Traditional, Hand-Drawn 2D Animation Effect - How?

[StuffMattDoes]

Hey all,

I’m trying to achieve a traditional, hand-drawn 2D animation effect. Because the animation is hand drawn, each frame is imperfect, therefore varying slightly in shape and color from one to the next. Think of very old cartoons.

My #1 inspiration is this video of 2014’s Earth Day Google Doodle.

How can I achieve this effect?

I have no problem designing the desired look in photoshop. I’m aware of and well-versed in creating and using sprites; but my problem arises because I want everything in the game to follow this animation scheme (characters, items, scenery, even GUI text). Ideally, I’d draw one set of images for everything I have and pick a specific font to be used in game. I would then slightly modify each image or text at a given interval (like adding noise/grain, modifying the shape or line integrity very slightly).

Is this unrealistic? Do I need to create multiple frames for one image for everything in the game? What about text? This seems overcomplicated for something that a seasoned developer could probably achieve easily. Not to mention, this would increase the amount of transparency .PNGs in my project by like 10 or so.

Any ideas?

I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Thank you all in advance

[tanoshimi]

Were you specifically looking at 2d sprites? If so, you could certainly add noise and grain image effects, but I don’t think you have an alternative to modify the “shape or line integrity” in any way other than redrawing different versions of each frame of animation.

If you’re looking at 3d models, I created a “scribbly outline” shader as one of the effects in my Hand-Drawn Shader Pack. You can see it in action in the “Ink” material in this demo, but that won’t work for 2D, because it relies on modifying the vertices of the model - not the image texture of a sprite.