Animation Faqs

Animation has evolved over the years.  It started with simple hand-drawn animation and gradually progressed/improved to 3d forms of animation. The traditional method of animation is referred as Classical Animation or Cel animation by all.

The process is almost similar to 2d animation film making. It includes storyboards, animatics,  background, animation, voice recording etc. Digital ink and paints are used to draw each “cartoon frame”

Now that I’ve written about the steps involved in making a 2D animation film lets look at what processes are involved in making a 3D animation film.

Well the initial steps are same as that of a 2D film namely – Story/Concept, Scripting, Character and Environment Design, Storyboarding, Voice Recording and Animatics.

You can refer about it by visiting this link

Well the animatics could itself be done in 3D using dummies (read: low polygon models). So lets take it from there.

7) Digital Storyboard or 3D Animatics – using a 3D software like 3D Studio Max, Maya, Houdini, SoftImage etc. a low polygon model of each character and the set/environment is made. Now with the digital sets erected the low polygon characters are placed in the shot and the digital camera is added asper the camera angle in the storyboard. Once this procedure is done for all the shots a rough render is made and the entire film is seen through this Animatics just to check if there are any timing issues and other glitches.

8 ) Modeling – Once the Animatics are approved the 3D modelers take the character, prop and environment designs from the Design department and begin digitally modeling them.

CG Model with Texture

9) Texturing – When the modeling is completed its time for the texture artists to paint the relevant textures on to the models.

10) Rigging – Simultaneously the models are given to the Riggers who add the bones and various controls on to the models and it is these controls that enable the animators to animate the models accordingly. Most of the times its the riggers job to help simplify life for an animator.

11) Layout – The Characters are now placed within the environments along with the cameras. This laid out scene is given to Animators and also Lighting artists.

12) Animation – It can be further subdivided into Character Animation and Technical Animation. The Character animators get the Rigs to animate and they animate the gestures and also lip-sync the prerecorded dialogues. Now the job of technical animators is to animate through programing or use existing scripts and tools to modify attributes of objects to get the desired motion. Technical animation includes the secondary motion of the character hair, the motion of clothes on the character, just in case the clothes are not bodyfit; it also includes Particle effects – like dust, fireworks etc., Fluid effects like water simulation and explosions etc. etc.

Water simulation and underwater lighting used in Finding Nemo

13) Lighting and Shading – The lighting artists get the scene setup with the character and the background. They play with the various lights and settings so that each scene is lit according to the specified mood. Lighting artists at times also make Shaders for various objects and how each object behaves with respect to light, so that metal looks like metal, plastic looks like plastic and so on.

14) Rendering – Once the shots are lit they are sent to be rendered. Rendering is basically converting the 3D data to 2D flat images which is what will be visible to the audience on the screen. The rendering is done in passes (similar to the idea of having different characters on different Cels during Traditional Animation), and later all the ‘layers’ thus obtained are digitally composited together, and color corrected if necessary to give the final output.

15) Background Score – The film is now sent for background score.

Now, there you have a 3D animation film !!! Have Fun !!!

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 !!!

There are different types of Stop-motion animation

1. Clay animation – Clay models are used as objects to be animated. A light aluminum wire and thermocole armature/skeleton is first made upon which the colored clay is coated. Some models also have miniature clothes stitched for them while others mite have the clothes itself made of clay. A very famous example of Clay animation is the film Wallace and Gromit by Aardman Animations. Another style of clay animation is the Embossed effect animation in which the clay models are almost flat such that they can be placed on a horizontal surface with a camera vertically above it and then be animated. This technique is used when you want to show motion of fishes underwater or of flying birds; and it works because you don’t have to bother animating against gravity.
2. Puppets – Another form of stop-motion animation can be used by animating puppets made out of wood or plastic or any other material.
3. Sand – This is another very beautiful medium for animation. Here’s how to animate with sand. Take a flat surface and put thin layer of sand on it. Now place a camera vertically above the surface. Now with your finger make some shape in the sand, now click the image, now modify the shape slightly and click an image again. Keep on gradually modifying the sand surface and keep on clicking images. And when you will play it you’ll get a beautiful animation.
4. Beads – A similar style can be tried with colored beads, wherein you make designs with beads and you photograph them.
5. Cut out – In this style you use images cut out from magazines to animate. The images are placed on a horizontal surface and then moved frame by frame.
6. Pixilation – In this method live humans are used as stop-motion animation props. A very good example of this is the old sci-fi movies in which actors acting on screen used to just vanish in a split second; one frame they are there and the other they are gone. An awesome example is Norman McLaren’s Neighbors and A Chairy Tale. A must watch.

Animation can be basically 2D or 3D but when we use different mediums we get different types of animations. Lets have a look at them.

