Scannergeist, or ghosts in my scanner. Not real ghosts, of course, whether or not you believe in them.
A while ago, I repaired the broken spine of my current sketchbook with duct tape. Some of the adhesive made it onto the glass of my tabletop scanner. As you would expect, I simply used Photoshop to erase the smudge from several weeks of JSVB posts. Today, the smudge went across a drawing, so I resolved to clean it out.
My wife ran a special cleaning cloth over the glass while I pressed the scan button to allow more light on the subject. The result was this image, which shows what the scan head sees as it swept past my wife's hand. This looks so cool, it is pre-empting my intended JSVB post, which I hope to upload tomorrow.
Way back in the old days, animators would use photocopiers to squash and stretch their drawings. If you knew how to time the movement, you could shift the artwork on the glass by hand as the light bar moved underneath. Then, you'd get some interesting, transformative result. You can still do this using a photocopier or a flatbed scanner. It's interesting and fun! Nowadays, artists just use Photoshop to achieve the same effect, but with greater precision.
Below are some examples. I took yesterday's JSVB sketch of Sergeant Penny and transformed the scan. On the left, I stretched her by moving the drawing as the scanner operated. On the right, I took a pristine scan and made roughly the same transformation using tools in Photoshop. Neither method makes for a pretty Penny, but in a pinch and with a steady hand, you can make decent squashes and stretches without using computer applications.
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| Moved by hand. |
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| Transformed using Scale and Liquefy. |
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| Original scan. |
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