Animation questions for what's used today

[jcoolarts]

So I got a lightpad 3 weeks ago and fiddled a bit with it, and then I pulled an all nighter and made this >
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/ ... 67pil3.gif" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not the best I know, but what really got me is having to photograph the background behind the tracing paper.
In today's world of 2d Animation, if I want to hand paint or draw a background, as well as the character lines and colors traditionally, how would I accomplish this?
I understand how it worked with cells, but I know they're not used anymore.

Is this doable in tvpaint?

[slowtiger]

Looks like you used a video camera to grab your animation on paper. While this is good enougfh for a pencil test, a scanner is recommended for a real good line quality.

TVP has a great tool named "scan cleaner" which converts the light parts of a scan into transparent, so your animation can be combined with any background.

[jcoolarts]

It was a small hand held camera on a mini tripod
I'm working on getting one peace of equipment at a time, a scanner isn't far off ^

That sounds really usefull, I'll explore it's functionality in the demo version ^^

[User767]

I still use cels. They are still used.

If that's what you want to do, you could get a registration bar, for one. That's cheap, and will help. You can just tape one on to your lightbox.

A bunch of frames from a still camera works too. Scanning into TVPaint is probably the better thing to do. You can align to registration holes and all too. Where on the planet are you (country?) There are a number of animation suppliers out there.

In TVPaint, you just draw on different 'layers'. Very doable, it's sort of like an electronic stack of cels. Imported images work the same way. Easy to deal with.