Okay, I'm going to be quick here but I rather urgently need some help with regard to assembling animation.
All I need is a quick and easy (or as quick and easy as anyone here knows) way of compositing one layer of animation over a background. All I'm saying is just the simplest form of having a hold on a background layer, whilst proceeding frames on a layer on top, no ink/paint either, just rough pencils.
Here is a video that shows what I mean. I have backgrounds drawn, and am in the process of animating moving elements, I just need to know how to flatten it all and make the drawn layers transparent so the background shows through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yke6nhJAlxY&feature=related
thanks
Are you working in Flash or something else?
Well, that's the thing, I'm working on paper. So I don't know how best to assemble it digitally, is what I'm saying. So, I've got the background scanned so far, and I want to scan the animation layer so it's transparent (like multiply layer effect in photoshop) I was just asking the best way to assemble it as one video really.
So, I can work in anything you suggest really, the computers I'm using have CS3 package and toonboom (v4).
This is easily done in ToonBoom Studio version 4.0 using the Import and Vectorize command.
Scan your animation artwork on pegs so it's in registration. You should scan your artwork at 300 dpi so it will have the least amount of image break-up when it is vectorized. Save the BG artwork and the animation drawings in separate folders.
Open a new project in ToonBoom.
Create at least two layers on the X-sheet.
Click on the X-sheet layer that you want to bring your animation in to. Select Import and Vectorize. Navigate to the folder where you scanned animation drawings are . Select all the images in the folder and click Open.
Then the Import and Vectorize Settings window will open . Select Vectorization Type: Black and White. No Filter . Threshold 70% (you may need to play around with these settings to get the Threshold or the Filtering level just right ) . Click on Preview to see a preview of what the imported and vectorized image will look like. If it looks good to you then go ahead and click OK .
All the images from the folder will be imported and vectorized.
Now they are transparent images and can be overlayed on top of a BG image . You may select the lines of the vectorized images to change the colors of the lines if you want.
Look at the ToonBoom Studio Help Menu under Importing Artwork for more details.
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Another option in the ToonBoom Studio "Import & Vectorize" settings is to bring in your scanned images "with Texture" , which allows you to bring your images in with the "sketchiness" of the pencil line intact .
It is a good idea to Batch process the bitmap scans through Photoshop first to strip out all the white pixels of the paper from the scanned image , leaving just the lines , with a transparent alpha channel on the rest of the drawing. This allows you to bring in the images with texture to the line quality, but the rest of the image will be transparent so you can work with multiple layers over a BG .
There's a tutorial on how to do that:
Scanning and Importing bitmap images into ToonBoom Studio with transparency
I don't know if you're using a scanner or photographing you animation, but you can photograph them with a light box.
Put your bg down and put your animation overtop and then turn on the light box and photograph it like that.
That's the lowest of the low tech way to do it.
http://ben-reynolds.com
Animation and Design