1. Traditional 2D Animation on Cells– As I’ve told before it is a type of animation where each frame is hand-drawn, right from the character to the props, the environment and also the backdrop everything is meticulously hand painted.
2. Stop-motion - In this technique the object to be animated is shot with a still camera, now the camera is kept steady and the object is moved slightly and another still frame is captured, again the object is moved and its image is shot and so on. Now, when the still frames are played, since the camera was motionless the object now appears to be in motion. Hence the name Stop-Motion. This basic idea of Stop-motion has been extended to various mediums such as clay, puppets, cutouts, sand etc.
3. Computer Generated – As the name suggests all animations generated with the help of a computer fall under this category be it 2D or 3D. Softwares such as ToonBoom and Macromedia Flash are used for making 2D animations. Where as softwares like 3Dstudio Max, Maya, Lightwave3D, Houdini, SoftImage etc. are used to create animations ranging from home experiments to high-end computer generated imagery. An example of a very high end CG film is Final Fantasy made in Maya 1.0. Also have a look at Beowulf released in 2007. The stunning CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) will make you wonder how thin the line between real and CG has become.

a female model from Final Fantasy

Hi… Now that you know what Animation is and how it began lets look at the types of animations. It can be broadly classified into two categories 2-Dimensional or 2D and 3-Dimensional or 3D. People generally confuse the type of animation with the medium used for example clay, cut-outs etc. but we shall come to those a little later.

Tom and Jerry (2D animation)

Shrek (3D animation)

2D animation is also at times referred to as Traditional Animation or Cel Animation, since animation clips were produced traditionally by drawing on paper and later transfering them on cels (a thin clear plastic sheet made of cellulose nitrate). Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse popularized 2D animation with films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio etc.

Here’s the basic difference between 2D and 3D; its that additional ‘D’ or dimension. 2D animations consist of only the height and width. In other words they are flat and what they lack is the third dimension called ‘depth’. The sense of depth in 2D is got through the use of color shades and painted shadows. Where as in 3D we have height, width and depth.

In the early days when computers didn’t exist or were limited to the military and research teams, all the animations were hand-drawn, colored and later photographed and transferred to film. With the advent of computers and the development of the Computer Graphics technology different avenues began to openup and the concept of 3D came into existence. Computers began assisting animators thus taking the world of Animation to a whole new level. Softwares like 3dstudio Max and Maya came into being. Computer Generated Graphics started a revolution, but the love for Traditional hand-drawn animation still remains…

No one really knows who is the father of animation. Some say its Georges Méliès who experimented a lot to add special effects to his films and he accidentally discovered the stop-motion animation technique where he would stop the camera and ask the actors to freeze and then replace some actors or make some of them ‘vanish’ and then continue filming again. Some say its J. Stuart Blackton who made the first animation clip in 1900 called The Enchanted Drawing; later in 1906 he made another animated film called Humorous Phases of Funny Faces.

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. by J. Stuart Blackton

Gertie the Dinosaur by Winsor McCay

As far as the theatrical release is concerned I guess it was Gertie the Dinosaur by Winsor McCay in 1914, where McCay used this 2D dinosaur in the backdrop and the dino seemed to listen to him as he performed in sync with it on the stage. McCay would throw an apple at it and the dino would catch and eat it much to the excitement of the audience; well actually McCay used to hide the apple in his palm and the pre-animated dinosaur Gertie caught the animated copy of it. It was all a matter of sync and timing. Gertie is said to be the first animated character with a personality of its own. This seemed to excite the audiences and thus others tried to copy his technique of moving images and came up with their own animated films. And gradually various forms of animation came into existence; I shall write about them in subsequent articles. Adios…

The concept of Persistence of Vision was taken to a new level when people decided to experiment more and more with it; thus many instruments were developed on similar lines for eg. the Phenakistoscope, the Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope; and then came in the Flipbooks which I’m pretty sure most of you must have seen.

Flipbook

The idea of flipping images was tried with increasing the number of images per second, imposed on the retina. Thus developed the concept of frames per second. It was seen that when images were projected at a lower frames per second, the motion appeared jerky and at higher fps the motion got blurred, so after much experimentation it was found that a rate of 24fps (frames per second) was comfortable for viewing. The still camera was already existing then and this development led to the invention of the motion camera, well thats a totally different domain altogether.

Ok… so where was I, yes Frames per second; films are projected at 24 Fps in the theaters, where as the PAL system of broadcasting uses 25 Fps for the television medium and in some countries the NTSC system is used which broadcasts at approx 30 Fps. Cool, so thats it for all the factual and technical aspects of what animation is and how it began.

Hi I’m Zeee and we would not go into the details of me; cuz we are here to talk animation (as the blog name suggests). Hmmm… So.. after watching all the Tom n Jerry episodes, the Shrek sequels, the Dragonball Z series etc. etc. I’m sure most of you are aware of what animation is or at least what all that you see can be termed as animation;but not all of us know about it. So this specific article goes out to those who are unaware of what animation is and also to those who are completely aware of it but they simply love animation so much that they would sit down to read anything and everything about it inspite of knowing all of it.

Well, it all began in around 130 A.D. when a Greek astronomer Ptolemy discovered this principle called Persistence of Vision. It states that the retina in the eye retains the image in the form of light entering the aperture of the eye for one-tenth of a second; and if consecutive images are projected on the retina within one-tenth of a second then this causes the images to superimpose, thus giving us a sense of motion of the object in the image.

Okay I’ll simplify this, do you remember playing with this toy in your childhood, the bird drawn on one side and cage drawn on the other and when you twirl the string faster you see the bird in the cage. Walk down memory lane and see if u can picture it in your hand; well what you played with is called a thaumatrope and that was your first interaction with animation.