User Guide

Academic Courseware: Chapter 1
Joyce Ryan
2
TV layout based on a 4:3 aspect ratio indicating TV cut-off and title safe for a
standard NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) television broadcast.
Scanning for animation
If you draw your animation by hand, you will have to scan it into Corel
Painter. Your drawing should be created at the correct dimensions
(width to height) for your animation. Ten seconds of animation at 30
frames per second can translate into 300 drawings if you create one
drawing for every frame of video. It is critical to scan efficiently to
handle that volume of artwork. If you are scanning in art to use as final
renderings in your animation, you will scan at 72 dpi in RGB at 720 x
486 for NTSC video. However, if you are scanning in to trace, reference,
or make a rough pencil test of your motion, get into the habit of
scanning at 72 dpi in grayscale, so that your files are small and scan
quickly. Depending on your drawings, you may even scan them in as
black-and-white line art; the drawings will look jaggy, but if you are
only using them as reference to trace from in Corel Painter, that is all
you need. This will give you files that take up the least amount of
storage space on your computer.
A field guide or “graticule”
helps the animator plan a layout. 35-
mm film layout is based on a
proportion of 1:1.376 (known as the
Academy Ratio). This typically yields
a size of 12 x 8.72 inches. For
television, this format varies slightly.
Typically, an aspect ratio of 4:3
corresponds to the NTSC standard.
The degree to which TV cut-off crops
the field depends on the make, model,
and age of the TV set.
Tape an animation peg bar to
your scanner, so that all your drawings
are scanned in perfect alignment
(registration) to one another.