How I Color my Animation Work

[Music] hey guys it's nico pentoa and today i'd like to talk about how i usually go about coloring my 2d animation now the way i go about coloring my animation is that it usually depends on the software that i'm using as well as a certain art direction i'm going for whether it's vector or whether it's bitmap-based and i'll get more to that soon but the methods i'll show you are the ones that i've used for quite a few years and it's served me pretty well this video is not a software tutorial it's more about me sharing my philosophies when i talk about digitally coloring my animation so when you do go into a program so let's say it's vector-based or bitmap-based that philosophy can be carried over so what does it mean when i talk about bitmap-based software or vector-based software so bitmap or also known as raster is an image formed with pixel information so if you were to zoom in an image by like two thousand percent you'd see squares that make up the image programs like tv paint photoshop krita and probably clip studio also fall into this category of bitmap-based softwares vector also known as object oriented doesn't use pixels but uses mathematical information such as vertices spleens and edges to form remaining information so when you zoom in using a vector-based program you don't really see pixels but you just see new shapes being formed and this can pretty much go on forever and ever programs like adobe flash adobe animate toon boom harmony and even blender they fall into this category but programs like clip studio also have a vector option just like how toon boom also has bitmap options for drawing there are both advantages and disadvantages to each of them but that's a whole another video on its own the first thing that you want to have is to have a clean line art of your animation whether it's final clean lines or a tie down something that you know that you're going to use that lines for the final image however you choose to do your line art really consider your gaps in the gap closing option luckily most 2d animation software has this option where you can actually adjust it if let's say you're using a textured brush or pencil for your clean line and then you're using the flood fill tool to film the colors you're going to run with some issues regarding gap closing like sometimes the flood fill won't go behind some of those textures for vector based programs some people draw with the brush tool some people with the pencil tool but with a pencil tool in most vector based programs you can change the line thickness right on the spot you can change the stroke path but really just think about the gaps for now oh and here's an advantage that a program like toon boom has which is that you can apply a texture to a vector-based line art and when you use the paint bucket tool the paint bucket is only recognizing the strokes being made by the lines not the actual texture unlike a raster based program which will also recognize the texture as gap closing information the next step i do is i make a solid or alpha matte pass and this is usually for transparency reasons now when i usually animate it in flash back in the day i would just use the paint bucket tool to fill in the colors without doing a solid pass but what happens is sometimes when i fill things out it doesn't fill some of the gaps or there's a lot of tiny holes that are left untouched and then when i would bring it into a program like after effects where i did add some effects like highlight or emboss it'll pretty much show some unwanted effects but i make a solid pass based on the overall base color whether there's a dominating color of the character or i could just go for a neutral gray color so when i forget to color those spots in during the actual coloring stage it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb in a bitmap program like tv paint i would make a new empty layer that matches the the animation timing of the clean line art i would select the space outside the line art so my magic wand is set to a setting where it reads all the visible layers on screen so i would select all that negative space and invert select that and then flood fill the selection inside now you might want to adjust your magic wand settings so it can read gap closing within your line art and you just have to play with it until you get the desired selection that you want oh yeah and when i use the flood fill tool i only make it so that it only affects the current layer that i'm on and it's only filling within the selection and not being affected by the lion art around it so in other words it's not being affected by any visible imagery or layers once i have all the solid base color filled out already i lock that layer's transparency so when i do additional brush strokes on separate layers or in the coloring stage for example it only stays within the solid matte silhouette okay so i did mention that i wasn't going to make a software tutorial video but in this case i'm going to show you a thing that i do in tbp that sped up my process especially for the solid matte pass so notice in my layers i have my separate line art and my solid matte pass so the solid matte pass actually has matching exposures and timing and the number of frames from the line art but there's nothing in there and the way you can do this is you select your line art and you go to layer go go to new layer and you duplicate the structure of your selected layer all right so what i would do is select my paint bucket tool choose a random frame i would say the beginning of my solid matte pass and just fill it and notice how it's all gray now and then i would double click this entire