Bad Rabbits Illustration Videos

What software do dou use to draw? As I see it is not Adobe Illustrator.

Arbitrary, non-destructive canvas rotation does not exist in Photoshop or Illustrator. Painter, Manga Studio, OpenCanvas, Comicwerks and many other applications do, however, support it.

In Painter, Alt (or Option on Mac) + Space rotates the canvas on the fly. Painter’s brush algorithms are far better than Photoshop’s. The dampening and cubic interpolation (plus the ability to recognize stroke velocity as a determinate for how the brush reacts) is way above the latter’s brush engine.

Aside from that feature, nearly anything done here can be done in Photoshop or Illustrator.

Great videos, Ray! I’m awed by your line width control with your skill in feathering.

The part with “the Army” is great: the depth you achieve with just line width and black areas is clear and you didn’t have to use any “halos.” And the individuality of each person is clear and unmistakeable. I’m sure if I see the people these are based on, I would recognize them.

Thanks for sharing!

Liking the new crosshatching details you’ve added to your repertoire. That’s some good tasting line work.

I’ve heard you say before that you always work straight into the program. Do you ever do any preliminary sketches on paper? Do you have any interest (or spare time) in drawing on paper?

Thanks, Mike. GC, this one is going to be an experiment in coloring, too.

Ameee, when I say I work straight into the program, that means I don’t work on paper. I find that to be faster for commercial illustration. I do work analog in addition to digital. The amount of commercial work I do dictates that most of my work is digital.

So, I see you’re still using Painter X. I wasn’t sure if you’re “switching to” article was more a practice in theory, but you would probably revert to MS. I graduated with a BFA in art and did a lot of drawing, but never translated that into wacom digital drawing. I gave it a half-hearted attempt a year ago, working in illustrator (didn’t even launch Painter X, as I wasn’t familiar with it), but couldn’t translate the skills.

All of my vector work has subsequently been done in illustrator with the good old pen tool and mouse.

Until I ran across your blog. Now I’ve explored Painter and my wacom a little, and it is really exciting. I’m still having trouble with my setup (I tried creating your brush settings from that initial Painter X post), but I’m really excited about digital illustration and inking. Thanks a lot for your contribution with your illustrations and videos.

Seriously, i’m actually EXCITED again about drawing, both digitally and with my ‘daily’ sketch book.

One question I do have, is about anti aliasing and zooming. On your video’s, are you working at a 100% zoom? And is anti-aliasing something Painter automatically does?

There was a point in your initial PX video that you said you were able to work with smaller document sizes/less dense dpi in PX compared to MS, because of the anti aliasing.

I, however, end up with really pixelated looking strokes and that has been holding me back from inking. Maybe this article of yours would be a good example of when bulleting out the hardware/software used/general document setup sizes would be beneficial to those of us just now learning.

Thanks again.

InLikeALion, I’ve gotten a staggering amount of email lately that echoes your sentiments. It’s pretty gosh-darn humbling to think that I’ve inspired people to pick up their mark-making tools of choice and churn stuff out.

I don’t work at 100% zoom constantly. I do a lot of panning and zooming. I find I can get good trace results from a 10,000 pixel file dimension as opposed to a 19,000+ pixel dimension, thanks to anti-aliasing.

So, you’re saying you are often zoomed farther out than as you work? I’m just trying to get a sense of scale (or zoom scale) for what I’ve seen you do.

If I set up a brush like you did in the first PX post you did, and am still getting pixelated strokes, would you guess there is an obvious setting i’m omitting, or perhaps my documents just weren’t pixel-dense enough. I believe I was working at 3 or 400 dpi, 8.5×11, which would have been 2,550×3,300 px or 3,400×4,000 px.

That seems to be about .25 or .33 the size of document you use, if you meant you work at 10,000×10,000 px. Am I understanding that correctly? If so, and there is not missing setting, I guess that’s my problem.

I work much farther out than actual size. That would be pretty limiting.

I have worked as high as 19,000 x 19,000 pixels, but tend to work around 10,000 now.

Cool thanks, I was just wondering if you had any aspirations to do stuff on paper - because as you said it’s more efficient to go straight into the program for client work. I just meant for you personally.. but obviously with all the client work you probably don’t have time. Thanks for answering though.

I haven’t had time for a personal piece in a while. It’s a bit disheartening, actually.

hey ray, i love the illustration, i watched the entire thing! what dpi do you work on again?

This was low res. Its final use is on screen. I say work as big as your machine can possibly stand, always, for anything print.

I see, what pressure settings for brush tracking do you use?