Today, I will show you how to do clean-up
and color in OpenToonz that will turn your animation from this... to this! So let me just get
back into the laptop and show you how to do it. Hoooh! So here we are again at the start screen
of OpenToonz. First and foremost, let's load the animation we've made in the previous video. So in
order to do that you can just find the file on the right hand side but, if it's not there click
"Load Scene" and it will open another window so you can just open it from where you save the
file. By the way, if you are new to my channel, if you like to follow step by step, I suggest
you pause this video first and watch the previous tutorial where I introduced the interfaces of
OpenToonz software and how to create a rough animation. Just click the eye "i" at the top
right. Okay, if you've watched the previous video and you're ready to proceed, let's go do
this. I actually did some homework and created a character to use as a reference. If you like to
download this image I will put the link in the description below. So I want to import this image
into OpenToonz so I can look at it while I'm doing cleanup and color. In order to do that, we can
click and drag the image into OpenToonz. A window will pop out asking if you want to "Load" or
"Import" the file. What is the difference? Well, to import means OpenToonz will create a copy
of the file onto the folder where it usually saves. This is helpful if you're transferring the
files on different computers and you can find the files easily. "Load" means OpenToonz will load
the file from its location and it will not create a copy of the file. I usually just use "Load"
because I pretty much just use one computer and I know where it's saved anyway. Besides creating a
copy of the file means it will consume extra space in the hard drive. And there we go, here's our
reference I'm just gonna move it to the side so I would be able to see what I'm drawing. The next
step is adding details to the animation ruffs. So let's create a new level on column three I'm gonna
name it "jump-Jumpman-TD (because tie down)-1" (in case we need a number two.) We're gonna use the
same setting as the ruffs and we're gonna use the Toons Raster Layer. I want to lower the opacity
of the ruff animation so I can see the overlapping drawing better. To do that, select column one
and if you notice there are two icons there. Click the arrow beside the icon with a pinkish
background and a slider will pop out where you can adjust the opacity. I'm just gonna adjust mine
to 50. Alright, let me just speed through this tie down process. While this speed drawing is going I
just want to tell you the difference between clean up and tie down in tie down, you're pretty much
just adding the details onto the rough animation. You can still make mistakes at this stage but,
I would suggest trying to make the character ON-MODEL as much as you can here as it will save a
lot of time in the next process. Clean-up is what it is. It's cleaning up the drawings which means
the lines have got to be clean and crisp. You're prepping it for colors already so you can't have
sketchy and wonky lines. This is also the stage where you have to fix the mistakes you made in
tie down and make the drawing more appealing. Character has to be on-model at this stage. One
tip I can give is that you keep checking the previous frame to ensure the proportions and the
overall drawing is consistent. Flipping between the previous frame and the current frame you're
working on will allow you to see if the object is animated properly. This will also save you a
lot of headaches once you proceed to clean-up. Ok, here's what we have so far let's play
it in a loop to see where we at. [Music] Ah look at that! It's starting to come along
together. Okay let's do the clean-up. Let's create a new level on column four. I'm naming this one
"jump-Jump Man-CU (because clean up)-1" (in case we need the number two.) Before we draw anything,
let's set the palette first we're going to use the eyedropper tool to get the character's color from
the reference image. However if you notice, there are two eyedropper tools. I will be discussing the
difference between this eventually but for now, we will be using the second eyedropper tool called
the RGB picker tool. It's a little bit tedious so bear with me here. Right click on the palette
window and select "New Style" then select the RGB eyedropper and click it on the part you'd like
to copy the color. Let's do the line color first. So I'm clicking anywhere on the lines and it will
be copied on the palette. You can also rename this by double clicking the name. I'm naming this one
outline. Now we have to do the same process to get the colors of the skin, jumper, etc. Alright,
here is the entire palette of the character. I did rename all the colors to avoid confusion.
the next thing we need to do is export this palette so that we can reuse it on different
levels just in case. On the bottom *left, you can see there is a disk icon. Click that
and the save window will appear. Feel free to name the palette however you wish. I usually save
the palettes on the palettes folder in OpenToonz so I know where to find it when I need to load it
but, feel free to save it wherever you want. Now, the moment we've been waiting for, doing clean-up!
I don't need the ruff animation anymore so I'm gonna hide it by selecting column one and clicking
this eye icon with an off-yellow background and a circle thing icon with the pinkish background. The
eye icon will hide the column on the final render and the circle thing icon will hide the column on
the canvas. Then, let's just lower the opacity of column three. Let's go back to column four and do
the cleanup so select the brush tool and set the appropriate thickness and adjust the smoothness
to your preference. While this is going, let's talk more about the X-sheet especially the
columns. Think about the columns as layers like in Photoshop or Clip Studio. One thing you have
to keep in mind is that the rightmost column will always be the topmost layer. You can arrange the
order of the columns by clicking and dragging the column. By the way, I just found out about this
but you can change the a column name by double clicking the column so you can label the columns
however you like! Okay, let's stop this speed drawing here for a bit because I want to show you
how to duplicate drawings. What do I mean by this? In this example right here, frame 7 and frame 8
drawings are almost identical and while we can copy and paste this, it's easier to extend the
frame. Right-click and choose duplicate drawing and what it does is create a duplicate of frame 7.
The difference is that when I edit this duplicated frame the previous frame will not be affected.
Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions. One tip I would like to give, is
to make use of the "Rotate" and "Zoom" tools. It's very helpful especially in drawing clean lines. In
my case, actually my hand is more comfortable in drawing pairs that arch towards the right hand
side but when I do curves arching on the left, it's less appealing so I use rotate tool to put
the drawing in a better position for me to draw the lines better. Another thing I would like
to point out is that you don't have to strictly follow the tie down because when doing clean
the main priority is getting the character on-model. When I work in a studio, I received
handouts where the animation tie downs aren't exactly on model and it was quite a headache
because I got tons of because I followed the tie down too much. so don't just blindly trace,
make the drawing better and make it on model. Alright, here's the cleanup drawing. Frame one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and
fifteen. Let's play it to see how it looks so far. Awesome! Now we're almost done. The only thing
left are the colors. The main tool we'll be using is the Fill Tool. To fill an area with the color
select a color in the palette window and just click around the area you'd like. For starters,
let's fill the skin first. We're gonna do this to all 15 frames. I usually fill the drawings
one color at a time so in this example right here I'm filling the skin for all the drawings
before proceeding to the clothes, etc. For me, it's faster to do it this way because you don't
have to move your mouse all over the place to change the color and fill. You only need to change
colors when you're finished filling one part of the drawing for all frames. One thing you have to
look out for is the gaps within the lines because the fills can mistakenly leak out of places you
don't want that specific color in. So just double check your drawings just to make sure. The fill
tool is great for filling in large areas but it's not a perfect tool. If we zoom in right here, you
can see there are some very small unfilled parts. To rectify this, we are going to use another tool
called Paint Brush Tool, not to be mistaken with the Brush Tool. I know it's very confusing. So the
paintbrush tool is like a fill tool but freehand. So instead of clicking on the area you'd like to
fill you have to draw freehand to fill something with color. Which is really good for nooks and
crannies like this because it won't draw over the lines like the brush tool does. So we have
to do this on all the frames. Double-check any corners for any unfilled gaps and fill it
using the Paintbrush Tool. Here we are guys we've created a full colored animation! Let's play
it in a loop to see what it looks like. [Music] Ah beautiful! Now you know how to animate frame
by frame but did you know there's another way to animate in OpenToonz? So if you click this
video right here I will show you how to do it!
