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Hello Everybody! I hope you are having a great day (and that I am writing my quastion in a good place)

I am producing my short, and I am looking for some ways for making my life easier I am geting to the texturing stage, I am going for an hand drawn/graphite illustration. Here is a final render of a character: To get such an effect I am starting with a clean lineart and creating masks as here: And then I am adding textures, shadows and pencil lineart. All by hand, which I find quite charming but not neccarily effective (and for sure time-consuming). I am wondering about ways of saving some work. I thought about reusing clean lineart from cleanup stage and transform it into pencile-like lineart. After a while playing with different effects I got to this:

But the line is containing white as well: I feel like it is a stupid problem but I couldn't find a way to get just a black colour with an aplha insead of black with white parts. Here is what's I used: So... my question is how to get off of the whites in the line? At the stage of creating a line. (not by blending mode of the layer)
And if by any chance somebody has a thought how to make some part of my texturing process easier I would love to hear your ideas!

Thanks for reading this post and for any advices

Image > Scan Cleaner changes all white to transparent.

Several FX only work with black and white pixels, but not with black on transparent. I duplicate my line art, merge with an all-white layer, apply the FX, and use Scan Cleaner to get black line on transparent again. I think this should be possible to automate via a George script, but that's beyond my knowledge. Anyone?

Thank you very much! Haha, I love how easy is that. (And I feel a bit ashamed for not knowing it).

I simpy used the effest Scan Cleaner B&W and its working.

That's mean that my main problem is solved

You write

And then I am adding textures, shadows and pencil lineart. All by hand, which I find quite charming but not neccarily effective (and for sure time-consuming). I am wondering about ways of saving some work.

Something that comes to mind for the texture part of that (and which also smoothes the texture a bit from frame-to-frame) is how Sandra Fierlinger works in certain situations as described by Paul Fierlinger in his larger entry further down (the 10 Dec 2014, 10:37 one - he has several contributions in that thread) in the post "SHRINK and STRETCH of a layer" at https://www.tvpaint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=8726. Sandra's workflow - when appropriate - is to paint every third frame and then shrink and stretch the layer with interpolation, and minor tidy-up if needed. It might be applicable to your workflow... for example, perhaps for the hair - or more likely - for some of the shadows.

Thank you John for the suggestion. I wasn't aware that interpolation is also aviable in TVPaint. I've started using TVPaint 6 years ago and know I'm starting to learn about its possibilities. Better letter then never


'

KasiaKrysia wrote: ↑02 Mar 2021, 15:57 ... I wasn't aware that interpolation is also aviable in TVPaint.

Be aware, interpolation here means "crossfading" so in most cases you don't really want this.

Tvpaint can not actually interpolate drawings.

Thank you Peter for pointing that out. Saddly it is true, but I'm currently working on using more loops while appling textures and shodows, and it is somehow faster then doing all frame separately.

But I've discovered (ha!) that using ENTER (re-apply) is coping every action, not only transformation as I thought till yeasterday. It may be very usefull while texturing more static elements, coping the same line but with diffrent configuration of brush stamps. I thought of create some handy custom panel, with comends for going to next frame and re-appling the previous action, but I could not find this among options of creating new action. I would be grateful for pointing where can I find it (if sth like exist).

Here is some progres with the previously uploded shot, for those who are interested. Any thoughts are very welcome
(I am not sure if its a proper place to submit such stuff, sorry if I am making needless mess.)

KasiaKrysia wrote: ↑12 Mar 2021, 15:13 Here is some progres with the previously uploded shot, for those who are interested. Any thoughts are very welcome
(I am not sure if its a proper place to submit such stuff, sorry if I am making needless mess.)

That's lovely ! Thank you for sharing your work.

This looks crazy good

Thank you a lot for those kind words. I'm working on it for quite a while so it's reasuring that you (as people of industry) find it appeling

To be clear, I've should mentioned that I'm directing this film and rough animation and cleanup ware made by my wonderful coworkers (at these exact shots).

I agree, its a very nice design.
Great acting and i love the look of the clouds.
excellent work.

If you don't mind some critique, i think the shadows on the first character move a bit too erratic.
(its a boring habit of mine to always find some fault with everything... sorry i do really appreciate the work!)

Thank you Peter for sharing your thoughts. And no need to be sorry, pointing out the weak points is the most helpful!

Yeah, there is an issue with the shadow. Personaly I am very used to erratic texture in animation and it's to my liking. But it's supposed to target children and adolescents, I guess it maybe be irrirating for those young eyes used to 60fps I need to make some test with inerpolating shadows at static elements, to calm down this effect (and to save some work )

I don't mind erratic either
and with the hair or cloth i think this effect is o.k.
but in the parts that supposed to have a solid surface, like skin and arms, that shadow movement becomes distracting especially because the lines and animation are so controlled and tight.

There's several solutions to this. A possible approach that I use is to have a dedicated animated shadow layer, which acts as a mask for a layer with animated shadow texture. The "animation" in this case is slow x-dissolves. Those are done easily in TVP by just stretching a layer with interpolation on. To avoid easy to spot repetition one can have two or three shadow layers of different lengths on repeat.