Painter X Inking Video & Brush Settings

Thanks for your settings, Ray!

Now I’ll have to (ahem) brush up on using Painter X.

Cool illo, btw.

I really need to keep up with you flippin’ blog.

Ah… so there’s that blessed app (Cocoapotrace). Looks interesting. Do you have any ‘most favored’ settings for this app? Thanks, Ray.

I gotta tell ya man, I check your site every day to see if there is anything new cause I love your style so much. Thanks for those settings too, I couldn’t figure out how to get a line like that on my own.
I know it might not be your thing but have you ever thought about doing toys? I was thinking that the artwork that you do could never be duplicated in a 3D form because it relies so much the drawn line, but it would be cool to maybe come up with something different trying to make it work though huh? Hit me up if you ever want to try it out:) Keep up the awesome artwork too!
John Faso

hey, I’m new to the tablet drawing and inking world. I was wondering: why does the image in painter look so crappy? I can’t seem to find a zoom setting that renders a crisp line. My drawings and strokes always look very stairstepped. document in question is 4×3″ at 450 dpi.

Thanks, guys. I would have replied sooner, but I was out of town for four days or so.

John, where should I contact you?

Ben, in the preferences dialog, you need to to turn on area averaging for the zoomed out views!

Dear Ray,

I’ m unworthy…what else can i say?
Thanx so much for the insights to your artwork and your tips.

But regarding your brush-settings: WHICH brush is it you use for the basic setting (on which you build on you individual setting)? Guache? Oil? Croquil?

Hope i made myself clear, english is not my native language ;-)

Cheers

Sly

Sly, you were perfectly clear! I used any old Oils brush as the starter.

Any old oil brush?
Sorry if im busting your chops, but can you be specific?
I just got this program, and need to know what brush you were using, because somehow, my strokes dont seem to come out like yours.
And by any old, do you mean, any of them, or did you mean, a category, as in opaque oils?

I think the starter brush might have been an opaque round. It really shouldn’t matter what variant you pick. The above settings totally annihilate what you start with.

Ohh Ok.
Because I’m sure it turns out different man, but ill give it another go.

Thank you very much!

I really cant believe u have switched to painter!I thought MS was doing fine for you..I’ve tried using painter for inking before but never got the good results like MS can do..But u show a very nice video up there..i think i hav to giv it a try again in Painter with your settings,and compare with MS..by the way,i never thought painter can rotate like that!thanks for the brush settings.

Thry still don’t work, and I sound like such an idiot!
Haha.
I’ll try a bit harder, but somehow, its not recognising my wacoms pressure sensitivity. Hmm, it just makes it a line with no pressure variant whatsoever.

Nevermind. I got it. Looks great, thanks alot Ray.

Good, good! It sounded more like a driver issue than a Painter one.

Yea. I was new to painter X, so I had to save the variant. Haha. Thanks alot Ray, your an inspiration. I should ask you, where do you get your macabre etc inspirations from?

NNNNIIIICEEE!
Can’t wait for the set up!!

Hi ray I like that brush. let me know if you need any tips in painters underground features. I like the woodcut effect and the magic wand plus select/convert to shape come in handy to. happy creating. Thanks again for the brush settings

Hey Ray. You can contact me at titaniumwings@aol.com and I’ll get back to you as soon as I see it:)

Ray,

Can linework vectorized with Cocoapotrace be colored? If so, how? I just downloaded and installed the program, and you’re right, it autotraces fast, sharp and accurate. However, drawings autotraced with LiveTrace and be colored with LivePaint. I can’t see how to do that with Cocoapotrace eps files.

Hi Ray,

Could you please do a post talking about the business end of your freelance job?

Hi Ray,
You’re blogs & tutorials are so great, really. They’re such a help for those about to step into the world of digital inking.
Quick question–what size tablet do you use? For someone about purchase a wacom tablet is there a huge difference between the 9×12 or the 6×8? God knows the price is! Thanks in advance for any insight…

Leandro, I will try to do just that.

Pete, I used, up until two days ago, an Intuos3 9″x12″ tablet. I now have a 20″ Cintiq. I recommend getting the absolute best tablet you can afford, whatever size that may be. Bigger seems to be better in almost all instances from my experience.

Hi Ray,

Just came across your great video on Vimeo. Thanks a lot for the brush settings, as this will help alot for me trying to create t-shirt designs. I’m currently testing it out with my Intuos 6×8. Just need a confirmation though, Cocoapotrace is only available for Mac yeah?

True. But CocoaPotrace is a port of Potrace. Potrace is available for nearly every OS flavor under the sun.

‘Nuther Painter experiment…

http://www.imagekind.com/Showartwork.aspx?IMID=6e1e3530-9442-4824-aff6-d31fdfa49c81

The smeary brushes are what I dig. Better than the opacity based fakery of Photoshop.

