Water FX Animation: Colouring Process + Tutorial

Hey, It's Kam!

I am very proud to share my water FX animation with you all!

 In this post I wanted to go talk about the process I went through to colour it, as from what I've seen its not a common technique used, but it works pretty efficiently if you need to colour a larger area of paper in a pinch! Just be mentally ready to sacrifice a few pencil crayons in the process!

I would like to note that the capture taken of the animation does not give the colour of the water true justice. Due to time constraints and tech errors it's the best capture I have. If I remember I will attach another image here so you can get a better look at the final product.

I learned about this technique back in middle school, our art class was not well funded at all and so they taught us what I like to call "the poor man's pastels." 

What I love about this technique is that soft and vibrant pastel vibe you get from it. I will say that if you own pastels it's probably your best choice to colour with that instead, I'm just not going to buy them any time soon and so I'll still be using this knock off technique!

 Lets get started!

...Even though I just told you a better way of doing this!?

Coloring Process:

You will need:

• Pencil Crayons: If you are trying this technique for the first time I recommend some cheap Crayola ones, but I prefer to use softer lead like in my old, beaten up Prisma Colors to better achieve the soft look we are aiming for. 
• Pencil sharpener: Your pencil crayons are going to get super dull, super fast!
• Utility knife or a sharp pair of scissors: the utility knife is more efficient and is more precise than the scissors, but either can be used. 
• Tissues: It's important that this material is soft. Do not use toilet paper or paper towel as they are more rough and textured. 

 Instructions:

1. Whatever you are about to colour, darken the lines on it. If the lines are too light they will disappear when we go to smudge the pencil crayons.
2. Take your utility knife and carefully (please be careful) shave the lead of the pencil crayon over the area you would like to colour on the page. You want the shavings as tiny as possible. If they are chunky it will scratch the page and that's the last thing we want :(
3. Once you've accumulated enough shavings, take your tissue and fold it once or twice, then gently rub the shavings into the paper. for the softest effect, go in light circles. I also find that following a contour or certain direction looks really nice too. The harder you press the more pigmented it will be but proceed with caution: If you press harder there is more potential for the lead to scratch the paper, If this happens there's not much you can do. Just play with that texture and feel it out, its just as cool! 
4. Wipe away excess shavings. Make sure you aren't rubbing this in when you do. This part is quite messy so be prepared!
5. Rinse and repeat with different colours, try to blend them and experiment until you get your desired look. 
6. Now pay your respects to all the pencil crayons that you just killed colouring in all that! Goodbye teal, goodbye yellow, I'll miss you dearly!

Important notes:

• It's always good to have a test paper to see which colours show up most effectively. Some will look more pigmented than others and will require less shaving. If a colour is too light and you can't push the colour to be more pigmented than it its probably not worth your effort trying to apply that to the page.
• An eraser is almost futile, it may pick up some colour, but it wont completely vanquish it. If you are using a regular eraser it ill leave edges that may be hard to blend out again. 
• Don't get any wood from the pencil crayon in there when shaving the lead, it will ruin it. 
• Don't try to micro control the lead, its hard and it looks better when its more loose.
• For best effects, use a different tissue for each colour (it gets muddy looking otherwise) and change it out if it starts to get shredded up. 
• Practice makes perfect! Right now it may not seem efficient to you, but once you've figured it out and worked out how to avoid the common problems it becomes way easier to do. And if you don't get the hang of it, that's ok! Those pastels are waiting for you!

And that concludes my tutorial! Fingers crossed that it actually makes sense! 
Thank you for reading this far,

Stay tuned!