Clean-up is an essential part of the animation process where rough animation drawings are refined into final drawings. In traditional animation, rough animations are first drawn loosely and then cleaned up by animators or clean-up artists. Clean-up artists follow the animator's intentions, staying true to performance while drawing final lines and completing additional drawings to finish shots, which usually takes twice as long as rough animation. Now, clean-up can also be done digitally.

1. Animation

2. Abbreviations and Terms
Cleanup|Animation
Dope Sheet or X-sheet - the exposure sheet on which frame numbers, dialog and drawings numbers
are written.
Dial - dialog
Bal - the "balance", whatever is not indicated by a separate chart. (ie: a key has a chart for "Right
arm" - everything that is not the right arm is the balance).
T/B - Traceback ( a drawing traced back from the previous one)
Ruff - Rough animation drawing Folo- follow
Reg- Register the character to the background or other animation drawings)
BG - background
TP- Top Pegged Seps- color separations for ink and paint (tone mattes,rouge on cheeks etc.

3. Cleanup
Cleanup|Animation
Clean-up is an essential part of the animation process. Learn how to refine your roughs, and why you should do it
in the first place!

4. Cleanup|Animation

5. Cleanup|Animation
Clean-up is a part of the workflow in the production of hand-drawn animation.
In traditional animation, the first drawings are called "roughs" or "rough animation" because they are often
done in a very loose fashion. If the animation is successfully pencil tested and approved by the director, clean
versions of the drawings have to be done. In larger studios, this task is given to the animator's assistant, or, in
a more specialised setting, to a clean-up-artist. The artist doing the clean-ups is responsible for the final line
and finished look of the drawn character or object.
Clean-up animation is the process of creating the final drawings you see in the finished film. It does not
necessarily mean a "clean" fine line. The artist, usually a team of artists, uses key drawings and animation
charts from the animator, making it appear as though one artist has created the whole film. The clean-up
artists will follow the intentions of the animators and stay true to performance and movement.
Clean-up is generally done on a new sheet of paper. They can be done on the same sheet as the rough
animation if this was done with a "non-copy blue" pencil. This certain tone of blue will be invisible
to photocopying machines, and can be filtered out by scanners. The finished animation will be copied
on cels or transferred into a computer for further processing.
On average, clean-up usually takes twice as long as the rough animation because of the precision and extra
drawings that are required to complete a shot.
Nowadays, clean-up animation can be done digitally via graphics tablet and software.

6. Cleanup|Animation

7. Cleanup|Animation

8. Cleanup|Animation

9. Cleanup|Animation

10. Cleanup|Animation

11. Cleanup|Animation