layer and then hit enter and it's going to apply the same thing to every every drawing so now i have all these separate gray fills in each of these layers and then what i would do and by the way when you hit enter it repeats the action that you just did previously so what i would do next is i would have the paint bucket tool selected go to display so now it's also reading the the line art and then i would set this to clear or erase and then i would just hit some corner up here and then just do that then i would double click my solid map pass and then hit enter and it's going to repeat the action for the next frame so that would be for me a quick way to do a solid matte pass and i would just you know go in and you know adjust adjust and fix like where other negative spaces and i could always fix it later on so yeah that's just one way of how i do things so for vector programs since most vector animation that i know of doesn't have an option where i can just flood fill based on visible layer information meaning that i can't work in another layer while using a separate visible layer as a guide for my flood fill or selection or whatever i make a duplicate of the clean line art put it underneath the clean light and use the paint bucket to fill all the colors within usually the line art on top will hide the line art below it but if you wanted to take an extra step further you can change the colors of the line art underneath to match your base color and why would anyone do this it kind of makes a distinction between what is the actual queen lion art and what is just the solid matte also if you have remaining holes or empty spots in the solid matte layer you can select your brush tool set the settings so it brushes anything underneath the art and stroke away those holes now let's talk about adding actual flat colors to the animation and i usually try to make it match with the character designs palette now with bitmap-based programs i usually make a new empty layer underneath it select my flood fill tool make sure my flood fill tool is affected by all visible layers or the layer on top and then just fill away and since this is all in a separate layer i don't need to worry about the color being on the same layer as my line art or my base color if you really wanted to go extra you can make separate layers for the hair or the arm or the skin this can be useful for compositing for adding effects for adding texture even when it comes to replacing colors it can make your life so much easier now when it comes to vector based programs it's very similar to what i did with the solid matte pass i basically take the clean line art duplicate that put it underneath the actual clean light art and over the solid matte pass this is something that you're going to notice when i talk about coloring within vector based programs but yes i duplicate again and using that layer i select my colors and start filling away with the paint bucket tool now back in the day when i was using flash solely i would basically just color directly on top of the clean line art but i think it's good to keep the line art and the color art separate so when one thing needs to change it doesn't have to affect the other so in most cases i usually end there i just add my flat colors with the clean line art and presto it's done and when it comes to lighting i usually add that in after effects or any other compositing methods personally i just like flat colors with lines but if i want to actually add hand-drawn lights and shadows then there are several ways i approach that so let's talk about cell shading and cell shading is basically making light and shadow information based on shapes for both bit map and vector programs i always make a separate layer for the stage but because i'm dealing with entirely new shapes basically i start a brand new layer and in vector programs i'm not actually duplicating the line art again i draw keyframes of those shapes and lay it out in the corresponding drawings and i would flip back and forth so i can kind of be more specific with drawing those shapes in and then i would break them down and then eventually in between them to the point where it actually matches the timing of the animation line art everyone has their own way of approaching cell shading there are three popular approaches when it comes to drawing cell shaded light information and shadow information so the first method you could use is to basically start with a general shape for the shadow so for example you can choose a black shade that's like 50 opacity you then just draw them out like basic shapes and then you flood fill or paint bucket to the insides if you're using a bitmap-based programs you can actually alpha clip it to your solid matte base so when you do draw new shapes or when you do flood fill it does not leave the silhouette of that base in vector you're basically going to have to draw outside of the character art in a program like toon boom you can set the node so that it doesn't register anything outside of the character's silhouette flash has a mask setting that you can play with some people manually erase it by hand but i usually mask out shapes outside of the line art in after effects anyways i just mask it out speaking of compositing if you're using this method where you're choosing one color that represents all the shadow and one color that represents all the lighting you can actually edit that in after effects you can change the blend modes so some of them are overlay some of them are multiplies some of them are color dodge the power of compositing the second approach is something that a lot of animators who work in the sakuga or anime side of things usually work