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5 Things To Do Before You Ever Start Animating

Ever tried to start an animation from scratch without planning a single thing? I'm guessing it ended in

disaster. When we get a new idea, it's tempting to dive right in and start scribbling frame after frame,

but more often than not we end up wandering off the beaten path with no idea where we're going.Slowing down isn't much fun, but it'll save your project in the end. To help keep yourself in order, try

following these five simple steps before you get started.

1. Know your story. 

Many people, especially beginners, dive into an animation with an idea, but no real story. While

every story starts off with a concept, you need to really write out everything to understand

what you're doing and plan ahead. You may need to make some last-minute changes to the

story when you run up against constraints or problems, but that basic framework still needs to

be there. Write out a narrative. Heck, write a script, complete with stage direction, notes on

camera pan, zoom, and angles, etc. Plan out every detail. You'll need it later.

2. Know your characters. 

Don't just do one quick sketch of your characters. Do several, and not just one or two facial

shots. Draw them full-body, from numerous angles. Draw them at rest; draw them moving.

Draw them angry. Draw them happy. Draw the way their hands move as they're speaking. Draw

the finer details of their piercings, or tattoos, or even the weird designs on their t-shirts. Render

them in color.

Heck, if you have inanimate objects that appear in the scene, draw them too - especially if

they're moving objects such as cars, space ships, who knows what else. This will help you a lot

later, during the animation process. We know what our characters look like in our heads, butwe may be inconsistent in getting that down on paper when actually in the process of

animating. Creating character sheets helps you formalize that, and you can use it as a reference

later. You'd be surprised how far it goes in lending consistency and regularity to your

animations. Not only that, but it helps you render your characters in as few lines as possible to

cut out excess work.

3. Plan your scenes. 

Unless you're animating a one-scene short, you'll have several different scenes in your

animation. Take a look at your story or script. Mark where one scene ends and the next begins,

then sit down and concretely identify the requirements of each scene. How many characterswill be in each, what backgrounds you'll need, what kind of music or voiceovers you'll require.

Create a storyboard detailing scene action, camera action, effects, colors, etc. Make the words

of your story / script into images with clear directions. This will form the framework guiding you

throughout the process. It's basically visual instructions to yourself.

4. Map out your timing. 

Proper timing is essential to animation. Not everything moves at the same speed; running X

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distance won't require the same number of frames as walking X distance. If you animate a

cheetah leaping but just pick X number of arbitrary frames to fill in between your keyframes,

you may leave your cheetah floating slowly through the air, or plummeting at deadly speeds.

Not only that, but not all motion continues for the same speed; sometimes there's an ease in

and ease out, such as the wind-up for a baseball pitch. You'll also be working with time

constraints, likely; how long do you want your animation to be? What can be cut that isn'tessential, to fit into those time constraints? Knowing this will help you create dope sheets 

mapping out the frames you'll need to draw.

5. Create a workflow and a project plan. 

Steps 1-4 should have helped you form a clear idea of what work you need to do for your

animation, and in what stages. Write that down. Decide in what order you'll complete each

stage of your project, and your methodology. Stick to that; practice a little discipline. Set

yourself a timeline, especially if you're working on a deadline for someone else. Work out how

much time you'll need for each part, within realistic expectations, and then break down how

you'll allot that time over X number of days.

Following these guidelines won't make you a perfect animator, but they'll help keep you on

track and help you establish a professional working process.

Animation Career

by Shanna Smith

The term "persistence of vision" describes the optical phenomenon that makes animation

possible. The human eye retains an image for a split second after the source of the image

disappears, so when 24 frames per second of an animated film zip through a projector, the flow

of motion on the screen looks seamless.

The same phrase could also be applied to the mind-set of a young (or not quite so young!)

person who has his or her heart set on becoming a Disney animator. For generations, the debut

of each Disney animated feature film has ignited in the minds of thousands of individuals the

desire to be a part of the marvel they see on the screen.

What does it take to be a Disney animator? What spectrums of talent and elements of training

are needed to produce these wonder-working "actors with pencils" called animators? We

recently put these questions to Frank Gladstone, Manager of Animation Training for Disney,

who works out of the Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World.

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Gladstone begins by explaining that natural talent will come out at a young age. Every parent

knows that a child with an artistic bent considers the family home a vast and inviting canvas.

Such children "draw all the time... everywhere, on everything. They see Mommy and they try to

draw Mommy. They see the dog and they try to draw the dog," Gladstone says.

Children go through different phases as they explore their skills. Three that Gladstone cites are:

1) The very young child who tries to render his or her own creative fantasies. Mom or Dad may

not be able to recognize it as such, but according to the child, that blue scribble is a dinosaur

eating an ice-cream cone! (And who is to say it isn't?) 2) The older child who is fascinated by

visuals, who sees cartoons or illustrations and attempts to copy them as accurately as possible.

