The following process is something that you could use to render and polish drawn animation you have made on paper. By combining additional layers of hand-rendered shading and colouring you’ve done with actual materials like pencil crayons and watercolours, and/or digital equivalent treatments with Photoshop, it’s possible to manufacture effects that range from expressive to subtle. Using After Effects, you can then composite image qualities and matte in paper textures, add shadows, and further treat the images, for atmosphere and mood.
Scanning Drawn Animation Sequences
Click here > if you need to refer to notes on scanning
- IMPORTANT – You should establish a punched field guide or layout that properly frames the range of movement and animation in the sequence that you intend to work with. You will be scanning line drawing and subsequently layers of rendered artwork and use After Effects to composite colour, so be sure to use the same layout for the scanning process for each layer, to make sure the elements are properly registered.
- Therefore, save the layout in a safe place and don’t lose it (i.e., in a folder with your animation drawings). You will use the layout later to register your hand-rendered colourings and textures.
- Preview/scan the layout first. Align the scanner’s bounding box to the layout.
- Prepare to capture the subsequent flimsies with the highest of dimensions, at least 1920 x 1080 pixels. More correctly, at least 1080 high, but the width might not be as much as 1920 pixels if the layout isn’t a true 16:9 aspect ratio. If you are ultimately going to animate a zoom by setting keyframes for different scale positions, you will have to scan at even higher dimensions (e.g., to zoom into an area that is one quarter of the field, you will have to scan four times larger than full resolution).
- Before you proceed with scanning the image sequence, choose “TIF,” lossless compression as the file output type (not JPG).
- When it comes to scanning the image sequence, remember that you must scan the series of images one after another, without Previewing the document again. The scanner actually thinks that you’re scanning multiple copies of the layout drawing.
Using Photoshop to Prepare the Artwork
- You will use Photoshop to open the sequence, as a video layer.
- To begin, set the Frame Rate for your Photoshop document. Go the Main Menu and select Window > Animation. From the Animation Timeline, use to context pull-down menu (at the upper-right corner of the Timeline) and choose Document Settings. There, set the Frame Rate for the document at 12 fps.
- Going back to the Main Menu, select the first file in the image sequence — but don’t open it yet.
- Photoshop will recognize that the files are an image sequence, so click on the Image Sequence Button, located in the lower region of the Open File Window.
- A Frame Rate dialogue box will then open. Set the frame rate at 12 fps.
- The sequence will then open as a Video Layer in both the Timeline and Layer Palette.
Remove the Whites in the Image Sequence
- You will use a colour-picking method to select the whites of the animation flimsies in order to delete them. Before you proceed, you might want to adjust the Levels for the layer, to brighten the whites. Go to the Main Menu and choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. Use the Adjustment Palette to “sweeten” the whites, blacks, and middle greys.
- To select large regions of white on the flimsies to remove, go to Main Menu > Select > Colour Range.
- Use the Colour Picker to select a portion of white. and use the fuzziness slider to adjust the selection.
- Press OK
- Going back to the image itself, you’ll find that once you’ve picked the white, a selection or “a row of marching ants” will appear.
- Use the Delete Key to remove the whites. The result will be an image of line drawings against a transparent or grey checker-board background.
- Continue on by following the same steps listed above for each frame in the sequence.
To Add a Back-paint Layer
- As part of the back-paint process, you should plan to use a different colour than white. Doing so will mean that, later on with After Effects, you will use the back-paint as a “track matte” and apply it to incorporate hand-rendered colour and shading layers, paper textures, and the like. Even if you would like to use white as a background for the line drawings, you can reduce the saturation and manipulate the colour in After Effects. As long as the back-paint layer is a colour, there is much that you can do with the layer. You would be limited if you chose to use only white, because there is not colour pixel information in white.
- To proceed with adding back-paint, create a new blank Video Layer (i.e., go to Layers > Video Layers > New Blank Video Layer. It is this back-paint layer that will become a track matte layer.
- To back-paint, referring to the Layer Palette, place the animation line drawing level above the back paint.
- Again in the Layer Palette, turn down the opacity of the layer, to aid you with deciding where to add the back-paint. Lock the animation layer to protect the line drawings.
- Use the Pencil Tool to draw a back-paint layer sequence below the animation. You should draw slightly beyond the outside of the line (how far is up to you – it’s a design decision really).
- Once you’ve created an outline, use the Paint Bucket Tool to fill in the rest of the paint region.
- Continue on by following the same steps listed above for each frame in the sequence.
- Save the sequence as a PDF file. In the near future, you will use the PDF to export PNG sequences for additional work in After Effects.