with which is basically to use placeholder shades with your clean line art this is so that i know where the lighting information is before i even commit to actual colors the blues usually represent shades more yellowish colors represent highlights this works well in a production where you actually have a dedicated ink and paint department but utilizing this still allows me to plan but still use the information that we just did here for the actual coloring meaning i can just select my paint bucket tool and just replace it with the color i want in a bitmap-based program i do this all in a separate layer but when i use my paint bucket tool i make sure it is influenced by any visible layer so it's actually using the clean line art as a guide when i use a vector based program it's still very similar i do everything in a separate layer but then i duplicate my clean line art and then merge that with my cell shading information put that below the clean line art and then use the paint bucket tool to replace the colors again the reason for this is because i haven't really found an option where i can use the visible layer on top as a guide to where the fills go i basically have to work in the same layer so that means i have to use the clean line art in the same layer and that's why i duplicate it for either bitmap or vector based programs you can choose to have the shades in one layer and then the lighting information and the other this is so that you have more freedom if you choose to add blend modes or compositing effects later on so like the shadows could be overlays and then the lighting could be linear dodge the third one i utilize is something that i've used for many years back during my flash days which is using neon colored lines to determine the shapes so this is kind of very similar to the previous one honestly i think it's kind of like a merge between the second example and the first example where i draw the shapes out with the neon lights and then just add in my colors inside of those neon lines then i would do something that would either hide or delete those neon lines in a bitmap program i do all that in a separate layer and then using the animation timing of those neon lines i make a new layer and then paint bucket my colors inside of those lines then i would either delete the neon lines or hide them in a vector based program select flash i would draw all that in a new layer duplicate the line art merge that with the neon lines flood fill my colors in both my shadows and my lights and then select the neon lines in all the frames either delete them or turn the opacity down to like zero percent that way you can't see it in the final result the great thing about a vector program like toon boom is that you can choose to select a object based on their color based on what type of line they are and then you can just isolate that selection and delete it now that's more of the traditional cell shading type of lighting and shadows but what if you actually wanted to utilize brush strokes that represent the lighting and shadow information and something like this can be great if you want to give something a more hand brush or hand painted feel in a bitmap program i basically make a new layer i clip it to the base color and if you want to work on top of the line art so let's say you're making or drawing shapes that also go on top of the line art i would also include the line art as part of that clipping so when i draw my strokes it also sticks within the silhouette including the line art and then i would just stroke away frame after frame this is how i did the shadow and lighting information for the city of secrets trailer in a vector program it's basically similar it's actually the same thing but of course the strokes are going to leave the silhouette of the character so i usually edit that in after effects or some other compositing methods and see that's the thing with compositing you can do a lot so sometimes you don't even need to shade or color everything by hand sometimes you can use compositing to fix that so in after effects i usually apply an inner shadow layer effect switch the color blend mode to something like add or shadow and just play with it and sometimes it'll just save you so much time especially if you want to just do a quick rim light but i also want to talk about blend mode so in tv paint there are blend modes especially if you have the professional edition you can change the blend modes of each layer to multiply or color dodge and even if you don't have that in tv paint or in toon boom you can use another compositing software like after effects to apply those later while using after effects to mask out anything that's unwanted so that's basically how i go about coloring my td animation maybe some of you might have a better approach of doing these things but this is something that i've been comfortable with this is something that has worked for me and something that i can feel confidently in sharing but as usual i hope this helped okay bye interested in learning hand-drawn animation or learning how to finish an animated shot from beginning to end have a look at the store where you'll find the complete introduction to 2d animation video course tutorials and other resources learn classical animation approaches drawing lectures techniques and other process videos visit the store through the link in the description below

Channel: Toniko Pantoja

Views: 110,471

Keywords: Toniko Pantoja, Youtube, Animation, Tutorial, Advice, Lesson, Vlog, Adobe, Photoshop, Animate, Flash, After Effetcts, Premiere, Video, Film, Drawing, Tips, Gestures, color

Id: eG9hBIweaOE

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021