Ooh!  Yes!

What I do, is I always put the colour on its own layer.  Since TVP is bitmap based and not vector, there will be little pixel fuzzies if you use the fill tool on the same layer as the colour.  Is you put it on a separate layer, you can paint freely beneath the lineart.  Since I use sketchy lines, I mostly just paint in the colours, but if you have nice clean lineart, you can totally use the fill tool while still using a separate layer!

You just gotta set the source for the fill bucket to “front” and expand to about “2” (depending on how thick your lineart is) like so:

and it will detect any lines on all layers above it to fill in and expand that selection by 2 pixels so that there won’t be any of those fuzzies. :D

btw, I highly recommend putting your colour on its own layer.  Because if you need to change something in the lines after you’ve coloured it, it’s soooo much easier to just turn off the colour and focus on the lines again.  Plus, the light table doesn’t recognize lines against colour, so if you turn that on, it won’t be any help to you because the previous/next frame will just be a great big blob!  Bluh!

Aw thanks! :)

I honestly haven’t tried colouring animation that I’ve done traditionally first so I can’t really say for certain what your best option would be… TVP (at least the version that I have, I dunno about the newest version) doesn’t have layer modes like multiply.  If it had that, I’d say it would be the obvious choice to scan your animation right in there*, put your animation on a multiply layer and colour from that.  Buuuuut to the best of my knowledge, it does not.

Hmmm.  This is a tricky one, I mean… Personally, I’d want to clean up the traditionally done animation that was shot/scanned in right in TVP so that the lines are as clean as possible to give you the easiest colouring job.  But if you’re not as confident in using a tablet, then I can see why you’re wanting to find a way around that.  It’s easier to clean up scanned lineart in Photoshop and to colour those lines all nice-like, but if it’s animation, that’s gonna take a whiiiile.

So if you’re fine with taking your time to do it in PS, I’d say that’s your best bet.  But if you take the time to learn to be more confident in your linework in TVP, I think that’ll pay off better in the long run.  For me, doing traditional animation was mostly for the practice and really getting a feel for the actual animation techniques.  It’s the best for sketching out gestures and doing studies hands down!  But for colouring animations for a nice finished product… I feel like that’s a job that’s better done digitally.  That’s just my opinion!

*TVP does have a tool to scan/capture separate drawings into frames.  Just gotta go to Window > Video Grabber

Well it depends on if you want to do a single image or an animation!  For a single drawing, I like Photoshop waaaayyyyy better just because it has so many more tools and lines just come out nicer.  You kind have to work a bit harder to get nice lines in TVPaint.  But Photoshop is not an animation program.  It may have that option, but I cannot wrap my mind around how people are able to make character animation right in PS.  You may be able to make nicer lines, but it won’t mean anything if you can’t get the flow and emotion into the animation!

Out of all of the animation programs that I’ve played around with though, TVPaint has the best brush options if you just play around with them a bit!  Like I said, you do have to work a bit harder to get a nice clean line, but personally I prefer a bit of a sketchy line anyway.  Which is something certain other animation programs can’t give you *coughflashcough*

I think the MAIN difference though, is that anyone who’s drawn things in Photoshop knows that in order for lineart to come out looking nice and smooth, you have to make the image at least double what you would end up posting online and zoom in real close to draw.  Then you size it down once you’re done the whole thing.  With animation, you kind of only have one size to work with (or at least I do).  I work at 1280x720 and… Although it sizes down when I upload it to the internet, 1280x720 is still a pretty small size to work at… For me anyway!  Because when I do lineart in Photoshop, I usually work around 2000x2000px.

I do like making my backgrounds in Photoshop though.  Just because it has much better painting options and brushes and adjustment layers, haha. :)

(The film in question)

Totally!  I heard CalArts has started using TVPaint, so it’s possible and it looks a lot like it was.  I could be mistaken, but it looks a lot like TVP to me!

It’s done easily enough, the lines are pretty sketchy (using a pretty small pen tool I think??) so I’m guessing most of the animation was just done on one layer.  There was probably a more sketchy rough animation layer on some bits though, depending on the action.  Then just colour on a layer beneath the lines!

