Introduction: These notes were written in London and reflect UK animation practice as I know it. So camera and artwork moves, for instance, are in inches. Pictures are assumed to run at 24 frames per second for cinema use and 25 frames per second for video use. You should be aware of some difference between vocabularies used in the UK and US - for example, what we call here a dopesheet (or dope sheet) is referred to in the States as an exposure sheet and a mix is a dissolve.. The reason for these notes is simply to fill a gap; an increasing number of animators in the UK, many of who are very talented, seem to have little idea of how to fill in a dopesheet. I was never formally taught myself, but over the years I found that there seemed to be animators who used conventions that I recognised and others who tried making up their own systems. The reason a good dopesheet looks the way it does is not because someone designed dopesheets and wrote a set of rules; the conventions arose by evolution. They work because they are the easiest way to communicate. I'm certainly not an authority and there are countless variations on the suggestions I make here. Doubtless some people will argue with my suggestions. What makes a good dopesheet, however, is communication - anyone in the animation business should be able to pick up someone else's dopesheet and understand it whether it follows the rules below exactly or not. There is one other point I feel should be forcefully made; I think it makes good sense to continue using traditional terms. Digital technology has all but taken over a large part of the 2D animation process, but this does not mean that traditional skills and animation terms should be discarded. The term "cel" may no longer mean a sheet of acetate, but it's a lot easier to call a 32 bit TIFF bitmap file with LZW compression a cel than any other name. Similarly, the animation rostrum camera has all but gone, but it's still very much easier to describe an animation setup in terms of artwork and camera, so let's do it. The old terms and working practices evolved for maximum efficiency. These notes are written to help aid communication when it is necessary for an animator to deal with others in a team. Sometimes the person compositing a scene is not even in the same country as the animator. It is essential that wherever possible we all use terms that others will understand.
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