adobe illustrator tutorial how to draw manga speedlines tutorial

Illustrator 10 · Speedlines Tutorial

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A visual guide for making Speedlines with Illustrator 10

Speedlines have always been tedious to draw and difficult to recreate. This tutorial once understood will allow you to create custom focus speedlines and linear speedlines.

Creating the Sliver

· Create a new document in Illustrator of any size or shape.

· Now to create the sliver used for the speedlines effect.

· Click on the Rectangle tool

· Draw a long skinny box by hand or single click the canvas and a properties box should open.

· Set the Width to 2 and the Height to 200-300.

· Once drawn make sure the box is solid and not an outline.

< Mouseover for proper setup of colors.

· Follow steps A, B (select bottom of rectangle) and C.

A

B

C

Page 1 of 19The Paper Mill - Illustrator 10 · Speedlines Tutorial

06/11/03http://www.astralmatrix.net/bahn/tutorial/speedlines/

· This is the final shape of the speedline. Now we need to make a Scatter Brush

· Once you have the two bottom nods selected click on Object > Path > Average (ctrl+alt+j)

· A window pops up. Click Both then OK

· You should have a sliver shaped object on your canvas roughly this size or larger >

Note:(It really doesn't matter the size since we are using vectors)

· Select the Black Arrow in the tool bar.

· Select the sliver and drag and drop it into your Brushes menu.

(Your brushes menu can be found under the Window menu)



When the Scatter Brush Options loads up click on OK. Notice how our sliver is now in the Brushes menu. We will get back to this. But for

Select New Scatter Brush and click OK



now...

Creating the Guide

· The guide helps us line up our multiple scatter brushes for speedline consistancy.

· Select the Star tool by clicking and holding the mouse down over the Rectangle tool.

· The Star attribute box should pop up.

< A

· Select the Pen tool and single click the canvas to make a single dot. see example A · Now click on the single black dot > from the Brushes menu.

· What's the point of this? It's easier then manually setting a line width for visibilities sake. This will be out reference point. · Turn View > Smart Guides (Ctrl+U) on.

< Star Tool

· Single click over your refference dot.

(you should see the word "anchor" appear if you've selected Smart Guides)



Tweaking the Spokes

· The Scatter Brush Options allows us to alter the look and feel of the speedlines. Note: To assign your new brush to any object simply drag it from the Brushes menu, and drop it on any object.

· To access the Scatter Brush Options, double click on the new Scatter Brush sliver you dropped into the Brushes menu.

Change Rotation Relative to Path. Click on Preview under cancel.

Set Radius 1 and Radius 2 to an

equal value

Set Points between 70 and 300 and click OK

The Result

(Remember to make the outline black and the solid color clear: ie white with a red

line through it.)



Spacing should be set at Random. % values should be between 1% and 3%. You have to do this manually, the slider stops at 10%.



Scatter contracts or expands the distance between the ends of each speedline.



Setting Scatter to Random and tweaking the two sliders will give the following effect.



If you set Spacing to 1% in both fields you get a more uniform effect.



Set the Size to Random and alter those values. Size and Scatter are simmilar but not the same.

I encourage the use of both.

· At this point you would want to click on the center reference and create about five or six Star guides for speedlines and fill out the gaps. This only works if you've set your Spacing to a Random number between 1% and 3% or higher. If not, you rotate a few copies of the original and place them one over the other. We aren't done yet.



Additional Effects

· Make another sliver, this time thicker at the end. Like so.

· Drag and Drop it into your Brushes menu and repeat all our previous steps.

· Repeat again with a thiner version of your speedline until you are satisfied with the varience of the effect. Make more versions if you like, and place them anywhere on the canvas. Save the document in Illustrator format (.ai).



· Mind you, the effect looks convincing without a second or third variance so don't fuss over it.

Parallel Speedlines

The following is a simmilar effect. It's uses vary but it's similar to the focus speedlines, in respect to offering a dramatic effect for any panel that needs emphasis.

· Now we need a vessel for our speedline

· Repeat all steps to create the initial sliver.

· Select the Reflect tool by clicking holding down on the Rotate tool.

· Click the top middle of the widest end as shown in example A

· Press alt+shift and hover your mouse over the sliver. You should see a double arrow. (black and white arrows overlapping). This means your making aclone of the original. Pressing shift automatically aligns your selection. · Click and drag your copied selection (make sure to hold down alt+shift the whole time) over top until you have a shape that resembles the one on the right.

· Click and Drag the final drawing object over to yourBrushes menu. Select New Scatter Brush. Click ok

< A

· Select the Line tool

· Hold shift and draw a 45degree line

(It's simpler to use shift because it snaps to 180 degree or 45 degree angles)



· Add the new speedline attribute to our line by clicking on it in the Brushes menu. Double click on the sliver in your Brushes menu to open up Scatter Brush Options.



The set up for this type of speedline is similar. Notice the settings for Size and Scatter.



Stretch out your line if it's too short, it should look similar to the above image. Your done! You can add a few more 45 degree lines (with your new scatter brush

attribute added to them) to add thickness and darkness to your effect. It's all up to you.

Utilising your Speedlines

I find it easier to work with these effect when they've been rasteriesed and used in a non vector program. Let's do that. · Select your speedlines by dragging a rectangle around it with the Selection tool.

· Copy (ctrl+c) it

· Open Photoshop or Painter or whatever program you use and open up a New document.

· Paste (ctrl+v) it.

The following is Photoshop 7 specific

· If you're in Photoshop, select Paste as "Pixels". Click Ok



· Then press Enter or click the Checkmark on the top menu bar.

Samples

As you can see by the following samples, there is no limit to the effects you can achieve with this tutorial.

· Select the Rectangle tool.

· Select Regular Rectangle option on the top menu. (It's the the 3rd one highlighted) · Set Mode to Clear · Clear the edges of your speedlines to get a nice square version of your effect for use in your comics.

^ Mouse over





The following example was created by making 3-4 lines with the speedline Scatter Brush attribute on each of em.



Closing Comments

Second Tutorial. Not as rough as the first one. Not as detailed either but hopefully just as easy to follow. Like the Painter 7 Tones Tutorial, the idea to do this came in a flash of inspiration while fiddling with the software. I enjoy figuring these things out and I am more then glad to share them with online artist. I'm planning on a more indepth look in the tone tutorial. Hopefully it will be done soon.

Best of Luck

Richard

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This tutorial is NOT link free. My homepage is, but not the tutorial. If you want to link my tutorial please E-mail me.

All works copyright of Richard Campbell



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adobe illustrator tutorial how to draw manga speedlines tutorial