2D ANIMATION-INKING, COLORING, ROTOSCOPING, USING PHOTOSHOP TO ANIMATE, COMPOSITING IN EDITABLELAYERS

2D ANIMATION DRAWING INKING WATER COLOring

The reason I decided to do animation with ink and watercolor is not only because they are my favorite techniques, but also they express the traditional quality of japanese art. Water color infuse a subtle and very versatile quality to the general style. They are very unpredictable and each frame differs from the previous one which creates the effect of glitching movement and so more lifelike feel.

The whole peace is based on the contrast between red and blue, the traditional geisha colors of the characteristic for the time. Red means life power, blue divinity, sublime.

rotoscoping

To draw animated body sequences in some odd angles was too much even for my artistic imagination. So after photographing and filming the references, I printed some of them out and redrew them frame by frame, fitting the style to the one of the main character. This was a really hard job as character is very deformed. Some of other references I used to study the change in facial expressions and shading.

After I Drew the sequence with the pencil, I scanned it in and line tested it on college computers- until I found a better solution- animating it in photoshop. After nearly losing my mind, tracing all the animation I did with the pencil on an animation paper onto the watercolor paper with ink- I found a better solution. I scanned in all the frames, altered them in photoshop to give them more inky look , cleaned them, aligned them and printed them out on the watercolor paper. Once painted I scanned them back in and send them to the group members to cut them out and align them again.

ANIMATING IN PHOTOSHOP- CUTTING IT OUT, ALIGNING, COMPOSITING

First of all I learnt how to simulate light box when one doesn't want to spend more than £10 on it! :-)

As said before I helped myself with rotoscoping reference when animating some of very complicated perspective angles. After painting the animation by hand (the process explained in Rotoscoping folder), I scanned it in. I cleaned the white background out with the help of MASKS in Photoshop. These enabled me to simply paint back in case I wiped too much out, while using magic wand or rubber, wouldn't give an option to return once done.Once cut out- I aligned the objects together and opened the animation timeline in Photoshop. This feature was available already in CS3, but it became even more appropriate to use in CS4. It allowes quick line test and once the position and duration of frames is sorted out, can be easily exported into any postproduction software in a shape of layers.