x-sheet workflow

[BenEcosse]

+1

[Sewie]

In that case I don't see why you need to go to the x-sheet. If your reasoning is to color just one instance of a frame and have the colors appear on all other instances, there is a very useful plugin for this in the youngmonkey collection (Marker/Tracker).
EDIT: This plugin also numbers each drawing.

Paul, I don't think I understand... what excactly does this plugin do?
Can you post a screenshot, perhaps?

[Paul Fierlinger]

There's not much to show so I'll explain the process:
You highlight the frames you want numbered (therefore also marked) usually an entire layer once you have finished animating. A small red number will appear in your top left corner. Then say you want to pick frames 5 to 10 and paste them again in that layer and maybe 2 or 3 more times in different places.

Once you are done you click on the tool button and drag left (I think) while you hold the mouse button down and this will create a replica of your animation layer, except there will be no images and any frame that is a repeat (also called instance) will have a long red slash drawn through it. Now you start coloring except whenever you come to a frame with a slash you don't color because it means you have already done that.

Once you have finished you hit the Tracker button, which will replace all the slashed frames with the appropriate colors and you are done. If you want to get rid of the numbers, you press a button and they all get erased at the same time.

But this plugin does a few other things. For instance if you want to isolate all your original frames without the instances, it will find these and put them on a new layer for you so you can move these to another layer or even another project and arrange them in a totally new way, including instances ... there's more stuff like that. If you need to insert new inbetweens you can do that at any time and mark it, which means that the new frame will get the next consecutive number in that layer. Each new number is just an address of a new original drawing and wherever that drawing appears within that layer you won't have to color it again.

As often is the case, this is not as complicated as it may sound once you do it. The plugin has been updated to work with TVP 9 Pro.

[Sewie]

That sounds like a very usefull tool! Thanks for elaborating, Paul.

[Paul Fierlinger]

You're welcome. Some of us here have been using it even before Mirage shimmered upon the desert.