(This "draftsman" stage may be difficult and frustrating - more on this later.) 3) The high school

student who goes back to the beginning and gives free rein to the imagination, rather than

adhering to straight copying.

"This is the bridge," Gladstone says. "This is when someone may be a serious artist. If they draw

things they see - the real world - that is a big jump. The intent to interpret what they see in the

three-dimensional world is, for me, the tell-all that somebody's interested in art in a serious

way."

Getting to that "bridge," that third phase, though, requires passing through phase two - easier

said than done.

Gladstone explains, "Most young people who start drawing are trying to make things as

accurate as possible. They work very hard to get the eye right, and that's where a lot of people

get discouraged.

"There's a certain strength in being an artist, he says "in that at some point every artist I know is

trying to draw Mom or Dad and somebody will come up behind them and say `that doesn't look

like that.' This is when many people's art career ends."

He continues, "The only time they'll draw again is if they can copy something exactly, which is

why many people are good at drawing from a picture, but they can't do the other [draw from

life]. The person who is strong enough to say `So what? It's my version of this'- that's another

step."

Practice is paramount to maturing as an artist. "Go to the zoo and sketch: draw your friends,"

Gladstone suggests. "Drawing people and their animals, trying to capture something that's

moving - this kind of thing comes with time. It's not something that many children do early on.

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It comes with experience."

Milton Gray, in his book Cartoon Animation: Introduction to a Career, recommends studying

animated films frame by frame, using a VCR or laser videodiscs.

Gladstone agrees. "I had the opportunity to put an old-time print of "Pinocchio" on a Moviola

and spent an entire night going through the scenes I like frame by frame and finding out how

they created that movie.

"It won't teach you everything," he warns, but, "we still do that. We still study how [certain

segments] were done - how did Frank Thomas approach this problem. It's a very good way to

do things, but it's only one of the ways."

Hand-in-hand with practice is formal art training. A young person, brimming with talent though

she or he may be, needs structured schooling to make animation a career.

"They're not going to get a job here when they're fifteen years old," Gladstone says. "We

recommend not only high school, but additional schooling as well - hopefully a college degree."

This schooling would, of course, have art as its primary focus - not merely drawing, but other

disciplines as well, such as painting and sculpting. Milton Gray recommends studying actors and

books on acting, learning something of staging, choreography, and principles of music.

Beyond the fine arts, some background in history, geography, the life sciences, et al., makes for

a more knowledgeable, flexible animator.

"You have to bring things to the table," Gladstone explains. "Half of doing Disney-style feature

animation is the ability to draw, paint, run a computer, or whatever, but the other half is

communication skill. We find that people who have some post-secondary education are more

well-rounded, more adapted to the needs of our studio.

"We realize," he adds "that not everybody can go to college, but we seem to see more

seasoned players if they have." Can you be an animator without being able to draw? Gladstone

replies, "If a kid wants to do animation and he or she can't draw, there are ways to do that.

There always have been ways to do that - stop-action, pixilation (which is stop-action using

people instead of objects), things like that. Now there's another one, the computer. You don't

have to learn to draw to learn how to animate on a computer."

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He cautions, however, "Computer animators just have a very fancy electronic pencil. If they can

draw traditionally, they're that much ahead of the game. In all the computer work that I've seen

in my life, [work] that has really pushed the animation limits - not just the movement limits,

there's a difference - the animators have either come from traditional areas or had good

traditional skills."

These skills, be they traditional or high-tech, can be utilized in a variety of ways. An animated

feature film employs the talents of a wide variety of artists. Animators make up a fairly small

population of the people that create an animated film. There are also assistant animators; in-

betweeners; breakdown, background and layout artists; effects animators; storyboard artists;

visual development or inspirational artists; computer animators; and graphic designers - to

name a few!

All these individuals work as a team (hence the importance of communication) during the long,

arduous process of producing an animated film. Gladstone gives an example of how the artist

(in this case the layout artist), director, and art director work together. These individuals

interpret the storyboard into the various sets, backgrounds and foregrounds for each shot of an

animated film.

"The layout artist has a lot to do with the lighting of the film, the scope, the way the camera

moves through the sets," he explains. "The layout artist is in a very great way the

cinematographer of an animated film, deciding what the camera is going to see and where the

characters will be blocked in a scene."

The in-betweener has traditionally been looked upon as the first rung on the ladder of a

animation career. Although there are exceptions, Gladstone says, "Most people come up

through the ranks, starting as an in-betweener and working their way up to an animator. I think

that's a good way to do it. Eventually, if they become an animator, they will have had the

experience of the people that follow them up. They were there before."

So, the path is charted - now, where to go for the all-important formal instruction? There are

many schools that offer good fundamental art programs and consistently produce graduates

with the skills necessary to become Disney animators. These schools are by no means the only

choices available to the future animator.

