Tutorial: The Colouring Process

The colouring process is the key to making Pups look like Pups.

It mostly involves exporting the line work gifs from flash into Photoshop. I'm using a walk cycle Will worked on to show the process.

We start off opening the gif in Photoshop. Create a new layer beneath the animation layers. Fill this layer in grey with the fill tool.

Next we put all the animation layers on Multiply. You know this is working correctly when you see the grey layer becomes visible beneath the animation layers, like the image to the left.

Then create a Group above the grey layer but below the animation layers and we call this "The White." Now for each frame of animation we create a new layer within the folder. Use the magic wand tool, with the tolerance at about 150, and select the outside of the image. Then with the magic wand still equipped, right click and select "Select Inverse." then fill this white. continue to do this until each frame is filled white like the gif below.

The reason we do this is so backgrounds can be put behind the animation layers and it wont interfere with the colour work. The grey layer is just a stand in until the backgrounds can be added.

Now we close up "The White" group, click the arrow on the group layer and it'll close, and create a new group above "The White." We call this group "Colour." In the group we create a new layer for each frame of animation, like we did with the white. This time though we use the brush tool and the oval brush that you should have been given to hand colour each frame, using the reference sheet given to know what colours to use. You can ether colour each piece at a time and go back through to colour another part, for example I have gone through once to colour Jenny's hair first and then gone through again to colour the coat, or just colour her all in one go for each frame until you're done. Do whatever you feel is best for you. Keep going until it ends up like the gif below.

(Quality slightly reduce due to being in gif format)

Don't cheat! Each frame has be hand coloured each time to create the boil effect. If you cheat by using the fill tool or a similar method then the effect will be lost.

Happy colouring!