[...] http://frenden.com/painter-x-inking-video-brush-settings/ [...]

I think the “alt + space” command (in mac version) is marvelous, simply fantastic, but the X version of Corel Painter has many bugs. I have the 10.1.052 version, what have you got, Ray?

Anyway, Painter is very usefull for drawing it is clear, but the interface and the consistent of the app is worse that Photoshop CS3. It is a pity!

Adobe might learn how to do our life more easy implementing the rotate function in the new CS4 version…

Thanks for the tutorials!

P. S.: Sorry if I have some “bugs” in my write, I am Spanish! :P

[...] on June 7, 2008 Filed Under Process Ray Frenden, Illustrator » Painter X Inking Video & Brush Settings The above video explores inking in Painter and how to trace your inked output. Albeit, very, very [...]

awesome post ray, great to see the inking styles

Ray – you’re the coolest guy on the web, srsly – if you saw how I’ve been getting clean lines for years you’d laugh – thx for the info, I finally got painter and a wacom – the first thing I hit was this video – thx.

I promise I wont steal any of your ice cream cone guys.
;)

- livenootrac

Thanks for the settings, but they are useless unless you tell us what type of media you changed the settings of. Painter settings are very media specific and if you apply those settings to the pencils for example (like I just did), you will not get the same effect.

Hey Ray, I was just googling how to get the pressure sensitivity to work and yours was near the top of the heap! Thanks for the settings…. just getting into Painter X, finally, now that I don’t have so many deadlines hanging over my head.

Rad post Ray, i think it’s super neat the work you do and the information you share. Very generous and selfless. Keep up the amazing work.

Dude,the work you do is filthy insane, quick question: would it be possible to do the stuff you do on photoshop with a drawing pad? Or is it all about the painter X and stuff?

Awesome little tip! Im so stokked you posted this!

Do you know of a windows based Cocoapotrace program?
The tutorial is great.
Thank you.

No matter what I do in Painter X I cannot get crisp lines…nothing but jitter. I am getting frustrated to the point I think I will go back to the old way of inking–using actual ink and paper.

[...] more on: http://frenden.com/painter-x-inking-video-brush-settings/ Corel Painter: Inking [...]

Ray,
Thanks for such a great brush (I’ve dubbed the ‘Frenden Opaque’…now Painter X behaves more like traditional media. Only problem, I’m a third of the way through a children’s book. Oh, well.

Amazing folio BTW, the late Ed “Big Daddy” Roth would be jealous of such mad skills.

No problem, Brandon. Glad to have helped in some capacity.

Randy, Potrace is the windows equivalent to CocoaPotrace!

Here is the windows version of Potrace for PC. It’s called CR8 and has a gui.

http://www.cr8.netfirms.com/tracer.html

Hi Ray!
My settings just go with still some not perfect problems…. Maybe it’s about the tablet version I use. Mine is the antique wacom tablet “graphire (4.78) “. Besides, it’s a small one. My brush seems can’t do very well in changing from thin to thick very smoothly. It suddenly grows thick, and suddenly becom thin. (I chose Acrylics-Opaque Detail Brush 3 to apply your settings). But what weird is that, I can have a jsut fine result in Photoshop (I mean to change from thin to thick smoothly). So it makes me confused if it is really the problem about the tablet? If you got time, please help me about this~ Thanks A LOT. And thanks for the tutorial, too. Really awesome!

Hello Ray,
Being a newbie using a tablet and Painter Essentials I enjoyed your video showing your brush adjustments, etc., but I have a real case of “I don’t know enough to know what I don’t know”. I’ve dabbled a bit tracing images in PE and am getting results similar to yours, but I don’t understand the purpose or need for Cocoapotrace. I’ve downloaded it, played with it and I see what it does but I don’t get where it fits into the tracing process or your workflow. Also, how can I learn about those various pre-process and algorithm adjustments and how to use them?

Great work. Is it possible, do you know, to create a similar brush in photoshop?

Yes. It’d be a simple, hard-edged round brush with size set to pressure sensitivity.

Thanks for the response. Much appreciated, alas, though, it just doesn’t seem to want to know. I use a wacom pen partner on cs3. The pen pressure works on the wacom setup page but not on photoshop.
Thanks anyway.
Sam.

thanks a lot for those explanation!! it will help me a lot !!

I just downloaded CocoaPotrace anyone know how to use it? I am on a MAC and right now I am beyond the point of frustration. I have clicked on every icon/file possible and still nothing. I am really starting to think it wasn’t meant to work at all. I have to ask how on earth did you get it to work Ray?

HELP!!!!!!

It’s super simple. Drag a file you want traced into the application.