ALTHOUGH, please don’t think I’m dismissing this as “easy”, it’s a beautiful film and a lot more thought and hard endless work went into it than just sketchy lines and colour. :)

I’ve had a great deal of experience with both programs and since I’ve gotten used to TVPaint, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Flash unless I have to. 8)

They both have their advantages and disadvantages and certain looks to their finished products.  Flash can be really great, don’t get me wrong!  But a lot of the time it still does have that “Flash look” that a lot of people don’t like.  I don’t mind it personally, as long as it’s animated well.  But as a personal preference, I enjoy animating in TVPaint a lot more!

The first reason being: Flash is vector based and TVPaint is bitmap based.  Basically, it is sooooo muuuuch nicer to sketch in rough animations using TVPaint.  Anyone who’s used the brush tool in Flash knows how annoying it can be to sketch with.  Whereas TVP, you have all kinds of nice sketchy brushes available to you.  TVP just has a much more traditional feel to it, it’s a proper animation program.  It does have its weird little things and the tools are all different from what other programs might have, but once you figure them out, it’s like “WOW, THIS IS REALLY USEFUL WHY DON’T OTHER PROGRAMS DO THIS”

I’m more into frame by frame 2D animation.  But if you’re more into doing things quicker with a nice clean look to it, Flash (or Toon Boom!) is for you.  TVPaint is just my personal preference!

Also, just as a little side-note: TVPaint has never crashed on me.

Ever.

Just sayin’

Oohh no, that’s weird!  First of all, make sure you’re in the “Project Display” tab in the Export settings.  I’ve accidentally clicked over to one of the other ones before and was momentarily confused. *-*  Also try just restarting TVP, that sometimes works.  Or reinstall Quicktime?

I’m trying to find if there’s a way to reset your export settings to default but no luck, I’m afraid.  Hm!  Well let me know if any of these work and if they don’t then I’ll keep looking! :)

tribute27:

tvpaintanimation:

It really depends on how you want you animation to look! Toon Boom has that lovely vector look to it and this is a finished fully coloured screenshot of an animation I’m doing in TVPaint. I was dumb and made the lines super sketchy which made it harder to colour but if you put the work into…

That preview pic. Now you’re just teasing. >8C  Quick question: do you paint your backgrounds directly on TVPaint, or do you import them?

Hahaha ;P

I paint my backgrounds in Photoshop just because that’s what I’m more used to but you can totally paint in TVPaint too if you play with the brushes enough!

It really depends on how you want you animation to look!  Toon Boom has that lovely vector look to it and this is a finished fully coloured screenshot of an animation I’m doing in TVPaint.  I was dumb and made the lines super sketchy which made it harder to colour but if you put the work into it, you can make it look however you want.  Although I did cheat a bit and did the bg in Photoshop and shadows in After Effects haha.  I’m not too familiar with Toon Boom though so I’m afraid I can’t really compare the colouring options.

If you take the time to do really clean lines, there’s a paint bucket tool that makes it easier, buuut I mostly have to colour things frame by frame.  I’ll try to do a post on colouring some time!

I just love TVPaint because it’s bitmap based and it has a lot of great brushes that are soooo much better to sketch out rough animations with than Flash or Toon Boom.  I can’t really compare it to Photoshop because PS isn’t an animation program (how people manage to animate with it is beyond me) but TVP is kind of like if PS had no lag, a great timeline, not as good editing abilities admittedly, OH! And it never crashes.

I use TVP 8.5 but I’ve been meaning to upgrade to 10 because apparently it has much better transformation tools.  :T  I honestly don’t really care about those though because if I need to transform something, I’d rather just try and redraw it.

There’s only so much I can tell you though!  To see if it’d be worth your time, I’d just download the free trial and play around with it!

@Anon 1: There certainly is!  I use it all the time!  All you have to do is when exporting your animation as a Quicktime, have it set to Mode: RGBA and Alpha: PreMult.  You also have to uncheck the Background checkbox at the bottom.  Just import it straight into After Effects and it should be all good!

@Anon 2: HAHA that tool.  That’s there so that you can quickly find out which layer you’re drawing on.  It’s like the most amazing useless tool I’ve ever SEEN.

@Anon 3: I export my animations as a .mov file with these settings.  If I’m just testing it, I export it as 720x405 but when I do my final export, I keep it at 1280x720 so that it’s all nice and HD if I choose to upload it. (:

This is my workspace!  I do have to make the window smaller for livestreams though.  (I have a couple of saved livestreams here if anyone’s interested.)

It’s a simple enough workspace… I could probably rearrange things better but this is what I’m used to now, haha.

I go into my method of animating in earlier posts on this blog, you can see them starting at “rough poses” on the sidebar!