top of page
PRE-PRODUCTION
SIZZLE REEL
THUMBNAILS
I believe thumbnails are the best way to begin my animation thought process. This stage is merely jotting down any ideas I have.
I like to quickly sketch what my character is going to look like, that way I can plan for the specific rig I'm going to animate.
Thumbnails overall allow me to show a rough example to my director and/or coworkers, to see if they like my ideas before proceeding.
STORYBOARD
Storyboarding is the next stage of my pre-production. This is where my main posing, camera angles, story, and overall look of the animation gets planned in an organized way. It's critical to make sure that my posing and camera angles are clear for others to understand. Sometimes what makes sense to me doesn't make sense to others, therefore I always get feedback.
A storyboard template is where I place all of my drawings in different frames. The scene number, shot number, and page number are always included in these templates.
Anything I feel that needs to be explained with words I use the lines below each image. Sometimes the drawings are pretty self explanatory or have no explanation at all (as seen below), just as long as my posing makes sense and comes across strong.
ANIMATIC
An animatic is the next stage after storyboarding. This is the time when my drawings come to life in a short video along with some music and sound effects.
The timing and images help me greatly when animating later on.
I start off by placing all of my drawings in an adobe program called Premiere Pro. I watch them playout by default and see which images need to be shorter and longer to really make my drawings come to life. After I get the timing down, I add music that suits the animation. Sometimes I will have to adjust my drawings again, maybe I want the animation to move to the beat of a certain part of the song.
Last but not least I add sound effects for certain actions or objects that the character might encounter.
BLOCKING
Blocking is the stage where I finally block out my main poses in an animation program (I normally use Maya). Now that I have my timing and audio, I can import the audio into Maya and begin posing my rigged character.
I copy my poses from the animatic into my blocking, then I can add the other poses in between the main ones. I remember to add follow through, squash and stretch, and all the other principles of animation.
I don't animate the character fully yet because I need to get my blocking approved by my director before proceeding (I may have to lower or increase exaggeration in the posing).
I normally change the curves in the graph editor into step curves to show the blocking better (I get rid of the step curves when ready to animate again). Once I get approval, I proceed to the final polishing stage.
POLISH
The final stage of my animation process is polishing. Once the blocking poses are complete and the director is happy with my work, I can go in and add finer details to the character. This is a very tedious stage because every little movement is important, even from the slightest curl in a finger tip to a slight mouth change.
When the director likes my finished product, I am officially done the animation and the process and can move onto lighting/rendering.
bottom of page