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As we move on to the production roles of animation, we start to enter waters that have always had me on guard. Especially when it comes to being a clean-up artist. I think the amount of skill and passion it takes to be a 2D clean-up artist is quite incredible and from all the experience I’ve heard about from professionals in the industry who have taken the time to visit Central Saint Martins to talk to us about the clean-up process, it seems that I would be right with the assumption.
It takes a lot of discipline to ground oneself and draw characters designed and animated by other people and contribute such a significant part to the finished look of the animation. I’d never before this term gotten the opportunity to clean up anything properly. Just one animation I did in my undergrad but back then I wasn’t really aware of how to do it precisely. This November I cleaned up my animated short for the Reflections of Reality project and I got better acquainted with inbetweening.
Like writing for animation, but on a much bigger and more precise scale, the creative mind and understanding of 3D form are essential to the role of a clean-up artist. Now that the roles of a breakdown artist, an inbetweener, and a clean-up artist almost entirely fall upon the clean-up artist, knowledge of the structure and timing of animation are just as important as the structure and timing of oneself with their craft.
One animated film I’ve really looked up to with the clean-up, colouring, and lighting process is Klaus (2019). The various behind the scene shots we have gotten from the animators right from the character design to the process of lighting up the film have been very interesting to explore and almost five years later, I still continue to find things about the clean-up process in that movie that makes me want to explore the field more. Here’s an example of a shot breakdown from Klaus.
Working on my film this month made me realise that with a little more time and a little more guidance, clean-up is something I would really enjoy exploring in the future. Also this quote from clean-up artist Todd Jacobsen,1
“The little fire inside me that I felt while I was working on the film gets stoked once again, and it makes me walk a little taller knowing that I was an element of a moment in time that can’t be explained so easily.”
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