Thanks, I did see the new layer buttons at the bottom, I just didn't know what the different types were used for.

I was trying something as an experiment tonight, similar to what you suggested with the materials. I imported a jpeg image (a regular photograph of a person) into the canvass. My idea was to find a way to trace over it to make an outline of the person by using another layer. I wasn't sure what kind of layer I should use for the tracing though. I also found out by trial and error that I had to "rasterize" the Jpeg before it would allow me to trace over the top of it, even if I'm using a separate layer for tracing, which I thought was kinda strange, but ok. Not sure exactly why, but I found that out by watching a tutorial on YT, otherwise I wouldn't have known.

What is the best way to go about doing a tracing of a photograph, ie... should I create a new Vector layer to use as the drawing layer, would it be best to use pencil for the tool? when I tried it I found I had to lower the opacity of the jpeg photo in order to see the pencil outline. I'm going through the motions of doing this, just not sure if I am using the right type of layer(s) and the right tools for the job. There are so many options, it gets a little confusing.

Thanks, yes I can see there are quite a few layers!  From what I've been looking at with tutorials, its seems the general consensus is that a lot of separate layers are the way to go. It makes sense if there are unlimited layers available then why not keep everything separate for separate editing, would make it easier.

When you go to choose a new layer, how do you know which type of layer to use for whatever part of the picture you are going to be working on next? There are a lot of different types of layers, so I'm just curious how one knows which type of layer to choose, is there a general rule of thumb for this? 

I'll be reading up in the manual tonight, there is probably a lot of detailed info about layers I'm sure. I can tell by the little icons next to each of your layers that you used a few different types for this particular picture.

Hi Helos

I see what you are saying about the process you used here. I'm beginning to notice after reading and watching some videos, that getting to know the layers process is a big key to being able to get things done correctly. I need to learn what each different kind of layer is used for, ie....rastor, normal, transparant, etc....still not very familiar with how that all works together.  I still haven't figured out the correct workflow order, or at least what will work for me yet, but I am beginning to understand more now since I actually have the program and have begun experimenting with it. One day in is hardly enough, so I'm just going to keep trying. I have posted for some help also at the RDNA forum. Th bianks for posting your samples, every bit of information is a help! ;-)

Well I have just installed MS5 and Anime Studio 10 Debut. But obviously there are a lot of things I'm clueless about having never used either one. I've been searching for a tutorial video that shows how to make a character in a scene on the canvass, then for example, put that whole into one panel of say a 3 panel comic strip. The workspace that comes up by default is a full page (maybe 8 1/2 x 11), so I haven't figured out how to take a scene that I create on the full space and shrink it down as a whole and insert it into a strip.I'm guessing at this point that I have to save the scene, then bring it and size it later once I get my blank strip panels setup? 

It's early in the game, so I'm sure I'll figure things out as I go along. It just seems most of the tutorials I've seen just focus on one aspect, either drawing, coloring, etc....there's even one on how to insert custom panels, but they don't show you how to insert the characters or scenes into them. Haven't found one that takes you step by step through the whole process from beginning to end, from drawing a scene, inking it, coloring it, loading a strip of panels and inserting the characters and scenes, then exporting. If anyone knows of such a tutorial on YT, please let me know, thanks. In the meantime I'll be reading up! ;-)

Lol, maybe Pixar will let you borrow their toys! ;-)

Yep, that's exactly what it would be like, good analogy. I actually do something similar when I write and record music. Most times I record all the instruments myself separately, then mix, master, etc.....in my own home studio I don't have the luxury of many different musicians at my disposal, so I wear all the hats, write, record, mix, master, etc...most of the time.

Lol, yeah I think I'll pass on drawing 172,000 drawings, I'll be long gone from this earth by then! Then you can pick up where I left off and maybe the animation will get finished! ;-)

Thanks RorrKonn, some amazing facts, especially this little note.....

"...At that instant was completed the first feature-length motion-picture cartoon ever created, one requiring more than 1,500,000 individual pen-and-ink drawings and water-color paintings.".

Like I said, they must have worked long hard hours back in the day!

