In Motion: Sonic Throwing a Boomerang
A lot of fun with this piece, Sonic the Hedgehog hurling a boomerang! By the way his hair, and even the spikes on his back, are swishing, it looks like he put a good bit of effort into the throw! Now the questions are: Where’s it headed, what or who’s path will it cross, AND will Sonic even be there to catch it when it comes back? Jesus loves you!!!
Behind the scenes time! I read that traditional animators use blue pencils to sketch the basis of the animated frame, and then I suppose it’s inking as normal. What’s amazing is that, when scanned, the blue pencil SHOULD be easier to separate from the black lineart digitally, compared to a regular gray pencil, which is closer to the color of the inks.
Though there are what’s called “non-photo blue pencils”, which can be used for the job, a realistic question is:
Can you use a “normal” blue pencil to create clean lineart scans, or does it have to be a special kind to work?
Yes, actually, you can use a non-“non-photo blue” pencil to create pretty clean scans. While I can’t speak for all pencils or types of paper, I sketched this piece on printer paper with a light blue colored pencil that wasn’t labeled “non-photo”, and then inked with a fine tip marker. After tweaking some correction settings and what-not digitally, below you can see the results for yourself! (did I mention, the lines were inked with a THIN fine tip, and it still came out clean!) (would using thicker inks affect it negatively? great question–go find out!) (or maybe I’ll do one eventually…)
#1/Left: Original scan; see the blue pencil? | #2/Right: After correction layers and what-not; Clean scan, YAY!
For a look at what inked art with regular gray pencil looks like scanned: “Tangle x Mighty Happy John 3:16 Day 2023!” was also drawn traditionally; However, there are some differences, such as: thicker lines, was drawn in a sketchbook that has a different texture than printer paper, the presence of red in the scan, and the correction settings were probably not identical. I can say in THAT piece, a good portion of my original pencils are not visible, but if you look around Mighty’s hand you can see some; once again, the next question is, would a blue pencil have the same problem on this type of paper/with thicker inks?
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