How Animated Films Are Made?

Photo by Dinu J Nair on Unsplash

Did you know that the stampede scene of The Lion King (1994) took almost two years to be created! As an aspiring Animator, you must be curious to know about all that goes into making the stunning animated movies that entertain us so well. Are you keen to find out the steps involved in the making of animated movies? Then read on to find answers to all your questions.

Pre-Production

•    Ideation
An idea could be a concept or a theme, which is then woven into a story built around some characters. Creators and writers sit together and share ideas, in several what could be called brainstorming sessions and come up with a unique idea for the film.

•    Scripting
Once the basic outline of the story is decided, the writers start chalking out the detailed plot of the film. A script is prepared which is the film in its textual form. A scene by scene sequence of how the story is going to go forward is curated. 

•    Story Boarding
A storyboard is a visual representation of how a story will play out, made up of chronological series of images, just like a comic book.

Production

•    Layout
Layout design is the process of conceptualizing environments based on the story. At this stage, animated characters are placed in the scene and camera angles are finalized to ensure continuity between scenes.

•    Modeling
Modeling means building and shaping a character or an object in 3-D software, to match its design. A model is a digital representation of any object, surface, character or environment.

•    Texturing
Texturing is essentially wrapping the 3-D objects with 2-D images to give them their physical characteristics. It involves defining how the light will affect the object and matching the surface of the model to the real world.

•    Lighting
A Lighting Artist puts in different combinations of light sources to set a certain mood, making objects look realistic, making clear the time of the day in the scene, etc.

•    Rigging
A Rigging Artist is like a puppeteer who controls various strings that make the characters or objects move. It involves representing a 3D character model using a series of interconnected digital bones. Adding bones will allow any object to be animated freely.

•    Animating
This is the central part of the animation process. This involves adding life to the characters by defining their movements throughout the movie.

•    Rendering
Rendering is the process of generating digital images or clips from final assembled models, by using special software.

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•    Voice-over
At this stage, dialogues of different characters according to the script are recorded in the voice of professional voice-over artists. 

Post-Production

•    Composting
This step of post-production involves stitching together various elements like animations, graphics and backgrounds. Special effects are also added at this stage to create a life-like illusion.
 
•    Sound Designing
A sound designer creates and puts together the sounds involved in all the scenes. The background score is also added at this point, to enhance the mood of different scenes.
 
•    Final Editing
A video editing software is used to combine all the elements of the film created till the previous stage including sound and video clips of scenes into the final output and convert into appropriate video format.

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