For anime character/video games/movies

[iamwiccan]

Where do you find the stencils 0.o [as you can tell from my noobish question, ive never stencilled anything before...]

[zatanna]

I am kinda newbish too, so here is my newb advice from working on a lot of xmas gifts!

There are a few pages that have stencils that are free for personal use (not for sale). A good one I have used is http://kittybuttons.com/wordpress/?page_id=5>, they have a lot of different things. However, a lot of the stencils are pretty ambitious for a new person, at least they were for me. Some are simple, like a Fullmetal Alchemist symbol I put on a t-shirt pocket, so it's a mix, just choose wisely! Also, sites that have free pumpkin carving  stencils are decent, too (weird, yet true!). [edited to say there is also a list in the faq at the top of this forum, too!].

What I ended up doing for stencils was to grab images from books and trading cards.  I did all comic related items, so grabbing from vs. system cards or mtg cards for the dice bags I did and then from actual books for bigger pix worked well (scanned in), and then I just used simple photo editing to get just the edges on them. I have no fancy photo stuff and I don't know what I am doing, so I just used the 'edge' option in MS photo editor. For anime, it may work well to grab from the manga, since those are black and white.

I would say while looking to try to find images where there aren't too many 'islands', where you have to place the little pieces freehand into the stencil. The first one I did had those and it was a pain and discouraging, so try some ones that are one-piece first. Also, look for the freezer paper tutorials on here, that method works awesomely.

Hope this helps a little!

[iamwiccan]

thankies that site is awesome. i love it =]! do you know of any others?

[SevsOnlyGirl]

iamwiccan - if you check at the top of every section, there is usually a FAQ or Tutorial section with all the links for things.  Here's the one for stenciling:

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=154651.0

Or just do a search - we have a great search feature!

[instantkarma]

Another thing I've found useful (at least for anime characters) is to search for a good scan of the manga (if there's one that exists), find a picture you like in it, and then enlarge it in a graphics program.