User Guide

Academic Courseware: Chapter 3
Joyce Ryan
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Coloring your characters
Corel Painter offers an almost unlimited number of options to paint your
characters. Traditionally, animators inked their drawing onto clear
celluloid or acetate sheets called “cels.” These were inked on the front,
then turned over and filled in with special cel vinyl paint on the back.
This technique gave a flat matte finish to the paint and kept the ink line
intact. Color paints had to be mixed in quantity to assure not running
out. Remixing could cause the colors to shift before all the cels were
painted. Each color was labeled and keyed to a master painting for
reference. Many people were required to paint and, again, they all had to
stay on model. Corel Painter makes it easy to both “paint cels” and mix,
store and label your colors.
Create a custom color palette for painting your characters
1 On the Color Sets palette, click the palette menu arrow, and choose
New Empty Color Set.
2 On the Colors palette, choose a color from the Standard Colors or the
Small Colors display (the Hue Ring or the hue indicator). On the
Color Sets palette, click the Add Color To Color Set button.
3 On the Color Sets palette, double-click the color to get the Set Color
Name dialog box. Name each color to correspond to parts of your
character: “face,” “teeth,” “eyes,” “hair,” etc. To display the color
name, choose Display Name from the Color Sets palette menu.
4 Save your color set with the name of your character by choosing Save
Color Set from the palette menu. Anyone who has to paint the “cels”
now has the correct colors with which to paint the character.
5 Experiment with a variety of ways to mix your colors. Try sampling
colors from an image, using the Mixer palette and the Color Info
palette. There is no right or wrong method. Use the technique that
best fits your personal workflow.
Practice cel painting in Corel Painter
Cel painting is no longer limited to flat color. With the advent
of Paint programs like Corel Painter, the range of techniques
used to paint cels is limited only by your imagination.
Experiment with different styles to give your work a unique
look and feel.
1 Open a new file and copy one of your cleaned-up characters to the
file. Save the file and call it ColorRef.rif.
2 Drop the copied layer to the canvas.
Make a palette of colors that is
specific for the job, so you can stay
consistent from frame to frame. You
don’t want your characters changing
colors! You may also have an assistant
helping you, who will be working on
the same storyboard and will need to
use your palette.