How DeeDee Brought Hand-inked Look into Digital Animation
How can digital animation capture the organic imperfections of traditional ink drawing without compromising production efficiency? Let’s meet Bình Lường - a senior animator at DeeDee Animation Studio for a sharing of a hand-inked look in digital animation for the project Chivalware.
When Digital Precision Meets Traditional Ink
With its blend of medieval aesthetics and futuristic technology, Chivalware called for a distinctive visual treatment. Its line art couldn't look too clean or perfectly uniform. Instead, every stroke needed to feel as though it had been drawn with a traditional ink pen, with lively, organic variations that brought the artwork to life.
To explore possible solutions, DeeDee launched an internal open call, inviting animators to research and propose different approaches. The team eventually developed a solution directly in Toon Boom Harmony, using its built-in tools to animate line texture. The result gave the artwork a more authentic, hand-inked feel while maintaining controlled, consistent motion throughout the animation and received highly positive feedback from the client, Dotemu.
From Personal Experimentation to a Production-Ready Solution
To understand how to approach this initiative, we spoke with Bình Lường, Senior Animator at DeeDee Animation Studio, who contributed the technical solution.
Interestingly, the technique wasn't entirely new to Bình. Back in 2022, while working on a personal project with friends, he had already explored ways to create organic line movement without repeatedly redrawing the same artwork.
During that research, he came across the use of the Turbulence node in Toon Boom Harmony. The node can introduce wave-like distortions into texture, making textured lines appear to move subtly rather than remain perfectly static.
That earlier experiment gave Bình a useful starting point when the Chivalware challenge emerged. Instead of beginning from scratch, he revisited his previous experience and adapted the approach to the project's visual requirements.
Software developments also made the process more straightforward. In Harmony 21, the workflow Bình had explored required additional steps to separate and process line art and color layers. From Harmony 22 onward, the introduction of the Animate Pencil Texture node offered a more direct way to animate pencil texture, reducing the need for separate processing.
For the Chivalware task, Bình created an initial demo in approximately 15 minutes, then spent a little more time adjusting the parameters to achieve the desired result. The complete process took around 20 minutes. What might have seemed like a lengthy technical investigation was, in practice, a quick application of previously acquired knowledge.
The approach was also easy to share with the wider team. For the project lead, the solution met the intended requirement without needing significant additional development. The team could focus on adjusting parameters to suit individual shots rather than rebuilding the effect from the ground up.
What Animators Should Know Before Using the Technique
For artists interested in experimenting with line vibration, Bình recommends becoming familiar with the Turbulence node before moving on to Animate Pencil Texture.
Understanding how the parameters influence the direction and character of texture movement, such as horizontal and vertical variations, helps animators gain greater control over the final effect. Once they understand these adjustments, applying the technique becomes much more intuitive.
The texture itself is equally important. The effect relies on having visible texture within the line art. Smooth, uniform strokes without meaningful texture offer little visual detail to animate, limiting the effect's ability to create an organic, hand-drawn appearance.
In Chivalware, the rougher, slightly irregular quality of the line art provided the texture needed to make the technique effective. The key was not simply to make the lines move, but to ensure that their movement complemented the artwork's visual language.
Building a More Versatile Animation Toolkit
For Bình, the recognition he received for this contribution was a welcome surprise. He initially considered the technique a relatively simple application of existing software features rather than a major technical breakthrough.
Yet that simplicity highlights an important aspect of animation production: innovation doesn't always require building an entirely new tool. Sometimes, it comes from understanding existing technology, connecting it with previous experience, and applying it thoughtfully to a specific artistic challenge.
Through Chivalware, DeeDee demonstrated how a small, targeted technical solution could help bridge the gap between digital precision and the expressive imperfections of traditional drawing.
As the studio continues to explore distinctive visual styles, such workflow improvements provide a stronger foundation for bringing more artistic possibilities into digital animation - without losing sight of the consistency and efficiency that production demands.
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