Trying Colour

Even though my animation itself is technically complete, I couldn't help feeling how it would perhaps benefit from colour of some kind, so I decided to give this a go, using the previous digital method that I experimented with.

The screen shots show the process of beginning to add to colour to the frames of my animation.
I am pleased with the effect that this gives, so I am going to try to add this colour to the whole of my animation.

Sequence Ready

After I had put my frames into a sequence on after effects, I added the sound file and I rendered the composition and turned my frames into a running movie!

My first thoughts on the animation are that it looks quite good!
I tried to match the mouth movements of my characters with the sound from the sound file, making my characters 'speak' when the music did so. I had to be very specific with my timings in order to do this, and I think that this has worked well.

I am particularly pleased with how the characters walk, as this was a challenge to get right when I was actually drawing out each frame.

One thing that I think the animation could benefit from is colour, however.

Cel Animation Complete

Finally, I have completed the cel animation, It has taken a very long time to draw out over 300 frames completely by hand.

The next step with my animation, is to scan in every single frame, and put these frames into a sequence on after effects.

Animation Begins

After creating an exact timing schedule for each event in the animation, I began to draw out, by hand, each frame of my animation. This is a very long process, but one which I am enjoying.

Colour Practice

After my final decision to create my animation using the cel method, I began to think about the process of adding colour, and whether this was possible.

I carried out some research into how animations can be coloured. This research showed me that for some cartoons etc, cels are transferred to acetate sheets, and the acetate sheets themselves are painted onto. They are then overlapped with one another to create scenes.

I also discovered that a way to use colour digitally is to use the paint tools in after effects itself, I decided to give this method a go, as I would like to create a seam free animation.

I used a previous short cel animation to practice a digital colouring method.

In the following screenshots, I have used the tools in after effects to add a colour onto my animation frames.
I have added the colour red to the babys balloon, by physically colouring the balloon shape once on each frame.

I also decided to experiment with a different style of colouring, a sort of scribble, I have attempted this on the baby's shoes. Once again, this was created by applying the colour once per frame. I like the effect that this method gives, as it gives the impression of movement.

Character Sheets

After I had chosen what my Triangle Tribe characters should look like, I decided to create some character sheets.

These are mainly to help animators when they are drawing out characters.

I have showed what the character looks like from different angles, and also showed different positions of arms and legs.

A further character sheet shows how the character would look in a variety of emotions and thoughts.