Painting multiple layers at once – Animation cell painting?

GF
Posted By
george_f_cox
Sep 13, 2006
Views
1440
Replies
4
Status
Closed
Hello all

I’m new to this forum, so please be gentle! I’ve been a Photoshop user since version 1.5… love it.

Anyway, I am currently working on an animation project requiring me to paint individual hand drawn & scanned frames. I’ve been using "Toon Boom" to paint the cells largely due to its ability to paint multiple frames at the same time. Basically, it allows you to use a special tool that will fill all closed areas "underneath" the area on the individual cell that you click on. So for instance, if you are trying to fill the face of a character with his flesh color, you click in the face area on one cell and any closed areas beneath it are filled with the same color. Obviously, this saves LOTS of time because you don’t need to fill every frame individually – it does a lot of the work for you providing the area you’re trying to fill doesn’t move much and lines up.

So my question is, if I have scanned an animation sequence where each frame is a different layer in a Photoshop document, is there a way to do a fill on multiple layers, emulating the effect I described above in Toon Boom? I’ve tried searching everywhere for an answer to this with no luck. Help!

Thanks!

-George

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CN
Cybernetic Nomad
Sep 13, 2006
No. You can only work on one layer at a time.

BTW, IMHO ToonBoom is ideally suited for coloring animation, I mean it’s exctly what it was made for. Why would you want to use Photoshop (a software whose primary purpose is entirely different) instead?
GF
george_f_cox
Sep 14, 2006
Thanks for your response "Cybernetic Nomad".

To answer your question, plainly put, I just don’t care for the Toon Boom program very much for starters. Obviously, yes – it’s made specifically for what I’m doing, but honestly it runs rather clunkily and is not very intuitive in my opinion – and I have problems like hot keys working very sporadically. I realize that PS may not be the best solution, but since I know it so well and it works so well, I thought if I could use Photoshop I would rather do that. Also, the guy that is assembling the animation is doing it in After Effects, and if I had a layered file from PS he says it would be easier to import it.

Again, thanks for your answer!

-George
S
SteveV
Sep 14, 2006
Put it to feature requests, it has an application and might broaden the usage of Photoshop.
CN
Cybernetic Nomad
Sep 14, 2006
You could also try CTP software: <http://www.cratersoftware.com/> (note I have no affiliation with the company)

I’d also suggest that animation colouring softwares output in a variety of formats, many of which can easily be imported into AE if need be.

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