What can I paint or print on printed video frames, and how does it scan back?
Analog animation techniques on printed contact sheets: crayon, watercolor, Posca, cutouts, tape, photocopier, risograph, cyanotype. Which paper each needs and how each one scans.
- Technique
Nearly anything works, as long as it dries flat and stays off the corner markers. Crayon, marker, watercolor, Posca, cut paper, tape, stickers, a photocopier, a risograph, even cyanotype if you are patient. Each one scans back a bit differently. The table below covers each technique, the paper it needs, and the risk we ran into with the registration.
This post covers the middle of the loop. Printing the sheet is in how to print video frames to paint on. Getting from scan back to MP4 is in the full walkthrough. Here we stay on the paper.
The rules that actually matter
Three rules. Everything else is preference.
Do not cover the corner markers or the code strip along the top. That is how MIXD finds the page again. Everything inside the frames is fair game, and you can go past the frame edges too, just not into the corners or the top strip.
Page order is irrelevant. Scan them in whatever pile they ended up in. The sheet knows what it holds.
Imperfections are the point. If you wanted clean, you would do it in software. The shiver between frames and the frame where the tape lifted. That is the look people are searching for when they type "analog animation". Do not sand it off.
What footage to use
Whatever you want. But the clips that work best have a story you can follow at 6 frames per second. A hand opening. Someone turning their head. A dog jumping off a step. If the motion is fast, the viewer cannot read what is happening once you have thinned it to a handful of frames and covered it in paint. If it is too slow, you paint 30 frames of nearly the same image and lose the will to live around frame 12.
Two to four seconds. One clear movement. Start there.
Technique by technique
Crayon and oil pastel. The easiest win. Works on printer paper, better on 24 lb or cartridge. Scans as pure color with visible grain. Crayon dust lands on the scanner glass; some people wipe it, some leave it because it reads as texture. Registration risk is low unless you scribble into a corner.
Markers and Posca. Posca on printer paper is flat and opaque and scans exactly as it looks. Alcohol markers bleed through thin paper and show up on the back, which is irrelevant unless you print double-sided. Do not. Low risk.
Watercolor and ink wash. Needs proper paper, 200 gsm or more, or the sheet cockles and the scan gets soft edges and shadows in the buckles. On heavy stock it scans beautifully. Keep the wash off the margins. A wet edge that runs into a corner marker is the most common way we have seen a page fail.
Scratching. A blade or a needle through the printed ink. Works best on a laser print, where the toner sits on top and flakes off clean. Inkjet soaks in and scratches muddy. Wide open on paper choice. No registration risk unless you go through the page.
Cut and collage. Cut a shape out of one frame, glue a magazine scrap into another, layer tissue paper over a face. Glue stick, not liquid glue. Anything lumpy throws a shadow under the scanner lid, so press it flat under a book overnight. Medium risk, because a piece that overhangs a corner hides the marker.
Tape and stickers. Fast, and the number one marker killer. Washi tape across the top of the sheet is the classic. Keep it inside the frames.
Photocopier. Take the finished sheet, copy it at high contrast, work on the copy, or copy it three generations deep until it falls apart. A free texture machine. Each pass loses some registration precision, and a copy that has shifted on the glass can crop a marker. Check the corners before you scan.
Burning. People do it, really. A lighter along an edge, a cigarette hole. Low, wet, and outdoors. It scans as a brown gradient with a hard black edge, and the scanner glass does not care. Keep it well away from the corners, and away from anything you love.
The table
| Technique | Paper | What the scanner sees | Registration risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crayon, oil pastel | Printer or 24 lb+ | Grainy, saturated, dust on glass | Low |
| Marker, Posca | Printer | Flat, opaque, exact | Low |
| Watercolor, ink wash | 200 gsm+ | Clean on heavy stock, buckled shadows on thin | Medium, runs into corners |
| Scratching | Any, laser print best | Sharp white lines on toner, muddy on inkjet | Low |
| Cut, collage | Any | Slight shadows unless pressed flat | Medium, overhangs hide markers |
| Tape, stickers | Any | Sharp edges, sometimes glare | High, tape over the top strip |
| Photocopier | Any | High contrast, softened, drifts each generation | Medium, check corners per copy |
| Burn | Heavy stock | Brown gradient, hard black edge | Low, but seriously, outdoors |
| Risograph | 80 to 120 gsm uncoated | Two or three flat spot colors, slight misregistration | Medium, riso feed shifts the page |
| Cyanotype | Watercolor paper | Blue and white, soft, no midtones | High, coating covers the whole page |
Risograph animation
Risograph and animation were made for each other and almost nobody does it, because the layout step is brutal. A riso prints one spot color per pass, so a frame with two colors goes through the drum twice, and every pass drifts a millimetre. On a single poster you would call that charm. On 30 frames that have to line up again, it is a problem.
The workaround is to let the sheet do the registration. Print the MIXD contact sheet on a laser or inkjet first so the corner markers are exact. Then feed that sheet through the riso for your colors. The riso drift happens inside the frames, where it looks great, and the markers stay where they were. Scan, upload, and the frames come back in order with the misregistration baked in as texture.
Keep the riso ink off the top strip. Riso ink also never fully dries, so scan through a sheet of acetate or wait a day.
Cyanotype animation
Cyanotype is slower and weirder and the results look like nothing else. You coat the paper, expose it through a negative in sunlight, wash it, and get white on Prussian blue.
For animation, the printed contact sheet becomes the negative. Print the frames on transparency film instead of paper, lay that over coated watercolor paper, expose, wash. You get a blue sheet with your frames on it. The catch is the corner markers. The coating covers the whole page, so the markers end up as blue-on-blue and the scan struggles to find them.
What worked for us was masking the corners and the top strip with tape before coating, so those areas stay white paper. Peel the tape after the wash, and the markers are readable again. It is fussy. The result is a hand-exposed animation in a color you cannot get any other way, and it goes straight back through the same print, paint, scan loop as everything else.
Paper, printers, and money
Printer paper is fine. Start there. Thicker stock, watercolor, bamboo, anything over 24 lb, takes crayon and scraping without complaint. Lined notebook paper and a printer that is dying and printing in inverted colors can become the whole look, if you keep the accident.
Do not buy a tank printer for your first sheet. A print shop or a library will do 20 pages for the price of a coffee, and the library scanner is often better than whatever you own. Buy hardware when you know you will keep doing this.
Digital fakes are valid. If you want the vibe without the ink, there are ways to fake a scanned sheet in an editor. They will not give you crayon dust and a torn hole. For those, you have to photograph.
Do not copy one effect
The videos that got you here are mostly one person, one technique, one song. Do not copy the technique. Copy the loop. Print, wreck the paper, scan. Then pick scratch, crayon, cutout, or riso for the piece in front of you. The second sheet you make will look like yours, not theirs.
Print a free sheet and try two techniques on the same page. The scan will tell you which one to keep doing. Ours was scratching. We did not expect that.