Step 5, Two-Frame Animation For Emirates Airlines Commercial

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Here is the beginning stage of rendering. Zoom in to see the pencil lines that were transferred to the board from the pencil tracing. These pencil lines will be moved before going further with inking.

Time-lapse video showing phase-5 of the rendering process.

Tip
While rendering the shading stage of a line drawing, it's important to pull back visually to see the effect, or illusion, of the shading. As you apply the ink lines for shading, your visual distance from the drawing is normally extremely close. It's difficult, if not impossible, to get the illusion of shading at this proximity—it's the "can't see the forest for the trees" effect. One quick way to help visualize the illusion for shading is to lay the drawing at your feet on the floor and look at it from a distance of a few feet. Squinting your eyes to blur your vision slightly will also help you see the effects of shading. Another method of viewing the shading of the drawing is with the use of a reduction glass. A reduction glass looks like a magnifying glass, but instead of magnifying objects the reduction glass makes things smaller, approximately 50 percent smaller.

Inking
The Zoomify image on the top/left shows the beginning stage of inking for the first illustration. The main features of the face have been defined with a broken outline, and the darkest areas have been filled in with solid black. The robe has been outlined and filled with evenly spaced parallel lines.

Zoom in on the illustration and you will see that the pencil outline that was transferred from the tracing to the scratchboard is still there. Before going further with the rendering, these faint pencil lines need to be removed with a soft eraser such as a kneaded or gum eraser. It's important to erase the pencil lines as soon as the shapes have been defined with ink, and the pencil outline is no longer needed. It's important because erasing, even with a soft eraser and a gentle touch, will remove some of the ink from the inked lines, which degrades the quality of the line work.

By erasing the pencil lines at the beginning stage of inking, you minimize the damage done by erasing in two ways: first, there is less ink in the beginning stage that will be effected by erasing; and second, those few lines that are weakened by erasing will be re-inked while finishing the rendering. Waiting until the illustration is completely rendered to erase the pencil lines could cause noticeable damage to the inked areas, and that damage will be difficult to repair.

After the pencil lines were removed, I continued the rendering by drawing evenly spaced parallel ink lines in the face area. These parallel lines, like those of the robe, follow the contour of the shapes. After the drawing was outlined and parallel lines were drawn over all areas to be shaded, the overall drawing had a somewhat flat gray appearance. The next phase of rendering changed that flat gray appearance into a drawing with the illusion of depth and with the feel of textures.

This last phase is the "fun" part of the rendering process. In this phase, the drawing comes alive. By making the lines thicker where there is less light and thinner where there is more light, the illusion of a 3-D form develops. In addition, by manipulating the smoothness and roughness of the individual lines, you can create the illusion of texture.

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