Clean- up.
- Dan Evans
- Mar 19, 2023
- 3 min read
Cleaning the animation proved to be a challenging and tedious part of this production process. I spent considerable time trying to achieve brush strokes in my animation work. For me, correctly getting the marks or the brush was essential. My way around this obstacle was to zoom in and out of the drawing and rotate the canvas where applicable to achieve the marks and curves.
Unfortunately, another obstacle while cleaning up was using the charcoal brush on the dark character. It did not work as well as I had hoped when adding further detail to the drawing form, such as shading. When I played the animation back, it didn’t look how I envisioned it. A similar experience to when animating, a drawing can look believable and up to the standard as a singular drawing, but when incorporated as a piece of movement, did not have the desired outcome. The direction and density of the charcoal texture felt slightly discombobulated and diverted attention away from the animation. After numerous attempts, I abandoned the charcoal brush. Instead, I used larger scaled broad strokes of the drawing brush used to clean up the line to give the character form as opposed to looking flat and to bring more life and energy to each drawing instead, flipping through each frame as I progressed to ensure the overall look felt natural and appealing. Surprisingly, it strengthened the drawing rather than being an alternative method.
I found filling in the character with a solid colour behind the clean-up line tedious, as it was continuous and therefore felt never-ending, although it was relatively straightforward. The reason for filling a character with a solid colour behind the clean-up line was so I could edit, tweak and composite better without any complications, if applicable in After Effects. The only times I thought I needed to be cautious was when the line gave the impression of blurred movement and consequently, the fill also required to give that impression. I achieved this by scaling up a soft-erase brush, gently blending it, and replaying the animation to ensure it worked.
A process that helped me conclude if a shot was completed was playing it a few times with significant pauses in between. When previously playing the animation on a loop I felt I was finding mistakes (errors) where there were none. I felt the more I looked at the animation on a loop the more I was convincing myself that the quality wasn't up to standard. Giving small breaks in between allowed me to view the animation with a fresh perspective/pair of eyes.
What also helped me during this process was remembering that these mistakes are only on screen for a fraction of time and unless vastly incorrect to the point of being noticeable by others, did not matter. Therefore, a question arose. Do I spend a considerable amount of time on a drawing with artistic mistakes which are only noticeable to myself and realistically are only on screen for a small amount of time, attempting to correct for personal satisfaction? Or do I focus on the overall quality of style and concentrate on the quality of performance and movement? The latter was a better option for the project's benefit and progress.
I tend to overfocus on style rather than animation quality (movement), prioritising look over substance. I am compulsive to get a drawing to look right, sometimes taking higher priority over other demands when it shouldn’t. I suppose I spend more time than I should on the clean-up because style and visuals are important to me. Ultimately my work is visually based and therefore is critiqued the most.
Timelapse of animation and clean- up process:
Another clean- up with both characters:
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