.
- berfmurret, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3every time i see the charles schwab commercials i always wonder why would an financial company would want their commercials to look like a mushroom trip?
- scjones, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Whoopty ***** doo LiveTrace+PaintGroups=A Scanner Darkly
- invader, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"turn off the Image layer and clean up the illustration."
ohhh.. so that's like 'tightening up the graphics' right? - bleutuna, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Yeah, nothing against anyone else - but please - this is something that MOST illustrators know how to do. It's not really a tutorial, and its not an 'easy' way to do anything.
http://www.bleutuna.com/qmanning/display.cfm?ID=40
You *must* have an artistic eye to do this. To know what to draw, what not to draw. How thick, how thin. What colors to replicate, what colors to not. Tutorial. Pfft.- 5hop4orce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"For the final poster, the large thumbnail at the left, I wanted to focus on the 'look' of what is considered to be a typical SCAD student..." i.e. gay as all *****. Jesus Christ, man. What kind of school is that?
- mrshonuff, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2SCAD p0wns all
-class of '98 - YoThisBAlec, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Ugh, excuse the SCAD kid.
Oh and as for what kind of school it is, there are really two types of students at SCAD. The rich kids with rich parents that go there only because they want to be in on the 'art scene' and the poor students that are willing to give an arm and a leg that go there because they actually have promise.
These days though the latter is few and far between. - panguin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I actually live about 30 mins from SCAD. It's a bitchin' school. And yes, there is a big difference between Rich SCAD Kids, and Cool SCAD Kids.
- bleutuna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's an art school 5hop, so there are about a million "original" people walking around that look exactly the same - piereced lips and noses, with tatoos a-plenty and extremely poor fashion sense.
A typical SCAD student is pretty *****' scenester, honestly. But, there are actually three types of SCAD students:
1) The rich kids - they may or may not be talented, but they are here having a blast wasting mommy and daddy's money. All colleges have these.
2) The "poor/normal" students - these are typically people, like myself, who are older and come back to school to pick up an education after experience the ***** hardships of life. We tend to work our asses off, because we understand that spending $2500 a class is insane, and you better get your damn money's worth. All colleges have these as well.
3) The jocks/dumbasses - even though NO ONE but athletes care about athletics at a school full of art nerds, many athletes at SCAD have full paid scholarships. Not all jocks are dumbasses (I know a few who are ridiculously talented), but a vast majority are here simply because its a free ride. Which, leads to the straight-up dumbasses: at last I checked, SCAD allowed 85% of applicants into the school. Some are weeded out by the class-load/harsh attendance policy, but others go all the way through because its the only college they could get into, and everyone thinks they're a graphic designer/photographer/filmmaker.
There are some amazing teachers here, particularly in the Film & Television major. And some equally talented kids. But like all institutions, you take the good with the bad. You get out of college what you put in - and SCAD's a shining example of that.
So, to follow up - yeah, a typical SCAD student may look "gay" to you. C'est la vie.
- vx69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This tutorial actually looks nothing like A Scanner Darkly, if you look at the detail in ASD you'll see that it's just the face and hair that are really detailed, also A Scanner Darkly doesn't have that many flat colours, everything is more blended.
It's still a good tutorial to help people find their way around Illustrator a bit more I guess. - rekanize, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2For those that say,"Oh, Live Trace does that." you're half right... I'd say that the colors and whatnot could be done with Live Trace (at least, if you didn't want to fool with it all day), but the "inking" will still be done by hand. Live Trace's success will vary from image to image, some working better than others. The technique shown should allow you to create the look from ANY image. Live Trace will not magically create line-art for you, unless you're actually Live Tracing line-art (which is its real purpose anyhow. Besides, it's a welcome leap forward from Adobe Streamline)
I'm a professional designer, and while I already know how to create an image in the way they demonstrated, I thought it was a well done tutorial. - wassah2200, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2everybody who has illustrator should already know how to do that...
- nazsco, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1better submission title would be "wast time on a crap effect that lost it's appeal (if ever have any) on the '80s"
- hiskeyd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think we've killed this site's bandwidth... ah patiently waiting to load... wait for it... wait for it.............................. (Gun's and Roses "Patience" in background)................................. Hurray! Luckily I didn't have to hum the whole song to myself before it loaded.... :-)
- zlyoga, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Um this style's been all over deviantart forever
- blenden11, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I am a SCAD man. And I have to say it's Scadtastic!
Good town, good instruction, wicked tools and hardware and hot chicks that like to get naked and let you paint and photograph them because "we're artists"... What's not to like? - Oldschoolhack, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Dugg for the picture, but at the same time I'm disappointed. There needs to be a more realistic way of getting this done without 4 hours per frame. A Scanner Darkly had a whole crew working on it, and I have just me. If anyone knows a simpler way, I'd love to hear it.
- xGORDOx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1An alternative would be using the "cutout" filter in Photoshop.
It won't be the exact same but similar. I have done some work using it on my main picture then doing all the black work on a seperate layer and then combining them. It has a look that is half Linklater and half fascist Propoganda Posters. Look spretty cool.
Just play with the levels in "Cutout", but make sure you have difinitive lines so that the colors don't bleed. - WiretapStudios, on 12/25/2008, -0/+1This is for one image, not a frame of a movie. Are you asking how to get a multimillion dollar effect on your crap student film on the cheap?
- xGORDOx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1An alternative would be using the "cutout" filter in Photoshop.
- addicted2design, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Here is a simpler way!!! This Photoshop Action comes pretty darn close. This Action-Set has 4 different actions with different settings. You can adjust the masking on the individual layers to expose more details or remove the unwanted outlines after the action did it's work. It takes me an average of 2-5 min of post editing in Photoshop to get a nice looking result.
Link: http://www.addictedtodesign.com/blog/?p=19 - WiretapStudios, on 12/25/2008, -0/+1We did this in one our first graphic design classes. It's really simple on one image. A Scanner Darkly was done a little differently (rotoscoping), but the same general concept.
Wikipedia:
In the mid-1990s, Bob Sabiston, an animator and computer scientist veteran of the MIT Media Lab, developed a computer-assisted "interpolated rotoscoping" process which the director Richard Linklater later employed in the full-length feature films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006).[6] Linklater licensed the same proprietary rotoscoping process for the look of both films. Linklater is the first director to use digital rotoscoping to create an entire feature film.
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