Illustrating Our Manual

ByPeter Giffen

In trying to create a kyu belt manual for Ryusei Karate-Do, we were faced with a difficult challenge in how to illustrate our kihon, kata and kaisetsu. We didn’t have the money to hire an illustrator, and no one in our organization had the requisite skills.

So we were lucky when Kambiz Miranbigi and Rick Going joined the organization. The instructors of Ryusei Karate-Do Ottawa offered to undertake the job. As the model for the illustrations, Rick brought to the table many years of experience as a national-level competitor.

For his part, Kam is not only an experienced karateka but he is the owner of FX Masters, specializing in video and animation production and training. Rather than illustrating the manual traditionally, Kam elected to use his technical wizardry. He photographed Rick doing all the moves and then, working principally in Adobe Photoshop, he translated the photos into illustrations.

The transformation process was fascinating. So we thought we would give the technical and art nerds among you a glimpse into the magic behind the motion in the pages that follow.

Step 1: In order to convert a photograph to illustration, you have to take a picture with extreme contrast, also known as bleached.
Step 2: Select the area that needs to be traced.
Step 3: Create a Layer Mask from the selection.
Step 4: Use the “Poster Edges” filter in Photoshop (Filter -> Artistic -> Poster Edges). Change the settings based on the picture.
Step 5: Use “Replace Color” and substitute the skin tone to white colour.
Step 6: Create a blank layer (white colour) for background.
Step 7: Desaturate and add a border layer over the “Layer Mask.”
Step 8: Apply “Levels” to remove the midtones (grey colour). Save the file as .tiff (flatten).
Step 9: Import the .tiff file to Adobe Illustrator.
Step 10: Apply “Live Trace” with default settings.

The above images show the difference in quality before and after (bottom image) applying Live Trace.

Most of the work of creating the images of the manual technique is now done. Work is underway to combine these illustrations with the translation of Sakamoto-Sensei’s manual. We hope to have this work completed by the summer of 2009.

—Kambiz Miranbigi
Ryusei Karate-Do Ottawa