Skip to content

Print & screen effect

Comic Ink

Comic Ink is a halftone and retro screen effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Newspaper halftone and bold luma-based ink outlines.

Runs live on video, images, a camera or generated art. Stack it with any other effect, and route LFOs, envelopes or any of ten audio bands to its controls so it moves with the music.

Try Comic Ink free All effects

The untouched demo art: an eye inside a triangle over wavy teal, blue and peach lines — Source

The eye-in-triangle art darkened to a muted teal and brown print with a faint dot screen and black outlines — Comic Ink, default settings

What Comic Ink does

Drains the colour into a grey newsprint screen, light dots on near-black that brighten with the picture, then inks every tonal edge in black. Some of the original colour still bleeds through, so the default reads as a dark, muted print. Halftone sets how fine the two screens are, Dots sets their fill, Ink darkens the outlines, and Angle rolls both screens through their moiré.

Using Comic Ink

Where it works: Pop-art cover art and flyer panels where a photo should read as a printed comic frame, and lyric videos that keep faces legible because the ink traces their edges.
With the music: It has no clock, so all motion is routed. Map B7 snare to Ink so the outlines darken on the snare, and run a slow BPM-synced LFO on Angle so the screens shimmer through moiré across a phrase.
Starting point: Halftone at centre, Dots at three-quarters, Ink at three-quarters, Angle at a quarter for a clean newsprint screen with heavy outlines.

Controls

Halftone: Dot screen scale.
Dots: Halftone dot contrast and fill.
Ink: Edge ink weight vs halftone.
Angle: Turns both dot screens together, sliding the moire through and back.

Pairs well with Comic Ink