DeathMetalDesk, thanks, that's what I was wondering. Sometimes when a program is in beta you have to keep downloading each update to keep fixing the bugs they find, and I was just looking for the most stable version to play around with. That's why I figured the original might be a better bet, but I can't find a website with the original download anymore, must not be out there anymore I guess. I saw the demo in that video (link I posted earlier), it is kind of a "cute" program, will be interesting to see how they modify it now.

Looks like I'll be getting MS5, also, after watching a few tutorial videos, I did like the features of Anime Studio, and since it was such a reasonable cost, I picked up the Debut version of that for now just to try my hand at some short animations as well. Should be interesting. Now all I have to do is figure out where I stashed my pen tablet and I'll be set to go when it arrives. Thanks for all the help, you guys really know your stuff! Seeing some of your work it kinda makes me wish I had started doing this many years ago, but I'm still going to have a lot of fun learning as I go along.

I've watched some credit rolls at the end of some of the animated movies I've seen, and it's amazing that even with the fast computers and modern software they're using these days, there are endless lists of artists and animators in the credits. There's a huge team of people for every aspect of the production. They must have worked very long hours back in the days of hand drawn before CG.

Yes I have noticed that the modern day animations are 3D, most of the one I've seen in recent years seem to favor mostly the Toy Story style 3D characters. I like the look of those too, but as you mentioned,  it seems in order to get those characters perfected and realistic, the Disneys and Pixars are using all that super high end CG software, which would undoubtedly make their jobs easier and faster. I'm not really after that high end perfection, but I suppose there are advantages to working with 3D.

Forgot to post this earlier.....This short video lists the top 10 comic book making software........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T7RhFGjfnI

DeathMetalDesk, I did look into that Pencil software, This video I found a few days ago shows five free drawing/anime softwares, and Pencil is demonstrated as well in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJVQ5owmInA  Looks like they dropped the project, and in time, some others picked up where they left off. I wasn't sure if I should download it, because the only version available that I found is the newest beta, so I wasn't sure if it would work as well as the original. Do you have the original, or did you download the new beta version?

Thanks RorrKonn, I am confident that I'll get the hang of all this, I'm just the kind of person who checks out all the details before making a buying decision. Sometimes that's a good thing, other times I suppose it's not so necessary.

Thanks for the links, I actually did watch a tutorial on MS5 last night on YouTube. It's the webinar series they have posted there. They started with a character of a girl that they had already made earlier, so this particular vid didn't show them drawing the character, only how to ink and color it. That's as far as I watched, there are more parts to the series I think. I'm going to have to look for a tutorial or two that shows someone actually using MS5 to draw a character from scratch. What I'd like to find is one that starts with a blank page, they draw a character, ink it, color it, then draw the backgrounds and size and insert both into a three or four panel cartoon strip. I think if I can find a tut like that it would really go a long way in showing me the extremes of this app.

I think at first I'd be more interested in learning how to use the tool set that will assist me with drawing something more quickly, then I can at least get a jump on things, and if I'm short on time I'll know how to churn out something quicker than just drawing everything freehand.

I am a musician, so at some point I may even want to try animating some cartoons. I can easily record music, sound fx, and voice overs for animations. So I may end up getting Anime Studio as well. The Debut version is not very expensive.

Looks like I have most of the requirements met, not by much, but at least I'm in the ballpark. I should be ok with MS5, my laptop's video memory is just the basic factory HD video on-board that came with it, not a separate video card, but it should do the trick. I do have 4GB RAM & 64 bit Win 7

Lol, you really are encouraging me to learn how to draw with MS5, and not even use Poser or Anime, wow you have a lot of confidence in my skills! :-)  Ok you win, I'll give it a go, but before I order it I think I'm going to spend the next few days watching some tutorials, I learn much quicker by watching someone demonstrating the program, I only have so much tolerance for reading manuals, tutorials are much better for me. I saw a copy online for only $35, seems like a good price. I don't have to buy it from Smith Micro in order to register it, do I?

Aside from drawing the characters and backgrounds from scratch, the challenge for me is likely going to be making different poses and facial expressions when I have to change those from one comic frame to another, but I'll have to experiment with it I guess to see what kind of results I get.

