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Build a Better Mouse: Creating Cleanup Model Sheets

Animated characters have it rough. They’re pushed, prodded, pulled into and out of shape on storyboards, forced to line up on size-comparison sheets, and put through their paces on action-model sheets. Their outlines are erased, redrawn, re-erased, reworked, reviewed, and redone. Their innards are exposed, their skeletons analyzed, and their clothes removed or left as transparent shapes over their naked bodies. But even the roughest animated character can clean up their act.

Cleanup model sheets standardize surface details, line quality, and the appearance of all characters. It is the Wardrobe, Makeup, and Hairstyling Department of animation. Inconsistencies in design such as cheats must ...

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