Final Animation

My final cel animation is one which I am very pleased with.
Although it is not in colour, I think that the content is very good, with an unusual storyline.
I think that in some short parts, the animation appears to be too fast, however, the rest of the animation timings, I am extremely pleased with.

The characters appear to be life like with realistic movements, which is something that I was hoping to achieve.
I have tried to add exaggerated expressions to my characters in order to convey the emotions of the characters, and I feel that this has been done well.

If I was to do this animation again, or continue with it further, I would spend another few months adding the rest of the colour to it, as I think that this is one thing that would perhaps improve the overall look of the animation.

Overall though, I am pleased with how this cel animation has turned out, and through doing this, I have found something which I enjoy very much!

Colour Process too long

After spending what seemed like a lifetime trying to colour in my animation frame by frame, I am still only around 8 seconds into my animation!

Each individual frame takes around 1.5 hours to add colour in each separate shade/tone and outline with black. So, for my animation this would take approximately 450 hours!

It is a shame that this process is too long for this particular short project, as I think that the colour gives the animation a different dimension, and adds to its overall character.

I have, however, rendered the part complete coloured composition, and made this into a movie.

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.