Gladstone speaks from experience, "If you need to go to a state school - great! Find a state

school that has an art program and take the best advantage of it you can. Learn how to draw

well. Draw better than everybody there. If you can only go to trade school, great! Go to trade

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school and do it that way."

The various roads to an animation career all demand hard work, discipline, and patience. We

asked Frank Gladstone what crucial advice he would give animators. He responded, "Keep

trying. Don't get too frustrated. Realize your potential, be honest with yourself, and applyyourself to whatever that particular goal is you want to reach."

It takes, in a word, persistence!

For information on the Disney Animator Training Program, please write to:

Walt Disney World Casting,

P.O. Box 10,000,

Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-1000.

Do You Have What it Takes for a Career in

Animation?

Unlike you and me, Buzz Lightyear wasn’t born in a day. In fact, the charismatic space cadet

from Toy Story  cherished by children everywhere was intricately designed by an army of

animators on a computer screen. In reality, that adored astronaut is simply a series of

simultaneous still images manipulated to create the illusion of movement.

And it’s not just children’s movies either. Animators play integral, behind-the-scenes roles in

action-packed blockbusters like Transformers, high-octane video games like Halo, glamorous

television commercials and much more! How would you like to be a part of such exciting

projects on a daily basis?

In such a specialized and competitive field, it’s important to be sure you’ve got the chops tosucceed before investing your time and energy into a career in animation. To help get you up to

speed with the industry, we’ve compiled some need-to-know animation info for you.

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What does an animator do, anyway?

Animators, also known as multimedia artists, create special effects, animation or other visual

images using computers or other electronic tools for products or creations, according to the

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

As you know, animators help create television shows, movies and video games. But besides the

obvious, there are many lesser-known instances where animation is used, says Kristy Mize,

instructor of  digital design and animation at Rasmussen College. 

Some other unique examples of animation jobs she shared include:

  Designing animated graphics for websites

  Recreating crime scenes for court proceedings

 

Producing simulations for medical procedures or military practices

  Creating virtual tours of building architecture or model homes

Put simply, animators do more than just make cartoons. Mize explains that a crucial component

of an animator’s job is to create a series of drawings that bring characters and other inanimate

objects to life in a way that makes the audience feel what the subject is feeling.

What are some characteristics of a successful animator?

If you like the idea of working in animation, the next step is to determine if you have the innatequalities that lend themselves well to the profession. Knowing this information ahead of time

will help you avoid wasting time and effort if it’s not the right fit for you. 

“A successful animator is someone who is observant and inquisitive about life and the world

around them,” says Mize. She claims a natural animator sees the world much dif ferently than

the average Jane or Joe.

Mize says animators must commit incredible attention to detail to the world around them. For

example, a non-animator might not notice the stranger in line ahead of them at a coffee shop.

But a true animator would analyze every detail of that individual, from their posture and facial

expressions to the way they walk and talk.

When it comes down to it, animators must master the art of movement, which is why acting

experience is particularly helpful. In fact, Pixar Animation Studios places a large emphasis on

acting experience for animation candidates to ensure they can “show a character’s internal

thoughts and feelings through its physical external motion.” 

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What are the technical skills needed in animation?

Perhaps you’ve decided that you possess the natural characteristics necessary to excel in an

animation career. But hold on, you’re not quite in the clear yet. Those qualities are useless if

they aren’t accompanied by the requisite technical skills for animation. 

In order to give life to their creative ideas, animators must utilize both the artistic right and

analytical left side of their brains. You’ll need to possess the perfect combination of practical

skills and software savvy to flourish in this field.

First and foremost, Mize stresses the importance of strong drawing skills. She says it’s

imperative to have a clear understanding of how to draw a figure and how the body moves.

You don’t have to be the next Michelangelo but you should have a good understand of drawing

fundamentals.

Her advice to individuals interested in pursuing a career in animation is simple andstraightforward: “Draw, draw and draw some more!” 

Mize also teaches her animation students other essential skills from color theory and

audio/video editing to web authoring and digital media production. She ensures her students

master the 12 principles of animation. Students are also exposed to cutting-edge software such

as Adobe Flash, 3D Studio Max and Mudbox. 

If you find yourself lacking some of these technical talents, don’t worry! These are the exact

skills that you can acquire by earning an animation degree. 

So … are you up for the challenge? 

Bringing dynamic characters to life is an exciting job, but an animation career isn’t always a

walk in the park. Many animators work long hours, including nights and weekends, to adhere to

strict deadlines. But if you’re passionate about animation and determined to succeed, the high-

pressure, fast-pace environment shouldn’t faze you a bit. 

Now that you’re aware of the skills and qualities needed to succeed in animation, take a minute

to determine the areas in which you may need some work. Then decide if  earning a degree may

help you develop those areas. 

In the words of the Pixar animation team, “Computers don’t animate. People do.”