Could it be possible...

[Rory]

Hello, I'm new as you probably have guessed, name is Rory.

Have any of you seen the film 'A Scanner Darkly'?

Starring Keanu Reeves?

It's animated in a style that I would like to recreate, the filmed it in live action but then did some thing else to achieve this effect:

Could this be done on paint.net and if so, can somebody clever create a plugin for it?

Thankyou.

[barkbark00]

The closest thing you are going to get to this effect is by using "Cutout Plugin".

With this effect you may want to isolate the object you want to apply the effect to(i.e. just the face) and apply a gaussian blur.

This is Based on Seared Ice's Tutorial here.

Hopefully that will give you an idea of what the plugin does.

The effect you see in the movie is called vectorization. This is done (most likely programmaticly) by converting each frame into a vector styled image.

[Crazy Man Dan]

There's an introductory Rotoscoping-style effect using Inkscape discussed here:

http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewt ... =7867#7867

Otherwise, you can use the Cutout plugin with Ink Sketch to achieve something like this:

It's a little rough, but it's a 15-second example. You can toy with the amounts to get a better result.

[usedHONDA]

Just use inkscape. I heard it took 4 hours to animate 1 minute of that movie.

[sagedavis]

Used Honda::

That's actually because they have to process (rerender) each frame of the movie. At 23.9 frames per minute, that's 1434 frames. That's a pretty fast computer to process that amount of images in only 4 hours.

Reqarding the question at hand.

I have a suspicion that some of the lines (around the eyes, and nose) were enhanced with makeup before the shoot. And I am sure that the makeup technique was different so as to manipulate all the lighting so that it would work well with the software.

Actually,

The cutout plugin is pretty good. You will need it to do what you want to do.

Here's how you do it (I may later do a complete tutorial for this if I can).

Open your image

Make 2 copies of the background layer.

name them whatever you want but for my purpouses I am going to name them Layer1 and Layer2

From top to bottom my layers would be

Layer2

Layer1

Background

Uncheck the box so that Layer2 is not visible at the moment.

Double click Layer1 and change it's mode to "overlay"

click "OK"

Now, with Layer1 still selected, use the "cutout" plugin http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1832

It's hard to give specific numbers for this one, as it really depends on the size of your image, but, you want to get your image to look fairly toonish, but not discolored.

now go to Layer2

Put a check in the box so that you can see it.

Double click Layer2 and set it's blend mode to "multiply"

Now use brightness and contrast here til the lines in the face and so on are dark enough for you.

This should get you the effect that you are looking for, but.

lighting counts, a lot of unfocused background stuff comes out too dark. So you might need to fine tune these protions individually.

Hope this helps.

Sage

[Leif]

The lines are a problem. I dont see paint.NET doing those in exactly the same way. If someone knows a trick, I would love to hear it.

The deferent colure may bee made something like this.

Make your line drawing. Copy that layer, and make invisible.

Then apply the base colure to the entire face in the original layer.

Then make a new layer on top of your drawing. Draw black where you want shadows. Play with the opacity and blend mode.

Repeat as much you want, new layer, black, adjust opacity. (Use white for highlight.)

When you are done, you move the hidden layer up on top, and unhide it. That way your drawing reaper.

That is my best shot.

[Rory]

Thankyou all very much- a big help, I'll try all of these methods now, if it's a succes then I'll post the results.

[Im-a-n00b-at-art]

And one more thing... sig to big ^

[BoltBait]

Rory, your sig is HUGE at 577x409.

Rule #13 states that graphical sigs should be no bigger than 500x100.

http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=3446

Please resize your sig. Thanks.

[Rory]

There.

I finally got round to figure out how to use Inkscape.

Really emphasises Paint.net's easy UI.

Inkscape's UI is not friendly at all. Or maybe that's just me.

First image:

Vectored image:

Still needs a bit of work on the lines though.

[sagedavis]

Rory,

I would go with pictures of people to "perfect" the effect.

It'll be way easier for you to see how well the effect works, because you know how a person's face should work once the effect is added.

Sage

[Rory]

Will do.