Funny how you mentioned the maximum levels of animation. Historically, the maximum number of levels were 6; 1 background and 5 cels. Although cels were transparent, exceeding 5 cels would cause color darkening, blurring and shadows. This is why the exposure sheet listed a total of 6 levels. I’ve made this discovery 5 years ago by watching this video. It is uploaded by the same YouTube user who uploaded the video in this topic’s original post. Take a look:
Thankfully in the digital age, we don’t have to worry about the maximum number of levels/layers; we can have add layers freely. Also, we can pick from millions of colors instead of hundreds. We also eliminate the need for paper as it is cumbersome and expensive; it takes up a lot of space in a room; either hundreds of thousands or millions of drawings. Real acetate cels get pretty expensive, too, as they may take hundreds of thousands of them to make animation with.
Computers make hand-drawn animation much easier, quicker, cheaper and arguably better. I’m very fortunate to live in this era as far as animation, art and filmmaking goes.
In my opinion, you may or may not agree, digital hand-drawn animation is the best, quickest, fastest, and easiest way to make animation.
Anyway, according to your comment, you said you never number your drawings when you’ve joined the digital bandwagon, but I prefer to number mine so I can keep track of how many drawings I’ve used in each animated motion picture I’ve made for the record. Not only that, but also so I can track the animation frames on the canvas in relation to the timeline, identify which level/layer is about to be drawn on, and to help me know which are keys/extremes, breakdowns and inbetweens. To me, assigning numbers to drawings makes animation not only easier and quicker, but also more clean and organized.
Not to dwell on this, but should I still learn how to use animation charts? I don’t really want to but it might somewhat help me with animation. If I were to make animation charts, should I draw them like a ruler? Like, for example, if a character stretches his hand out, should I draw the ruler under or over his arm at the first pose and last pose?