By: William Bibbiani
Source: http://www.craveonline.com
Thanks to the Gods of Saturday Morning, several generations of kids have been raised on an exciting round of animated TV programs. No child alive is not intimately familiar with cartoons. I was, myself, largely drawn to the old Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies put out by Warner Bros. in the 1940s, and rerun on TV in the 1980s. I think the old shorts are still being run here and there on entire cable networks devoted to animation. And when I wasn't giggling at Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, I was grooving to crappy animated programs like Transformers and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe which were both sponsored by toy companies, and features only the most rudimentary of action thrills for my sugar-saturated mind.
One of the first feature films I remember seeing in a theater was Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940). I don't recall much of the story, but I remember Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff Edwards), and I remember being utterly terrified when the island of naughty boys began to magically transform into donkeys. Are we not men?
As I grew, I refused to give up on my cartoons, and continued to watch Saturday Morning fare into high school (no, I was not a cool kid). But my interest in the form did, thankfully, become more sophisticated as the years passed. And I can now offer you, my dear and loyal readers, a scholarly look at the form, and offer what knowledge I have on the making of animated feature films. Welcome back, then, to CraveOnline's weekly Free Film School, wherein I, Witney Seibold, your humble professor-like being, will impart piece-by-piece all of my film knowledge to you, hoping to get you to grow from a casually interested film fan into a legitimate film snot who dominates conversations at parties.
Animation, as we have likely all come to realize, has actually become something of a dominant art in recent years. Computer-generated imagery, or CGI, has not only been used to create entire feature films, but is leaned upon heavily to create all manner of special effects. These days, it's likely that most of the explosions, crumbling buildings, slimy monsters, and even certain stuntpeople have been created using CGI. Indeed, the reliance on CGI to create images in live-action films has reached the point where old school genre fans begin to reminisce when practical special effects were ubiquitous and more convincing. This is a subject I already covered in the Free Film School before.
But, for much of the filmmaking process, films animated using CGI and films animated in the traditional frame-by-frame style actually cleave kind of similar. Let me take you through the steps now.
STEP ONE: Writing. Like any film, an animated film starts with a screenplay. Thanks to the animated form, just about any visuals can be realized. There is no need to worry about what's possible with a camera. If you can draw it, it can be in an animated film. The “camera” in an animated film can dip and swerve and go anywhere the director wants. In traditional cel animation, changing perspective on an entire scene can be hard; it's easier to render something like that in CGI. I'll get to “cels” in a minute.
STEP TWO: Character design. This can be done before or after the voice-recording step (see below), but a team of artists will, using traditional paints, pens inks, and paper, design the look of the character. Some characters will go through several iterations before a final look is selected by the film's director. Characters are never designed using CGI. They are always sketches first. The character designers will also come up with a character sheet for each and every character, detailing the various extreme expressions each one has. They'll have a “happy” drawing, an “angry” drawing, etc. Since hundreds of animators will end up working on the film (sometimes even being shipped to other animation studios overseas for some of the manual labor), it's important that they each know exactly how each character looks. If there are standardized character sheets, one can be assured continuity in the look of your talking rabbit, even when that look is in the hands of hundreds. Occasionally, you'll come across a cartoon that wants to rattle this standardized system, and do more original, free-hand animation (see: The Ren and Stimpy Show). When a character deviates from their model sheet, it's called “going off-model.”
Characters can only move so far in most animated films, provided the director wants them to look like they have real weight; characters should only be able to squash and stretch their faces so far, right? The term for this form of squash-and-stretch design is actually “squash-and-stretch.”
In a CGI film, often a 3-D clay model will be sculpted to give the computer animators an idea of how it will look in the 3-D space within the computer. CGI allows for the quick change of perspective on an image, so how it looks from all angles is important.
STEP THREE: Voice recording. Actors are selected for their voice talents. The entire script is then typically recorded in its entirety. For most animated feature films, actors are recorded at different times, and their lines are edited together. Some animation directors prefer the naturalness that comes with organic acting techniques, and may record all the actors in the room together, going over entire scenes. Actors stand in front of individual microphones, and usually read directly from their scripts. There is little in the way of improvising, although Robin Williams was a big exception when he played the genie in Aladdin.
Read more.....
