Tools Of The Trade: Gitanjali Rao on Corel Painter’s Frame Stacks

Coming from the times of 35 mm, this was not a problem for me. I used it to paint progressively frame by frame. Unlike paint on glass, here you could go back and put in-betweens or delete extra frames.

On Bombay Rose, I used the software to make the entire animatic as well as key colored frames. I do not paint backgrounds myself but I do paint the characters. I painted one frame in every shot of the film — all the characters and their lighting — and this was followed by the team, frame by frame. I did it all on Painter.

However the studio artists, when given a choice between using Painter and Adobe Photoshop for the painted animation, chose Photoshop for its easy interface. Apart from the fact that the Adobe interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, one can work on layers in Photoshop as well as view the timeline in frames at the bottom of the screen. Navigating through countless frames becomes easy.

Painter does not have a timeline to view your frames. You need to go to the menu each time to choose your frame. This can get very time consuming. So Painter works for experts in animation, but Photoshop works for beginners as well.

I continued my work on Painter throughout the film and the studio artists simulated the same effect in Photoshop. This workflow presented no difficulties as the common format used was PSD. I used only one brush: soft charcoal with 100% opacity. This brush had to be simulated in Photoshop but it worked through the film.

Having learnt animation during the 35 mm times, I depend less on the software and more on my own skill. Photoshop has now developed excellent brushes that match Painter, but Painter brushes are lighter and move faster and do not freeze when you paint furiously, because the software is built light. Your images remain light and I prefer that quality as it lets me paint intuitively with my speed. It may not allow me to go back much in history but I do not need to.

It’s a pity that Corel has been neglecting to develop Frame Stacks. It has not changed or been upgraded much — in fact, it has deteriorated. The onion skin feature does not work in my latest version (2019). Having checked on forums, I believe it is a common complaint and not very well addressed by Corel. I wish Corel would develop Painter as well as they have developed Corel Draw.