The practice of animated film production

An animated film is usually described on four levels. The first, and most general, is the entire project, which is customarily referred to as a production. The next in the series of terms is the sequence – this is a large section of the production that can be distinguished by the area in which the action takes place.

A sequence consists of shots – that is, a record of the action from a single point of view. The smallest value within these four levels is the frame – this is one recorded image.

The process of creating animation itself customarily follows a certain pattern. It begins with the creation of a plot outline and the subsequent writing of a script. After these steps, you need to create a storyboard, which is a drawn version of the script illustrating the story with sketches of individual frames of the film. Storyboard can be drawn out in various ways. Depending on the target animation technique, we can use a simplified drawing or a target style drawing.

Storyboard

A model sheet is then created, which consists of drawings depicting the characters appearing in the animation. An exposure sheet is also prepared , which includes information on the sound or camera movement to be used for each sequence.

Characters in animation

The third sheet created at this stage is the production sheet, which is a collection of statistics and information on who is assigned to which functions and tasks in production.

Animatik

The next stage is animatik, which allows an overall evaluation of synchronization. It consists of arranging frames from the script to be displayed for periods corresponding to the target sequences in the planned production.

Once all this is done, you can proceed to determine the detailed plot and start working on the actual version of the animated film.