Source: http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/178563-free-film-school-23-animation-the-twelve-step-program
Source: http://www.craveonline.com
Thanks to the Gods of Saturday Morning, several generations of kids have been raised on an exciting round of animated TV programs. No child alive is not intimately familiar with cartoons. I was, myself, largely drawn to the old Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies put out by Warner Bros. in the 1940s, and rerun on TV in the 1980s. I think the old shorts are still being run here and there on entire cable networks devoted to animation. And when I wasn't giggling at Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, I was grooving to crappy animated programs like Transformers and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe which were both sponsored by toy companies, and features only the most rudimentary of action thrills for my sugar-saturated mind.
One of the first feature films I remember seeing in a theater was Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940). I don't recall much of the story, but I remember Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Cliff Edwards), and I remember being utterly terrified when the island of naughty boys began to magically transform into donkeys. Are we not men?
As I grew, I refused to give up on my cartoons, and continued to watch Saturday Morning fare into high school (no, I was not a cool kid). But my interest in the form did, thankfully, become more sophisticated as the years passed. And I can now offer you, my dear and loyal readers, a scholarly look at the form, and offer what knowledge I have on the making of animated feature films. Welcome back, then, to CraveOnline's weekly Free Film School, wherein I, Witney Seibold, your humble professor-like being, will impart piece-by-piece all of my film knowledge to you, hoping to get you to grow from a casually interested film fan into a legitimate film snot who dominates conversations at parties.
Animation, as we have likely all come to realize, has actually become something of a dominant art in recent years. Computer-generated imagery, or CGI, has not only been used to create entire feature films, but is leaned upon heavily to create all manner of special effects. These days, it's likely that most of the explosions, crumbling buildings, slimy monsters, and even certain stuntpeople have been created using CGI. Indeed, the reliance on CGI to create images in live-action films has reached the point where old school genre fans begin to reminisce when practical special effects were ubiquitous and more convincing. This is a subject I already covered in the Free Film School before.
But, for much of the filmmaking process, films animated using CGI and films animated in the traditional frame-by-frame style actually cleave kind of similar. Let me take you through the steps now.
STEP ONE: Writing. Like any film, an animated film starts with a screenplay. Thanks to the animated form, just about any visuals can be realized. There is no need to worry about what's possible with a camera. If you can draw it, it can be in an animated film. The “camera” in an animated film can dip and swerve and go anywhere the director wants. In traditional cel animation, changing perspective on an entire scene can be hard; it's easier to render something like that in CGI. I'll get to “cels” in a minute.
STEP TWO: Character design. This can be done before or after the voice-recording step (see below), but a team of artists will, using traditional paints, pens inks, and paper, design the look of the character. Some characters will go through several iterations before a final look is selected by the film's director. Characters are never designed using CGI. They are always sketches first. The character designers will also come up with a character sheet for each and every character, detailing the various extreme expressions each one has. They'll have a “happy” drawing, an “angry” drawing, etc. Since hundreds of animators will end up working on the film (sometimes even being shipped to other animation studios overseas for some of the manual labor), it's important that they each know exactly how each character looks. If there are standardized character sheets, one can be assured continuity in the look of your talking rabbit, even when that look is in the hands of hundreds. Occasionally, you'll come across a cartoon that wants to rattle this standardized system, and do more original, free-hand animation (see: The Ren and Stimpy Show). When a character deviates from their model sheet, it's called “going off-model.”
Characters can only move so far in most animated films, provided the director wants them to look like they have real weight; characters should only be able to squash and stretch their faces so far, right? The term for this form of squash-and-stretch design is actually “squash-and-stretch.”
In a CGI film, often a 3-D clay model will be sculpted to give the computer animators an idea of how it will look in the 3-D space within the computer. CGI allows for the quick change of perspective on an image, so how it looks from all angles is important.
STEP THREE: Voice recording. Actors are selected for their voice talents. The entire script is then typically recorded in its entirety. For most animated feature films, actors are recorded at different times, and their lines are edited together. Some animation directors prefer the naturalness that comes with organic acting techniques, and may record all the actors in the room together, going over entire scenes. Actors stand in front of individual microphones, and usually read directly from their scripts. There is little in the way of improvising, although Robin Williams was a big exception when he played the genie in Aladdin.
Read more.....
Source: http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/178563-free-film-school-23-animation-the-twelve-step-program
