Cartoons From Photographs

While working on my graphic novel about the found slides story, I needed a way to render the slides I found that made them look like cartoons, because I did not want to use the original photos; I wanted to give them an appearance consistent with the artwork but make them different enough to show that these were the photos I found (see the Found Slides, A Life Remembered section HERE)

I spent an insane amount of time drawing them on the computer using shading and brush effects, but wanted a quicker way, which is when I discovered some sites that will do this easily for free. Here are three such websites, along with examples from each (links at bottom of post).

But first, here is an example of my attempt to draw the pictures digitally, a very time consuming process.

Below is one of the found slides, on the left, and my rendered version on the right (click each picture for a larger view):

Drawing them this way took a lot of time, and didn't yield the exact results I was looking for.

Here is another picture, and some variations on what you can do on these cool websites.

This is a self portrait of Deb and I at Disney World.

Here is the same picture using the cartoon effects on Befunky:

This is one of the cartoon effects. Each effects has a sliding bar that allows you to control the intensity of each effect, to make it more abstract, or more detailed.

Here's another cartoon effect. The free version gives you some basic effects; if you want more effects, you can pay to unlock the premium effects.

The Underpainting effect on Befunky renders a nice cartoony-like look, but I needed it in black and white...

voila!

Here's the other Underpainting effect

Here's the cartoon version using Cartoon Photo, which does not have as many options as Befunky

...and here is the version from Cartoonize

Cartoonize also has some funky effects, such as creating a reflection in water effect.

I like Befunky the best, because it has the most options for customizing your photos, but try them all out for some fun effects on your pictures!

Befunky


Cartoonize


Pho.to