That "how to draw" like you posted is pretty good, I was looking at that earlier today too. Thanks! Much appreciated all your help, most everyone I've met here is very generous with their wisdom, that's very cool. ;-)

I may have no choice anyway RorrKonn. My version of PoserPro(2010) may need to be upgraded, and at an upgrade price of $249.00 it's a little steep for me right now. Plus in case I don't have the PC requirements to handle even the 2010 version I have now, it may be more trouble than it's worth. What looked interesting to me about Anime Studio was the type of tooney looking 2D stuff it can produce, and the character wizard looked interesting too. Too bad that the only way I could export stills is to purchase the Pro version according to the Smith Micro Tech, and the cheapest I've seen that online was $175.00.

I guess at this point in time the only way to avoid having to invest more money beyond just purchasing MS5, is to stay with my current version of Poser and make do with that, which seems to be what you guys have been recommending all along. Probably is what I'll end up doing for now and see how I fare with that first.

I downloaded Inkscape yesterday, that's a pretty cool free program. I'm not very familiar with its capabilities yet, but I'm wondering if I'll be able to put that to use for some phase of comic creation as well?  My wife has PS6 so I have that available to me, but that is still new to me as well, and having almost exclusively used Gimp for so long I'd have to get used to the differences in UI.

All very good points indeed RorrKonn!  I do understand that there will be some drawing and learning on my part, I'm just hoping to spend the majority of my time creating rather than reading technical manuals on how to use a program. I guess there will be some of that which can't be avoided in the beginning, hopefully it becomes easier and there will be less of that as I progress. I'm a musician, so I've experienced some steep learning curves when learning to use my recording software, so I understand that some digging into the works of the programs is necessary, just hoping to minimize it as much as possible. 

Regarding Anime Studio as far as exporting stills, here's what the Smith Micro tech support rep had to say about Anime Studio Debut version....."Unless you purchase the Pro Version of Anime Studio, you can not do Still Images, since it only exports to Animations.  For Comics and Illustrations, that makes the Debut Version not such a good fit for what you are trying to do. Also, Anime Studio, unless you are satisfied with the style of the Character Wizard, it will require artistic skill to draw the figures, then Rig."

So I'm wondering why the Debut version won't export stills, that's too bad because the Pro Version is much more expensive as compared to the Debut version. There was one rather detailed and lengthy review of Anime Studio Pro 10 from an Amazon customer that got me thinking, maybe someone could shed some light on the points this guy made that frustrated him so much after his purchase, here's what he had to say..............

[["Frustratingly Cumbersome Tools and Interface. AAAARRRRGH!I really wanted to like version 10 of Anime Studio Pro. I bought this app back in the day when it was called Moho, but gave up then because of its limitations and frustrating interface. Unfortunately, years later, the latest version of the app isn’t much better. I was hoping to use Anime Studio to replace Adobe Flash, which I’ve been using over the past 10 years for cut-out style animation. Even though Flash has been used to create animation for both TV and film, Adobe still hasn’t integrated proper animation features into what is basically an interactive multimedia platform. To animate with Flash, I sort of have to trick it into doing things it's not meant to do, export my .swf files and then composite them in After Effects. Not a very effective workflow. So I decided to test out Anime Studio 10 with a small animation project and purchased it online. Well at least it's an inexpensive piece of software. Off the bat, the interface and drawing tools are absolutely arcane! For example, the familiar pencil and paint bucket icons you’ll recognize from your drawing apps behave nothing like you’d expect. There’s no bezier tool (the ubiquitous all-in-one drawing tool included in every graphics app for the past 20 years) and instead you have to click and drag the “Add Points” tool to connect points to make lines, then use the “Curvature” tool to adjust the lines, point by point. What?

Then there’s an entire set of mysterious tools with names like “Magnet”, “Delete Edge”, “Point Reduction”, “Noise”, “Stroke Exposure” which are completely foreign in design and function. It’s as if this program was written over the course of 20 years by a dozen programmers working in separate parts of the world who’d never used a computer to draw anything in their lives.

