For a period, I was honored to personally participate in the project of a professional animation production team and to play a role in this project as a coloring animator.

Here, I’ll share some of the lessons and insights I’ve learned while working on projects within this team:)

In this project, I was responsible for the coloring work of two sets of shots, and the software was TVpaint. For team work, I tried the smart coloring feature in TVpaint for the first time.

Since coloring is a mid-to-late part of the animation process, my job often involves communicating with the cleanup crew. Through this whole process, I felt that communication in collaboration was far more important than I thought, because I encountered problems in this part that I had never imagined.

For example, in the coloring guide of the previous set of shots, the color of the character’s eyelashes and upper and lower eyelids were slightly different, while in the other set of shots, I found that the color grouping was less than that of the previous shot. Finally, after reporting the problem, I got the reply that there was indeed a problem with the coloring guide of this shot. For example, there are often times when the timeline between layers cannot be correctly aligned, which can save a lot of trouble by giving feedback and communicating with the upper level in time. Avoid having to rework when errors are found in later sections.

Because this workflow is very different from the one I arranged during the LIAF project, I really felt the improvement of work efficiency in this process, which made me realize the importance of workflow structure when multiple people work together.