seq02 comp without animated environment.

this may work after all...

sitting here for over a week trying to figure out how to keep the linear burn blending mode in the lineart layer so that the character could be composited, in all their dirty glory (no clean lines and cartoon paintbucket fills, so help me Martha) against an animated, water/sky background without taking weeks of importing minutiae to do it.

here's the magic formula, so as not to forget:

PSD characters against animated wave bg in After Effects:
• reduce PSD's to lineart layer (screen mode: linear burn) + merged color layers (color, deep color, under)
• select all PSD's for shot and import into After Effects: check "Photoshop Sequence," "Composition," "Editable Layer Styles"
• drag PSD sequences (lineart + merged color layers) into timeline, above animated waves
• edit character layers for moving holds, etc., using time remapping

update:
• will use the existing PSD's, with all their layers and imported as Photoshop Sequences, and apply a linear burn to the line layer (top), which achieves the same effect. will modify if this proves to much for the computer to process.

assembling...

seq02, color

first stab at a tvpaint wave

colors will change. this is a bit on the purple-y side.