Vectorizing sketches

[TurkishMonky]

Hello, i was just wondering if there is any secret to vectorizing scaned images easily. In Illistrator CS i've been trying to use it's tools (not completely familiar with it, i usually use photoshop for images, but illistrator has better vector tools), bt usually they just choke and do a 1 cm line, or on the manual way it deviates from the real drawing enough to make it ugly... Is there a specific way you're supposed to draw it to make it turn out (such as tracing it onto a new piece of paper to rid it of the mistakes, or anything?)
Any tips or hints would be appreciated. BTW, i also have freehand 10 and flash MX, if either of those has an easier way of doing it.

[MyrrhLynn]

Well I've done a lot of vectoring, but only vectoring of anime images, not of actual sketches. I can tell you what I know though!

Most people use the pen tool in Illustrator for vectoring. You can always stroke the line you make with the pen tool, so that it has a thicker border, although in a lot of cases that can look really ugly. Otherwise you can "outline" the black line, which is sort of hard to explain... basically you go all around the black border with the pen tool and then make the fill color black. That will give you a nice crisp line and you can make the edges pointed then, or thicker in some places and thinner in others.

Good luck!

[TurkishMonky]

thx! i'll keep working on it... maybe with some practice and tweaking it'll look beter..