The hand sketched drawings are transferred to the computer through huge scanners and software’s like ToonBoom studio & Flash. Digital pen is also used.

STUDENTS ARE USING A DIGITAL PEN AND DRAWING

Computers and traditional animation
The methods so far describes the techniques of an animation process who originally depended on cels in its final stages, but painted cels are rare today as the computer moves into the animation studio, and the outline drawings are usually scanned into the computer and filled with digital paint instead of being transferred to cels and then colored by hand. The drawings are composited in a computer program on many transparent "layers" much the same way as they are with cels, and made into a sequence of images which may then be transferred onto film or converted to a digital video format.

It is now also possible for animators to draw directly into a computer using a graphics tablet, cintiq or a similar device, where the outline drawings are done in a similar manner as they would be on paper. The development of paperless handdrawn animation is likely to replace the traditional pencil and paper not too far into the future, just as cels and traditional paint were replaced when digital ink and paint was fully introduced in the 90's. For instance the Goofy short How To Hook Up Your Home Theater represents Disney's first project based on the paperless technology available today. Some of the advantages are the possibility and potential of controlling the size of the drawings while working on them, drawing directly on a multiplane background and eliminating the need of photographing line tests and scanning.

Though traditional animation is now commonly done with computers, it is important to differentiate computer-assisted traditional animation from 3D computer animation, such as Toy Story and ReBoot. However, often traditional animation and 3D computer animation will be used together, as in Don Bluth's Titan A.E. and Disney's Tarzan and Treasure Planet. Most anime still use traditional animation today. DreamWorks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg coined the term "tradigital animation" to describe films produced by his studio which incorporated elements of traditional and computer animation equally, such as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

Interestingly, many modern video games such as Viewtiful Joe, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and others use "cel-shading" animation filters to make their full 3D animation appear as though it were drawn in a traditional cel style. This technique was also used in the animated movie Appleseed, and was integrated with cel animation in the FOX animated series Futurama.

Digital ink and paint

The current process, termed "digital ink and paint," is the same as traditional ink and paint until after the animation drawings are completed; instead of being transferred to cels, the animators' drawings are scanned into a computer, where they are colored and processed using one or more of a variety of software packages. The resulting drawings are composited in the computer over their respective backgrounds, which have also been scanned into the computer (if not digitally painted), and the computer outputs the final film by either exporting a digital video file, using a video cassette recorder, or printing to film using a high-resolution output device. Use of computers allows for easier exchange of artwork between departments, studios, and even countries and continents (in most low-budget animated productions, the bulk of the animation is actually done by animators working in other countries, including Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India).

The last major feature film to use traditional ink and paint was Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke (1997); the last major animation production to use the traditional process is Fuji Television's series Sazae-san (1969-present)[1]. Minor productions such as Hair High (2004) by Bill Plympton have used traditional cels long after the introduction of digital techniques. Digital ink and paint has been in use at Walt Disney Feature Animation since 1989, where it was used for the final rainbow shot in The Little Mermaid. All subsequent Disney animated features were digitally inked-and-painted, using Disney's proprietary CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) technology, developed primarily by Pixar (the last Disney feature using CAPS was Home on the Range). Most other studios use one of a number of other high-end software packages such as Toonz, Toon Boom Opus, Animo, and even consumer-level applications such as Macromedia Flash.