PRODUCTION:

1   track breakdown

Once the dialogue tracks have been edited to the correct length, they are "broken down", that is each word must be analysed so that an animator can animate a character's lip movements and acting. Until a few years ago, this entailed copying the sound on to magnetic film. An editor would then spend many hours running this film over a tape-head analysing the dialogue syllable by syllable and writing the broken down words on to bar-sheets, a tedious and slow process. There are now several ways of automating this process; indeed, for some forms of animation, you can take the automation further by even getting software to work out which lip movement drawings are needed from pre-defined libraries and placing them automatically into the dopesheets. The animator will then only need to have a word breakdown (even a sentence or paragraph breakdown may suffice for some scenes) instead of full lip sync. Complete automation of lip sync is very straightforward in 2D and 3D CGI but not practical in traditional 2D.

 2   layouts

A layout is a full-sized drawing that shows the visual workings of a shot. If a character is walking from one side of the screen to another, for example, it is normal to draw the first and last poses of the character. The background is indicated roughly so that the relationship in scale between characters and background elements is clear. Another important role of the layout is to indicate the precise framing of the camera. If the camera is not static, beginning and end framings are indicated. In some respects, you can think of a layout as a bigger and more precise version of the equivalent storyboard frame. It should convey practically all the visual information of a shot apart from its colours.

3    backgrounds

Traditionally, backgrounds were painted on stretched paper, (so they wouldn't curl), using water-based inks or paints and sometimes oil pastels. Often airbrush work was also used. Oil paints and gouache were usually not, since they have a texture which can cause shadow problems on the cel levels above. Increasingly, even within traditional looking productions, background artists originate artwork on computer nowadays.

4    key frames

The animation on a large production may well be compartmentalised, with some animators specialising in character work, some on effects animation. Budgets and work practices vary enormously. Often, a senior animator will work fairly roughly just producing key poses and indicating how many inbetween drawings should be created and how they are timed between the keys. Animators indicate how many frames of each drawing are to be shot by writing dope sheets these will also indicate camera moves and opticals

5    inbetweens

Unsurprisingly, the person who does the inbetween drawings is called the inbetweener or may be referred to as an assistant animator

6    line testing

The animation is usually tested before being coloured. Often animators will use their own line test camera to refine it until it is ready for the director to look at.

7    clean up

If the animation has only been drawn loosely ("rough") it is necessary to employ artists to clean up the drawings. Drawings are given the classic very tight but flowing line. Once this style was employed simply as a matter of aesthetics. Now, it is vital that the lines of an animation drawing are reasonably clean and not too "gappy", as they will have to be painted digitally and computers are not very good at dealing with outlines that are broken - the result is the colour floods out and the lines must be fixed before painting.

8    ink and paint (and checking)

The animators' drawings are coloured.

In the traditional process, when colouring was done on to sheets of acetate, this was followed by an additional stage called checking. The checker would go through every frame of the animators' dope sheets and place all the painted cels on to a pegbar over the backgrounds. In other words, this was a dummy run of shooting the final artwork but without committing to film. Shooting animation was a very slow and tedious process and it was important not to waste camera time shooting something that was flawed.

9    camera / compositing

The coloured artwork is "filmed", usually over background artwork. This part of the process can also be called compositing. Traditionally this meant shooting artwork frame by frame under a rostrum camera. Now, the entire compositing and shooting processes are virtual and carried out in software.

Whereas once a re-shoot because of a painting error or a doping error would be a costly mistake, it is now perfectly acceptable to view the output from this part of the process as a "first stab". Correcting a mistake may involve as little as re-painting one incorrect cel or altering a doping error, but the idiot computer will cheerfully re-shoot the scene without complaint until it is right. It is easy even to change colours within cels after they have been painted.

10  output

The resulting imagery is output to either film or video. It may alternatively be output to some digital storage medium such as DVD ROM so that the final transfer to video or film can be done at another facility, usually a post-production house.

 
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