Animation Faqs

Lets look at the steps involved in making a 2D animation film

1. The Concept / Story – The basic idea of the film and the whole story. The strength of the film is its foundation and in this case its the story. If the story is weak then no amount of jazz is going to work for the film. You got to have a strong story to tell, something worth the effort of animating, cuz animation needs a lot of patience and if you simply love the story then it will always keep you motivated to animate.
2. Scripting – Once the story is locked on its time for the script i.e. the dialogs and interaction of the characters. The cuts and the various scenes in the film. Its the second most important part of the film. If the film has a great story, a sagging script can kill the whole film so its very important to script the story well.
3. Basic Character and Environment Designing – Based on the script and the description of the characters and the environments, designers come up with rough sketches of them and once approved they move on to finalize the designs.
4. Storyboarding – Now that the characters and environments are designed the film is put into a rough pictorial form; it’s like the entire film in the form of a comic strip. This process is called Storyboarding. Storyboards decide the camera angles, the cuts and the general flow of the film. It is the first look at the film in the visual form and it is here that all the plot and script restructuring happens, cuz its here that you realize whether a plot or a joke is working or not. It is a very rigorous process and should be actually called Sto-Reboarding because only when the storyboard is locked on can other processes start. Trust me you wouldn’t want to figure out at the animation stage that a given scene is working or not.



5. Voice Recording – Once the storyboard is finalized all the voice-over artists record the dialogues for the various characters in the film.
6. Animatics – Now the storyboard is put on a timeline with the recorded voice overs and timings and cuts of the animations are further tweaked.
7. Designing – Once the animatic is approved the character designs from step 3 are taken and final character sheets are developed for each character, with various gestures, facial expressions and lip sync phonemes. The final design of the environments is also done and the mood and the color of the scene is also decided.
8. Layout – When the designs get approved by the director the next step is layouting which is similar to the blocking of shots done for live-action films. It is here that the background layout artists determine the camera angles, camera paths, lighting, and shading of the scene. Now its the job of the Character layout artist to make the basic key poses of the characters in each shot.
9. Animation - Once the layout is done it is time for the animators to work their magic. There are basically 2-3 tiers of animators as far as 2D animation is concerned; we have the lead animators, the in-between animators and the clean-up artists. (In smaller productions the in-between and the clean-up artists are the same) Now, what the lead animators do is, based on the layout given they make the final key poses of the characters keeping the timing in mind. Key poses and their Timings are very important because they have to follow the basic principles of animation which we shall see at a later stage. Once the key poses are done its time for the 2nd tier animators to draw the in-between frames and then its the job of clean-up artists to do… you guessed it.. Clean-up
10. Background – While the animation is being done the background artists paint the background scenes over which the animation is going to take place.
11. Ink and Paint – Once the animation is complete and the backgrounds have been painted the next process is to transfer the drawings on to film. But before that the drawings have to be transferred or inked onto thin clear plastic cellulose nitrate sheets called Cels. Once the outlines are inked onto the cels special paints are used to add richness and color. Each character is inked onto a different cell. Now all these cells are adjusted one on top of the other in a proper order so that everything is properly visible its time for the camera to take the photograph and thus transfer the frame to film. Well traditionally special Animation Cameras were used also called as Rostrum cameras, but with the advent of computers the drawings began to get scanned and the colors were put in digitally, thus replacing the traditional Cels with Digital Ink and Paint. Disney was the first to use the Digital ink and paint technique with the CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) technology (primarily developed by Pixar).
12. Background Score – The film is now ready except for one very important thing…. sound. Now the mute film is sent to the Sound Department for adding the background music and other ambient sounds and also the prerecorded voice-overs.

Animation Camera. Photo by J-E Nyström. 1999.

There you go, your 2D animation film is ready !!!