LIGHTING AND RENDERING

Lighting is added to the scenes for enhancement and effect. Lighting can imitate any kind of natural or studio lighting. After the lighting, the computer does the final render of all steps in the process by calculating each pixel in the frame. Rendering can sometimes take anywhere from a few minutes to 20 hours a frame to compute.

The Animation Process

(Film/TV)

STORYBOARD

The storyboard is a small visual layout of the story. These story panels layout the staging, action, camera, efx, and dialogue of the characters for the director and artists. This is the first step to planning out any animation project. Time and money are saved with the careful planning of a project through this pre-production process. In feature film, thousands of storyboard panels are created.

DIALOGUE

Once the storyboards are approved, the dialogue is recorded. This is done prior to the animation, so the animators know how the characters will deliver the lines of script. Sometimes the voice over actors will even inspire the design of the characters by their performance in the recording studio.

ANIMATIC

The storyboards are shot and combined with the dialogue inorder to work out the timing of the scenes. This is where the director can determine whether the animation will meet the length requirements of the project.

CHARACTER DESIGN

The characters, props, and backgrounds are created. Sometimes multiple views of a character are drawn so that other artists can keep the integrity of the design in any camera view. From this last stage of pre-production, a project will continue into either a 2D (Jungle Book, Bambi, etc..) or 3D (Toy Story, The Incredibles, etc..) project. There are often both types of animation used within a project.

ROUGH ANIMATION

Animation is created with only "Key" poses. This allows changes to be made without redoing full scenes.

MODELING

Three-dimensional computer models are created for characters, props,sets, and effects.

FINAL ANIMATION

"In-between" drawings are created for smooth movement between the key poses. Once approved, the drawings are "cleaned up" with solid lines on seperate sheets of paper and scanned in to the computer.

ANIMATION

Animation of the characters are done by choreographing the motion by defining the key frames or poses. The computer then automatically creates the "in-between" frames, which then the animator can adjust for smooth movement and accent.

INK AND PAINT

The color is added to the scanned drawings in the computer.

TEXTURING

The computer then adds surface attributes to the objects which include coloring, textures, reflections, transparencies, etc.. The computer is able to create a large selection of surfaces found in nature such as skin, wood, rocks, metal, water, fabric, and glass

COMPOSITING

Finally all layers of animation are laid over the background paintings for the finished composited frame.

EDITING

When the animation is completed and rendered whether in 2D or 3D the final images are brought into a computer editing program. Here the sound efx, dialogue, and music are combined with the rendered images. Now the finished scenes are ready for transfer to film, video, DVD, or CD-ROM.