We often get to hear from the parents that their kids love animation movies and that they want to do animation or choose animation as their career. Of late, there is a spurt in the inquiries by parents about this subject and the right means to help their children realize their animation dreams. Here is a quick round up for such parents who are out to help their kids aiming high in the animation industry.

What is Animation ?

Animation is a method by which pictures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film.

There are 5 mediums or types of animation

Cel (Celluloid) Animation. This is the original hand-drawn form of cel animation
where the artist literally has to draw thousands of images on special papers and
have them photographed, frame by frame.
2D Animation – Done on a computer with the help of software like Flash, AE etc.
3D Animation – Executed with software like Maya, Max etc.
Motion Graphics – Done with help of After Effects etc.
Stop Motion – Stop motion is like traditional animation, except that, instead of
drawing, you have clay models and a set that you have to carefully manipulate to
produce the animation.

Today, most animations made are in 3D using computer-generated imagery (CGI).

For an overview of the pipeline for animation we will take the example of 3D animation or CGI.

So when someone expresses their desire to learn animation, it is a vague request most of the times since they are inquiring about learning a medium without being aware of multiple features in it.

The right question from the students should be which part of the specific feature of animation medium they should learn.

Since we know now that the term Animated Movie is a generalized term for a CGI movie, lets go deeper and see what all categories are there in this CGI medium.

MOVIE MAKING PROCESS (CGI)

Any movie follows a process, it starts with an idea and it goes through multiple departments and ultimately ends up in a theatre. This process is broadly classified into three stages which is Pre-production, Production and Post-production. Making a movie is a complicated affair. You can’t play with other peoples’ time or money, and there’s always tremendous pressure to deliver every single day. The point of the above simplistic comparison is to show that cooking does not begin when you put your ingredients in the oven. Cooking begins a whole lot earlier.

Preproduction is the stage where you prepare for cooking. This stage is further divided into subcategories. They are:-

Script: It is a story idea of the movie written down by the screenwriter. It is basically a structure of the whole movie with complete plots, characters and tone.

Story Board: The script becomes the foundation for the storyboard. A storyboard is a graphic representation of how your video will unfold, shot by shot. Like a script, your storyboard visually guides you throughout the production process. By planning your video, you know which shots you need to create and how to create them when filming begins. You can get others’ feedback well in advance and make simple adjustments to your storyboard, rather than making major changes while filming.

Character Design: It is one of the most important stages of pre-production. This is where we sketch out our characters for the movie. Usually, you’ll be provided a physical or psychological description of the character, but it’s not really mandatory to execute all of them in all of your sketches, since the important thing is to explore the widest range of possibilities for a character, particularly the contrast between them. How does this character look? Tall/short, fat/thin, muscular/weak, white/black/Asian/Latino? Even in some cases, you could try drawing the opposite of the gender that was assigned.

Dialogue Recording: A script is needed for dialogues and extra sound effects. The actors will read the lines from the script and record their dialogue. These voices will be used later on for the animatic and for the final animation. In some big budget animated movies, the studio hires big Hollywood stars to give the voiceovers to the characters.

Animatic: In a nutshell, animatic is an animated storyboard. It is a series of images played in a sequence. Storyboards are brought into an editing program and are cut together with the correct timing and pace of the film. They include basic sound effects, dialogue recordings and scratch soundtrack.

Production: This is a stage where you actually do the “cooking”. This is the stage where students get confused with the general term of ‘animation.’ This is further subdivided into various departments from which the students can choose their specialization.

3D Modelling: It is a technique in computer graphics for producing a 3D digital representation of any character or object. So once the design of the character or an object is ready, we sculpt this character design into a 3D environment using software like Maya etc. An artist uses these software to manipulate points in virtual space (called vertices) to form a mesh: a collection of vertices that form an object. It is like taking a piece of clay and modifying it by applying pressure on some parts and pulling on some parts until a desired shape is achieved. The same process in done in a 3D environment.

Surfacing/Texturing: Once the 3D model is ready, it needs to be colored as it is in greyscale. Surfacing artists are master digital painters. They enhance the appearance of modelled characters, props and environments in an animated feature film according to the visual style set forth by the art director and director of the film.

Rigging: Rigging is essentially putting bones into your mesh (the 3D model). When you make a rig, you add in joints, all of which are connected by (the accurately named) bones. When you are done creating the rig, it should have a very similar structure to the bones of the human’s/creature’s skeletal structure. This can also be done for inanimate objects to give control over certain moving parts, like car tires. The rig allows you to manipulate limbs and depending on the complexity of the rig, smaller details like facial expression, thereby granting you the ability to move the mesh without
having to animate every individual vertex.

3D Animation : Once the Modelling, Rigging and Texturing of a character are done, it is ready to be animated. With the help of the software, we can move the rigged model. Careful manipulation of 3D models or objects is carried out within 3D software for creating snapshots of sequences giving them the illusion of animation or movement. However, this is completely based on the technique used for manipulating the objects and this is how one can make the character walk, run, cry or laugh.

Post-production: Post-production is the final stage in the process of creating an animated movie where everything comes together. It also is divided into few departments.

Lighting: In a nutshell, it is a process where we put the light in the shot to indicate what time of the day or night it is currently in the scene. Although it is far more complex than that, it often happens that a well-modelled 3D object looks unconvincing and flat or even plastic because of a badly implemented lighting solution. On the other hand, well-chosen lighting techniques can significantly enhance the project value.

Visual Fx: Also called special effects, this is concerned with creating explosions, fire, water and smoke effects. There are several other things we can do like crowd simulation and particle dynamics etc.

Final Editing/Compositing: It involves exporting or rendering out the animation frames and then editing the pieces of animation together using video editing software. The sound track, including sound effects, is also added during the final edit.

So these are the major departments through which any movie goes through. No single department is wholly responsible for the movie. It is a combined effort. Everyone plays a significant role in this process.