[Light]

My question is how does one get ultra high quality line art using digital media? Like Photoshop.

I don't think the normal pen and brush can do this unless you wanted to blow up the picture and spend forever inking it.

So, how does one do it? I don't want to use an illustrator/photoshop combo. I am interested in the fastest and most convienent ways possible to do this with pure digital medium (no scanning).

Look forward to any suggestions or tutorial! Thanks.

[r4bid]

If you have a tablet you can set the pressure sensitivity to make the brush thicker depending on pressure. Thus you select black with the pen tool and line art away.
For coloring you would color like any other digital art piece.

[Light]

Yes I have a tablet and do this. I can get pretty good quality but still not as good as high quality comic art. Maybe it is just my ability but I think it is more to do with the program tools..?

I will try to find some examples of various line qualities sometime to show as example.

[Ian Jones]

Due to the slippery surface of a tablet, you do indeed get jittery lines (yes, pro's have exactly the same problem). You can for example put a piece of paper down on it to improve the feel and control your movements a bit more smoothly, this will wear down your pen nib a bit faster, but reports say it is fairly minimal and besides you can always get more nibs. Also consider that your document working size has a significant influence upon the quality of the final lines. Traditional illustrators work at a half-size up and then the illustration is shrunk down to size when ready for printing. This effectively increases the detail and minimizes any small imperfections. Exactly the same principle applies to digital illustration aswell, perhaps moreso due to the nature of our pixel environment. I would suggest you work at twice the size of your intended final outcome. Try a quick excersize, draw a smooth as possible curve you can then zom out to 50%, I guarantee it will look smoother. Thats the way it works.

Hope that helps.

[Socar J. MYLES]

I know what you mean, Light...I tried doing line art digitally a couple of times, but the lines are never as smooth as what I can get with a pen.

In the end, I figured it was better (not to mention faster) just to do line art with a pen or a brush, then scan it in at a high resolution. I mean, to do a 7 X 10.5 page of lineart in Photoshop, that would take me all day. With a pen and a brush, it would take a couple of hours to ink a page almost twice that size...and I could make interesting spatter effects and get more texture going, as well.

I think non-vector-based digital programs are great for painting and colour work, but that they still have a way to go when it comes to line art. It's faster to do a digital painting than an oil painting, but traditional pen and ink is MUCH faster than Photoshop or Painter for line art (for me, at any rate).

Anyhow, anyone can feel free to disagree with me here. That's just my view on the matter.

[Rinaldo]

http://www.brianbolland.com/gk29/gk29-intro.html

bigger tablet will make lines smoother as well.

if you want to do something very fluid and disney (one stroke and absolutly no petting) with the lines you might want to try Illustrator. you can get it to interpolate (is that the right word?) your stroke into a smoother one with the settings. and it's vector so no worries about crispness.

I used to think that digital wasn't suited to lines at all. but it's just about learning the ins and outs of the medium. traditional brushwork doesn't look the same as penwork . same as PS lines might have a slight style of their own (and a technique for getting best results). but it's still the artist and not the tools IMHO. even in this situation.

[-HoodZ-]

i think your able to accomplish what you want on painter...check out Flexible Elfs site im pretty sure he inks his stuff on painter

nice link btw Rinaldo