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In many cases you can shortcut the need to manually opaque your frames.
See if this works for you:

1. Don't opaque your drawing. Instead, paint it with your final brush. If the brush is transparent, the background will show.
2. duplicate that paint layer, and turn the visibility of the top copy off.
3. turn the bottom layer's stencil on.
4. grab the rectangle fill tool, and select a color you would normally opaque with (white?)
5. draw a rectangle around the whole frame on the bottom copy of your paint layer > the paint will get filled with a degree of the opaque paint.
6. Press Enter as many times as needed till you reach the degree of opaqueness you're happy with.
7. Bring up the FX stack > Keying > alpha control.
8. Turn the visibility of the top layer on, and the stencil of the bottom layer off (important)
9. play with increasing the Skrink value and with the middle grey arrow in the histogram (shift it rightward or leftward), till you see the opaque fringes disappear.

now, this might seem laborious for a single frame, but once you apply this to all frames on a layer you find that it saves you much time, not having to opaque on first pass, and then paint on 2nd pass - you do the 2nd pass only.

If you struggle following these steps, I can make a video for you.

malcooning wrote:In many cases you can shortcut the need to manually opaque your frames.
See if this works for you:

1. Don't opaque your drawing. Instead, paint it with your final brush. If the brush is transparent, the background will show.
2. duplicate that paint layer, and turn the visibility of the top copy off.
3. turn the bottom layer's stencil on.
4. grab the rectangle fill tool, and select a color you would normally opaque with (white?)
5. draw a rectangle around the whole frame on the bottom copy of your paint layer > the paint will get filled with a degree of the opaque paint.
6. Press Enter as many times as needed till you reach the degree of opaqueness you're happy with.
7. Bring up the FX stack > Keying > alpha control.
8. Turn the visibility of the top layer on, and the stencil of the bottom layer off (important)
9. play with increasing the Skrink value and with the middle grey arrow in the histogram (shift it rightward or leftward), till you see the opaque fringes disappear.

now, this might seem laborious for a single frame, but once you apply this to all frames on a layer you find that it saves you much time, not having to opaque on first pass, and then paint on 2nd pass - you do the 2nd pass only.

If you struggle following these steps, I can make a video for you.

i can't follow the reasoning behind your step 6
Couldn't you just do
1.
2.
and then: use the FX stack > Keying > alpha control Gain function on the copy of the transparently colored layer
in order to perfectly eleminate the opacity.
finally use the alpha lock (enable preserve transparency) to paint the layer in the right background color(white) ?

Peter Wassink wrote:i can't follow the reasoning behind your step 6
Couldn't you just do
1.
2.
and then: use the FX stack > Keying > alpha control Gain function on the copy of the transparently colored layer
in order to perfectly eleminate the opacity.
finally use the alpha lock (enable preserve transparency) to paint the layer in the right background color(white) ?

It's indeed another option. Though I don't find that it involves less operations than the method with re-applying the rectangle fill (multiple Enter). I find both solutions reach the same result. I think that generally, if my layer has a few frames, I'll quickly use the Enter key. If my layer is long I'll use the alpha control.

This is very interesting. Maybe I will try it someday when I have the time off. I do not master all the technical effects that TVP has to offer. I think being a painter, I enjoy doing it by hand but anything is better than painting cells.
Thanks guys. Continue........

Very interesting techniques, all of you! I'll give these a go in the next few nights, and get back to you..!
C

This was just released for the public and I thought those who still might be interested in the making of Tulip might want to watch it. It's our Q&A session on stage at the Roger Ebert Festival last year in Champaign, Illinois.

Length: 61:13 View: 68 Author: Ebertfest

Q&A session following the screening of the film My Dog Tulip at Ebertfest 2011 Moderator: Matt Zoller Seitz Special Guests: Paul Fierlinger (director / animator / writer) and Sandra Schuette Fierlinger (director / color designer / paint animator) Video produced by Illini Film and Video

Tags: Roger Ebert Ebertfest Film Festival Chaz Ebert My Dog Tulip Matt Zoller Seitz Paul Fierlinger Sandra Shuette Fierlinger animation Roger Ebert (Film Writer)
http://myactionvideos.com/ebertfest-201 ... -qanda-439" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;