But the heart of Anime Studio is animation (right?), which is struggles to do pretty well. If you can manage to create your cut-outs in an app you’re comfortable with (Illustrator, Photoshop or Flash), with a little elbow grease you may be able to import the pieces into Anime Studio, reassemble them and rig a character with bones. Unfortunately Anime Studio will only import Illustrator 8 format, and even then my cut-out pieces were jumbled and unusable. That left me with Photoshop cut-outs, but of course that meant no vectors (for scalability); raster only. So once again I was back to viewing dozens of Anime Studio YouTube tutorials, trying to wrap my brain around the drawing tools and unusual interface.

After trying to use this program for a week, cringing and wincing and wanting to throw my iMac out the window, I finally threw in the towel instead, defeated and $150 lighter. There’s a reason why you rarely see animation of any caliber made with this program, which is a shame because if the producers took the time to redesign the drawing tools to behave like every other app out there, it could stand a chance of competing with the likes of ToonBoom and Flash. Unfortunately (again), I believe that will never happen. Sad face.]]"..........

Wow as you can see, this guy really was disappointed! I take what he said with a grain of salt though, because it's only one person's opinion, but it did get me thinking. And contrary to that, there were a few good reviews too. That all said, Anime Studio Pro 10 does seem to favor the 2D style of cartooney format I'm thinking of doing. If I go that route as an alternative to exclusively using Poser, I may end up having to get both Manga Studio 5 and Anime Studio Pro 10, but now the cost is adding up to be a little more expensive than I anticipated. Lots for me to think about before deciding to purchase anything.

Then there are the options which that customer mentioned of Flash and ToonBoom, but I know very little about either one of those.

It is helping a lot talking with everyone here, I'm learning much more about this whole process, thanks again, and welcome your thoughts on any of this. 

I see, so you mean a file I can draw from with several poses, or even a model in pieces, and just put whatever pieces together i need for a certain pose or expression, like a quick starting point? I guess I could probably make one of those at different angles pretty quickly using Poser, just turn the model a little bit then render, and keep doing that. Why is there always so much more to all this than I think, once I get into it! :-)

I wouldn't mind using Vue for backgrounds maybe, but I don't have a license version. I like that program though, have used the free version quite a bit in the past. I never really used Poser for doing backgrounds, so I'm not familiar with what capabilities it has for that. I remember seeing some furniture in the libraries, but that's about all I remember, don't remember any buildings, cars, outdoor stuff like that.

Thanks again everyone, much appreciate the info!

I did have a couple more questions typed out, but lost them! :-( I'll try to remember them and put them in bold below.....

The Pixar style characters are very cool, nice work!  It did get me thinking about upgrading. :-)  I'm an older guy, so when I think of comics that I'd like to create, I tend to think (most of the time) of the ones I grew up with that look more 2D, like Bugs Bunny, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, etc...you get the idea. Aside from creating 2D characters using your method and the characters in Poser or Anime, if I am even successful at drawing some 2D tooney characters from scratch in MS5, will I have to keep drawing them over and over from scratch every time I need a different expression or pose? Or does anyone here know of some kind of shortcut for that?

How about backgrounds, any suggestions on how to produce them fairly quickly instead of drawing them from scratch all the time? I realize I'll have to do some drawing, but I'm just trying to save time.

As for upgrading Poser, it would depend which would be cheaper, the poser upgrade or buying Anime, since either program would be able to use the method you've described in your photo tutorial...in Anime Studio, can anyone tell me if the Character Creation Wizard would be something that would speed up the process of making 2D toon-type characters from scratch that I could export and use in MS5 ?

As for Comic Creator having jpegs, I don't know, but I do know it only exports in PDF.  Unless there is a way to convert PDF images to Jpegs that someone may know of? I don't know if Adobe PDF viewer will do that, anyone know?

Thanks Vascania, good to know there is some content out there I can get, much appreciated.

I do understand the biggest difference between MS5 and MS5 EX, in that EX can do full books, don't think I'll need that right now.

All great info, thanks again, will check back here in awhile.