SUNRISE INTERNATIONAL Information

How does the animation that everyone watches on TV actually get made? To find out, let’s first take a look at the process from “Planning” to “Production.”

“Planning”

The process of creating animation begins first with the necessary step of creating a proposal which tackles such questions as “What kind of animation should we make?” and “What kind of audience do we want to create this animation for?” This is where all animation starts from.

“Scripting”

Once the proposal has been finalized, the next thing to do is create the scripts. Stories are written to bring to life the world and characters that were decided on in the planning stage.

Depending on the project, either one scriptwriter is responsible for writing every episode, or there is a single person who completes an outline for the entire series (as a script or series supervisor) and then gives the job of finishing the writing of the series to another group of scriptwriters.

For each episode, meetings are held with the director and producers to polish up the script. This needs to happen 3 or 4 times before a final draft is reached.

Once the script is complete, the next stage is storyboarding. This is the stage where it’s decided how the story will actually be presented to the audience in images.

“Storyboarding”

Storyboards are like blueprints that are necessary to figure out how best to convey the ideas of the story through the “performance” of the characters, the number of cuts, camera angles, and time management. Storyboards need to be completed before any other work can continue.

Now that the storyboards are finished, production meetings and art meetings need to happen.

The person who brings the whole series together is the director, but there is also another person who plays a director-like role for each episode, and this person is called a “production supervisor.” Meetings in which the production supervisor is assigned tasks by the director to set the course for the work are called production meetings. The production supervisor is basically responsible for checking the layouts and key art, deciding the overall course of the artwork, and checking the final images as they come in.

In art meetings, the production supervisor and the people in charge of artwork (the art production director and the key animator) use the storyboards to check the overall feel of the series, including the positions of the characters, angles, light direction, and shadows, etc.

“Art Production”

Once the storyboards are complete and production and art meetings have concluded, it’s time at last to start creating artwork.

Art production basically falls into three general stages: layout, key art, and in-between animation.

The first step in the process of art production is layout. Based on what was decided during the art meetings, layout is the very first responsibility of the key animator. In each cut, the flow of the characters’ actions, necessary background details, and even things which might be happening off-camera in a given location need to be decided, so the stage can be set. A “cut” is a single, unbroken moving image, and the person in charge of key animation normally requests key art in terms of cuts-15 cuts from Person A and 30 cuts from Person B, for example.

Once the layout is finished, it’s checked first by the production supervisor and then by the art director, and after it’s been given the okay then it’s time to start work on the key art.

Key art is images which use the layout to determine where the core or fixed points of moving objects will be. For example, in a cut where a character is walking, the locations where each foot lands needs to be decided upon at this stage.

However, where these core points are exactly can vary depending on the artist creating the key art. The key art, like the layout, is also checked by the production supervisor and the art director.

When that checking is complete, the images are brought together, and the pictures between key images are drawn in, so the images begin to move. Completed in-between animation is inspected to make sure there are no gaps. This is called “in-between animation testing.”

“Next Information”

Next time, we take you from “Color Setting” to “Video Editing.”

>> to “The Making of Animation” Take 2