Animation of the characters and props ends in the clean-up phase. The next stage is to add colour to the scene. Colour palettes for a scene are picked from the character model sheets and environment designs. Prop colours are chosen to keep in mind the colour scheme of that particular sequence. Solid colour is filled into all drawings frame-by-frame. Colour palettes are unique to every scene and each swatch is labelled with the corresponding object. This makes it easy for any new animator to understand which colour was used where. A few important aspects that we had to keep in mind in this stage were -
- All stroke paths in the clean-up animation must ensure that closed shapes are formed. Closed shapes allow colourists to fill colour easily.
- Pick one colour at a time and fill the colour in all frames of the scene before proceeding to the next colour. This helps manage and keep track of completed work.
- Clean-up animation and colour must be on different layers. This avoids any difficulties when the colourist makes a mistake.