Lesson 1 - Preparing Linework for CG

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Here we are folks,stage one of our CG tutorial.This is a very basic,step-by-step guide to preparing linework for CGing from a manga scan or from your own scanned drawings.You can use any source material you want,but here is the vector trace Love,Hina linework I use in the tutorial.

OK,here we go !

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Open your line work in PS,then in your layers pallete,left click on the background layer then drag it on to the "new layer" button in the bottom of the layer pallete.This will make a copy of the layer,one which can be modified.

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Make sure that new copy is selected in the layers pallete,then go to the 'Select' menu at top of the screen and click 'Color Range' on the menu.In the option dialogue that opens,go to the drop down box and choose 'Highlights' then hit ok.This will select all the white in the image,leaving our black lines alone.

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In order to see what we do next,you will need to hide the original Background layer.To do that,go to the layer pallete and click the little eye icon next to it.Be careful not to select the layer,though.Make sure the paint brush icon stays on your copy layer.Once you have done that,press the delete button on your keyboard to clear the selected area,which is all white pixels.

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You will then have a layer with nothing but perfect linework in it.We do this so we can have many layers of color data and not interfere with the original line work.Go to the 'Select' menu again and click 'Deselect' to remove the marching ants.

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Once you are satisfied that the Color Range tool did it's job right,go to the layer pallete and drag the original image layer on to the trash can icon in the bottom of the pallete.This will delete it and leave you only with your line work layer

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Now,with your line work layer selected,click the new layer button at the bottom of the layer pallete to make a new layer above your line work.This new layer will be transparent,so select your fill tool from the tools pallete,set the color for true white,then fill the new layer.

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Left click your line work layer and drag it to the top of the layers pallete so it is now on top of the new white layer you just made.From the drop down box at the top of the layer pallete,we will change the blending mode to 'Multiply'.This will omit any remaining white pixels in the line work,and allow us to stack out color data layers under it and keep our lines untouched as well as allowing them to blend in while we CG.

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OK,you are ready to start CGing.Double click the name of the 'Background Copy' and 'Layer 1' in the layer pallete to rename them to 'lines' and 'BG',respectively.WIth the BG layer selected,click the new layer button again,and rename this layer 'COLOR'.You can do anything you want to this layer and not effect your lines,but still see them perfectly due to the Multiply blending.If you screw it up,you can delete just that layer and not effect others.In a full CG work,you will have a whole lot of layers (5-10 for a simple CG,alot more for the really detailed stuff),so that comes in handy if you make a mistake and run out of undo's or just plain feel like changing something,like eyes or a piece of clothing.

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This line work was a vector trace,so it was made expressly for this purpose.You can rip lines from manga if you want,but it will be alot harder and require alot of hand erasing.Also,the contrast and levels may not be the best depending on the source of the scan,there could also be alot of JPG artefacts in the image.All of this makes cleaning for CG harder.If the only thing wrong is contrast and levels,that is the image looks feint and washed out,then the 'Auto-Levels' and 'Auto-Contrast' functions will get things back on track.

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And there you have it,perfect line work ready to CG.Next lesson is the really interesting part,CG coloring complete with tone,shading and highlights and how to get that even finish instead of the brushed/stroked style.Don't worry,it's easier than it looks,I promise.

In the mean time,you should practice your brush control.If you are lucky enough to have a graphics tablet it won't be that big a deal,but if you have a mouse and aren't used to precision work with it,you should do a little practice just to get your hand/eye co-ordination down.

All questions can be thrown at me in the Q&A thread.See you next lesson.