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Description
This is a frame of animation I cleaned up from the Movie 'Lilo and Stitch 2; Stitch has a Glitch'. I was a senior clean up artist on the movie, in the Jumba and Pleakley team, and got to clean up the work of some absolutely stellar animators.

Here is a shot of the rough animation on the left, and the cleaned up version on the right.

For those who have no idea what the heck a Clean Up Artist is or does in traditional animation, here's the Wiki definition:

"Clean-up is a part of the workflow in the production of hand-drawn animation, in which "clean" versions of the "rough" animation drawings are produced.
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 shot."

I would like to add to that definition that the biggest challenge of a Clean Up Artist is to understand and keep the essence of what the animator has put into the rough, and not lose any of that essence in the clean, on-model version.
A lazy clean up artist will just trace the rough with no thought process other than making quota. A good cleanup artist will draw over the rough while always keeping in mind things like volume, mass, what drawings came before and what drawings are coming after, nuances that the animator intended, the model of the character, elements of the character that may have been left out of the rough (like an inner mouth line or something), avoiding things that will 'flatten' out the character like parallel lines, etc.

Hope you find this interesting.

Description
This is a frame of animation I cleaned up from the Movie 'Lilo and Stitch 2; Stitch has a Glitch'. I was a senior clean up artist on the movie, in the Jumba and Pleakley team, and got to clean up the work of some absolutely stellar animators.

Here is a shot of the rough animation on the left, and the cleaned up version on the right.

For those who have no idea what the heck a Clean Up Artist is or does in traditional animation, here's the Wiki definition:

"Clean-up is a part of the workflow in the production of hand-drawn animation, in which "clean" versions of the "rough" animation drawings are produced.
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 shot."

I would like to add to that definition that the biggest challenge of a Clean Up Artist is to understand and keep the essence of what the animator has put into the rough, and not lose any of that essence in the clean, on-model version.
A lazy clean up artist will just trace the rough with no thought process other than making quota. A good cleanup artist will draw over the rough while always keeping in mind things like volume, mass, what drawings came before and what drawings are coming after, nuances that the animator intended, the model of the character, elements of the character that may have been left out of the rough (like an inner mouth line or something), avoiding things that will 'flatten' out the character like parallel lines, etc.

Hope you find this interesting.