Brushes and linework

1Why the line carries the look

Before any tool, the mindset. A viewer reads your line before they read your color or your motion; a lively, weighted stroke says hand-drawn and cared-for, while a flat, uniform one says traced by a machine. Thick where forms turn away from the light, thin where they catch it, that variation is what gives a drawing depth. Everything in this tutorial serves one goal: a line with weight and character.

2The brush system across your surfaces

FoundryInk carries a full brush system across its drawing surfaces, so the marks you make are not stuck as one flat pen. Brushes give you texture, pressure feel, and character in the stroke, the difference between a technical line and an inky, expressive one. The same brush thinking that powers the drawing studio informs how you build linework you will bring into an animation.

3Bring your own brushes

You are not limited to what ships in the box. FoundryInk lets you import your own brushes, so a texture or a nib you have refined elsewhere can come with you into the platform. Once imported, those brushes join your kit and travel with your account, ready whenever you draw. It means your signature line stays yours instead of being flattened into a house style.

4The Shape style panel

In the animation vector editor, a stroke's look is set in the Shape style panel. Tick Enable outline to give a shape a drawn line, then set its Line colour and its Line width. This is where you control how every filled shape's edge reads, so it is the first place to go when a line looks wrong: too thin, too pale, or missing entirely.

5Thicken and thin with Line Width

To reshape the weight of a line you already drew, reach for the Line Width tool in the Fill group. It lets you thicken or thin a curve without redrawing it, so you can push an outline heavier where a form turns away and lighter where it catches light. This is your main lever for turning a flat, even outline into one with weight and form.

6Colour and switch off the line

Not every line should be black. In the Shape style panel, set Line colour to tint an outline warmer or cooler, a deep oxblood line often reads richer than pure black on skin, for instance. And when a shape should have no edge at all, simply untick Enable outline so only its fill shows. Controlling where lines exist is as much a choice as how thick they are.

7Variable-width strokes

A variable-width stroke is one that changes thickness along its length, and it is the single biggest upgrade to a flat line. Draw the curve, then use Line Width to swell it where forms overlap or turn, and thin it where the line eases off. The eye reads that swell and thin as three-dimensional form, even on a flat drawing. Uniform lines look printed; varied lines look drawn.

8Tapered strokes for tails and hair

A tapered stroke starts full and narrows to a fine point, perfect for hair strands, whiskers, tails, and grass. Draw the shape, then use Line Width to fatten the base and pull the tip down thin so it ends in a needle. A pointed taper reads as something delicate and light; a blunt end reads as heavy and cut off. Choosing the taper is choosing the material.

9Confident lines with Freehand

A hesitant line looks hesitant. Use the Freehand tool to draw a stroke in one committed motion; on release it fits your gesture to a clean curve, keeping the confidence while dropping the wobble. Draw from the shoulder, not the wrist, and let the tool tidy the result. A single sure stroke almost always beats a line poked into place point by point.

10Consistent linework across a character

A character reads as one drawing only when its line stays consistent. Pick a base Line width and a Line colour in the Shape style panel and hold to them across every shape in the rig, then apply your thick-and-thin variation on top by the same logic everywhere. Face, hands, clothes, and props should all feel drawn by the same hand on the same day. Mismatched weights are what make a character look assembled from parts.

11Keep it consistent across scenes

Consistency across a whole project is easier than it sounds if you reuse rather than redraw. When a rigged character is saved in the Codex and dropped into scenes as a live instance, its linework comes along automatically, so every appearance shares the same line. Refine the line once on the master and the fix flows to every instance. That is the tidiest way to keep a line steady across an entire animation.

12Not here yet: boil and cycled brushes

Now the straight talk. Two fancier line effects are only partially surfaced in the animation editor today. Line boil, the deliberate frame-to-frame wiggle that makes a line look hand-inked and alive, is not a one-click setting here. And multi-image cycled brushes, brushes that flip through several tips as you draw, are likewise only partly available in the animation surface. Knowing this now spares you hunting for a toggle that is not there yet.

13Fake a boil by hand

You can still get that living-line feel with a little effort. Draw two or three slightly different versions of a shape's outline and cycle between them on the timeline so the line subtly shifts every couple of frames, holding each on twos with stepped playback. It is more work than a switch, but three redrawn lines flicking past reads convincingly as boil. For a signature hand-inked look, it is worth the extra minutes.

14What good linework looks like

Good linework has weight where it needs it, confidence in the stroke, and one consistent voice across the whole character. It usually means a brush chosen on purpose, Line Width used to swell and taper by a clear logic, one base Line colour and weight held across every shape, and lines drawn fast then tidied rather than poked into shape. Get that, and even a simple design looks finished and yours.

Linework questions