Animation from Pencils to Pixels

There are still some subtle little finessing techniques that will make the whole process much easier for you as the animator and much more believable for the audience. This chapter covers a few finessing techniques that I have always found most valuable.

Tracebacks

A traceback is where an animator or assistant animator traces several identical versions of a same static drawing, to give the illusion of life to that drawing even though it actually doesn’t move. Tracebacks are also employed when part of a key drawing is moving relative to a previous drawing but the rest of it needs to remain static. For example, where the head of a lamp is moving but the rest of it remains static from key to key, the static part of the second key would be traced ...