Ink and Paint

I shot this picture during my time studying in the Intro to Animation program at UCF back in Spring 2011. I was hand inking and painting the cells that dealt with the walking sequence of my Dodo Bird character. The cells in the entire sequence amount to 34 frames, 17 of which are shown in the image. The entire process to do it proved to be very time consuming as it required special attention to detail. I first began the procedure by cutting the 11.5 by 8 inch cells in half in order to match the size of my paper drawings. I then placed the cells over the drawings and traced over the lines with a big sharpie pen. I realized that certain aspects of the pencil drawing had to be somewhat altered in order for the cell drawing to be better defined and cleaned up. After the cells were outlined I then flipped over the cells in order to paint them. If you think about it the process is a cruder version of what we do now in Photoshop, where we are using two layers to create an image. The background will comprise of the colors while the foreground will contain the outline that will be on top of the colors. At the time of painting I used grey, orange, and white as the basic colors for the bird since that was the original color scheme back then. Newspapers were placed below my cells to make sure the paint did not stain the carpeted floor!