Here’s the rest of the first story.

This was all a part of a broader research project on the Hubleys, of which the @ani-obsessive.bsky.social substack was an excellent resource.

To copy this effect, I animated a rough in flash, and cleaned up the drawings in photoshop, manually painting in the transparencies with a big faux watercolor brush, leaving in the imperfections. I then composited these in after effects and daVinci resolve using a film emulator.

The Hubleys used a unique process wherein the portions of an image meant to be transparent were filled in with black paint. They then shot the multiple layers of animation on the same reel of film. A composite the layers would appear once the film was developed and was much cheaper than using cels.