2D vector "hand-drawn" converters or techniques?

Vito

I have a need to take an existing 2D vector image, drawn all with straight, normal, perfect lines, and turn every stroke into something natural/slightly messy/hand-drawn, e.g. take the top stroke and turn it into the bottom stroke, for every stroke:



I'd prefer this to be some sort of automated conversion. Anyone know of something that can do this?

Alternately, is there a method or process for drawing something in vector so it looks like the bottom stroke? Not a line type in software, but a way to draw.

Wells

in flash you can change the lines to a few different types; dotted, dashed, broken, etc. some enterprising fellow might have found a way to plug in custom styles.

might be a starting point.

Vito

Yeah, I'm not looking for a custom style or a line type. I need either conversion software, or a method, like, "taper the ends by 50% starting from the tip to ~25% into the length of the line. then every ~10% along the line jog it up or down and alias it heavily. then..." etc.

Eric Chadwick

Can you convert it to a bitmap, or does it have to stay as a vector? Photoshop filters can work wonders. Maybe you could rasterize it, filter it, then re-vectorize the result. Also maybe only processing the line art, if you had color fills behind it.

Vito

I guess it doesn't have to stay vector, that's just what the source is. I can convert it to raster and exclude the fills, I think. Filter process/order suggestions?

Eric Chadwick

Try this... Filter: Brush Strokes: Spatter and play with the sliders.

Also try out Filter: Filter Gallery to see what's available.

Archanex

Depending on how your vectors are layed out, Adobe Illustrator has brushes that will do what you want. you just select the vector line, and then apply said art brush

Michael Knubben

^^^
What he said

If the lines are seperated, you just select them all and give them a 'brush' preset. You can even make your own out of the example up there, if you vectorize it (since it's b/w, just make it 300 dpi (or whatever, just upscale), select the black and make a path out of it. then, export> paths to illustrator.
I haven't used illustrator in a while, so I can't tell you step by step how to turn that into a brush, but it's not that complicated, and I'm sure there are hundreds of tutorials online about how to do it, with ugly examples to boot.