why do the moving parts of cartoons have a slightly different color? Like if a car for is about to open, it will be a slightly different shade of color until it opens. Then when it’s closed/done moving independently, its color matches the rest of the car.
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Any links showing this? Never noticed it before.
Cartoon animation frames used to be drawn on clear sheets of celluloid. To save on time and labor, background illustrations, including any objects that arent moving, would remain unchanged with any action/movement being drawn onto higher layers.
When part of a stationary object moves, the drawings are on a different layer above the rest of the object. Light travels through the layers above the object *twice* before it reaches the camera doubling the amount of interference from the only *nearly* transparent celluloid. Thus, even when using the same color paint, objects with the same color will look like a more color saturated hue the further down the stack they are, and top layers will look lighter or washed out by comparison.
This was super apparent in the old Scooby Doo cartoons. Secret door? Not very secret since it was obviously a different color.
In addition to the other comments, especially in regards to the one about making thing stand out, it doesn’t HAVE to be like that, but it does help. I can’t remember what show it comes from but there’s a character who comments on a bit of rock that’s obviously an animation cell, so it must be some kind of pitfall trap, only for the trap to actually be part of the background.
(https://youtu.be/il8bP4ZS4Vc)
Painting starts at around 4min.
The difference materials alone makes it difficult to match perfectly. Often the cel is shiny while the backbrounds are matte paintings. Also for the purpose of consistency and speed, cels are often painted in broad, flat color blocks, which can contrast the more painterly backgrounds.
Furthermore, as someone in the video mentioned, the animated subject is often made to stand out on purpose.
Those are animation cels. Rather than have the animator draw the background for each frame, they instead have one background sheet, and then a series of celluloid sheets with the movements of foreground objects.
Because of the different techniques for creating celluloid sheets, colour matching between the background and foreground was not perfect. This is why you can tell when something is going to be a moving object based on its colours.
Imagine having a realistic painting as a background and animating your characters on top of it. Anything that moves means it’s going to be animated, and it’s a lot harder to animate a realistic painting than a simpler cartoon.
Unfortunately it can kinda spoil you, if you see something that’s coloured more vibrantly with a stronger outline I’m the background you can be almost certain it’ll move at some point.
I’m no pro but I remember hearing people like Seth MacFarlane and Butch Hartman say they worked as background designers/animators and they would just pass things on when they were finished. In doing so the creative styles are never the same (ie MacFarlane to Hartman) resulting in different looks and as for color matching sometimes the process taken is just good enough for progress because it’s meant for children most times.
Wow I’ve always wondered this. Always knew what was coming in older cartoons since the particular objects looked so different!
If I can ask a tangential question, why do cartoon vehicles always roll backward a little before moving forward? Fred Flintstone’s car, the Mystery Machine. They all do that.
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