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GHOST INK

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Ghost Ink is a second ink built into every frame drawing. Rough out your poses, construction lines, and thinking in Ghost Ink, then draw clean right on top of it — the ghost marks stay visible while you work and vanish from every export, print, and playback. Toggle them off to check your line, back on to find your way again, or clear them entirely once the frame drawing holds up on its own. It’s the blue pencil you never have to erase.

My thinking: anyone who storyboards or draws knows that a drawing evolves from a rough form to a refined one. Right now, short of bringing in a guide image, ShotGlide has no good way to support that. Drawing over your own rough and then erasing it is impractical, and the image import workflow — excellent as it is in other situations — feels like a counterintuitive compromise here. Ghost Ink seems like the right solution, and I haven’t seen anything like it in any comparable app.

Implementation note: this could work either as a dedicated ghost buffer per frame drawing — much like the image layer that already exists — or as a pixel-level attribute that marks certain pixels as ghost. Both get to the same place.

Please consider this.

Posted by tekkonkinkreet ·
Status: In Progress8 comments

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Comments8

  • Ellle

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    Sep 21

    Yes THIS!

  • tekkonkinkreet

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    Sep 14

    How did you draw the example boards on https://www.shotglide.com without roughs? Just curious — those are some very confident drawings… 😮

  • Dolly

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    Sep 5

    How can we draw storyboard without atari or shita-gaki layer? I think very good idea.

  • ShotGlide

    Team•

    Sep 2

    Thanks for the detailed suggestion. Very clear, and it could be a useful addition to the drawing workflow.

    The core idea is within reach: a Ghost Ink toggle on the toolbar, a fixed light blue color value that stays visible while you work and never appears in any export, print, animatic or playback.


    But I'm assuming that Ghost Ink only makes sense if the ghost survives as you erase the drawing on top of it, the way an imported background image is immune to the eraser today. Apple's eraser removes anything it touches, so the ghost would have to live in its own protected layer under the drawing rather than inside it, which makes it a much bigger build.

    So, definitely a great idea, quite complex to implement. Leaving it open here so others can weigh in, and I'll keep an eye on how much interest it gathers. Thanks for your feedback.

    • tekkonkinkreet

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      Sep 2

      Thanks for considering it. Not having a good way to rough something out is definitely an obstacle. Of course, this doesn’t actually have to blue—I just thought of that because many people use blue as their rough color. Sometimes I use a Mitsubishii Arterase erasable colored pencil that is invisible to the copy machine/scanner. Actually, there is no “protected layer” — if I erase something, the blue gets erased too.

      So, as I suggested, there are two possible implementations of ghost ink — one is as its own protected underlayer, as you say. Of course, this offers the greatest flexibility. This is more like tracing a rough drawn on its own sheet.

      But there is another way of implementing this within the same layer, as a pixel-level attribute, which adds most of the functionality without the architectural complexity. In this case, the ink attribute would exist as an extra 1-bit channel, rather than a full fledged layer.

      The idea with this version is that any pixel drawn with ghost ink (ghost attribute → ON) would render differently — light blue, for example, or reduced opacity — and could be cleared independently of the rest of the drawing. And, of course, pixels drawn using ghost ink are invisible to print, export, and playback. Pixels drawn in ghost ink also get overwritten (ghost attribute → OFF) by the regular drawing tools. That’s the important distinction with the independent layer version. I still think it is a big improvement over having no way to rough something out.

      • ShotGlide

        Team•

        Sep 3

        Thanks. If erasing takes the rough with it, then the ghost doesn't need protecting from the eraser, and that makes it more manageable. Color is a detail, agreed; blue just reads as "rough" to most people.

        On the pixel version: ShotGlide stores strokes, not pixels, so the ghost would be a normal stroke in a reserved light blue that the app skips whenever it renders a frame for print, export, animatic or playback. Otherwise it behaves as you describe: erasable with the rest, clearable on its own.

        The ideal version of this feature is of course the separate underlayer, mainly because it's the only one that survives the eraser and can be switched off and on to check the line. But the stroke version addresses the obstacle you describe with less machinery, so it's the natural first step.

        It's still a real project and we’ll have to see how much interest it gathers here, so upvotes and comments from other users will help. Thanks again for the feedback.

        • tekkonkinkreet

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          Sep 3

          Strokes! Even better.

          Come on, upvoters!!!!

  • tekkonkinkreet

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    Aug 30

    In Japanese we would call this アタリ or 下描き