Traditional animation
Traditional animation is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation of the 20th century in the United States until there was a shift to computer animation in the industry, such as 3D computer animation. Despite this, the process remains commonly used primarily in the form of digital ink and paint for television and film, especially when outsourced.
Process
Writing and storyboarding
Animation production usually begins after a story is converted into an animation film script, from which a storyboard is derived. A storyboard has an appearance somewhat similar to comic book panels, and is a shot by shot breakdown of the staging, acting and any camera moves that will be present in the film. The images allow the animation team to plan the flow of the plot and the composition of the imagery. Storyboard artists will have regular meetings with the director and may redraw or "re-board" a sequence many times before it meets final approval.Voice recording
Before animation begins, a preliminary soundtrack or scratch track is recorded so that the animation may be more precisely synchronized to the soundtrack. Given the slow manner in which traditional animation is produced, it is almost always easier to synchronize animation to a pre-existing soundtrack than it is to synchronize a soundtrack to pre-existing animation. A completed cartoon soundtrack will feature music, sound effects, and dialogue performed by voice actors. The scratch track used during animation typically contains only the voices, any songs to which characters must sing-along, and temporary musical score tracks; the final score and sound effects are added during post-production.In the case of Japanese animation and most pre-1930 sound animated cartoons, the sound was post-synched; the soundtrack was recorded after the film elements were finished by watching the film and performing the dialogue, music, and sound effects required. Some studios, most notably Fleischer Studios, continued to post-synch their cartoons through most of the 1930s, which allowed for the presence of the "muttered ad-libs" present in many Popeye the Sailor and Betty Boop cartoons.
Design, timing, and layout
When storyboards are sent to the design departments, character designers prepare model sheets for any characters and props that appear in the film; and these are used to help standardize appearance, poses, and gestures. The model sheets will often include "turnarounds" which show how a character or object looks in three-dimensions along with standardized special poses and expressions so that the artists have a guide to refer to. Small statues known as maquettes may be produced so that an animator can see what a character looks like in three dimensions. Background stylists will do similar work for any settings and locations present in the storyboard, and the art directors and colour stylists will determine the art style and colour schemes to be used.A timing director will take the animatic and analyse exactly what poses, drawings, and lip movements will be needed on what frames. An exposure sheet is created; this is a printed table that breaks down the action, dialogue, and sound frame-by-frame as a guide for the animators. If a film is based more strongly in music, a bar sheet may be prepared in addition to or instead of an X-sheet. Bar sheets show the relationship between the on-screen action, the dialogue, and the actual musical notation used in the score.
Layout begins after the designs are completed and approved by the director. It is here that the background layout artists determine the camera angles, camera paths, lighting, and shading of the scene. Character layout artists will determine the major poses for the characters in the scene and will make a drawing to indicate each pose. For short films, character layouts are often the responsibility of the director. The layout drawings and storyboards are then spliced, along with the audio and an animatic is formed.
While the animation is being done, the background artists will paint the sets over which the action of each animated sequence will take place. These backgrounds are generally done in gouache or acrylic paint, although some animated productions have used backgrounds done in watercolor or oil paint. Background artists follow very closely the work of the background layout artists and colour stylists so that the resulting backgrounds are harmonious in tone with the character designs.
Animatic
Usually, an animatic or story reel is created after the soundtrack is recorded and before full animation begins. The term "animatic" was originally coined by Walt Disney Animation Studios. An animatic typically consists of pictures of the storyboard timed and cut together with the soundtrack. This allows the animators and directors to work out any script and timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, and a new animatic may be created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard meets the users' requirements. Editing the film at the animatic stage prevents the animation of scenes that would be edited out of the film. Creating scenes that will eventually be edited out of the completed cartoon is avoided.Animation
In the traditional animation process, animators will begin by drawing sequences of animation on sheets of transparent paper perforated to fit the peg bars in their desks, often using colored pencils, one picture or "frame" at a time. A peg bar is an animation tool used in traditional animation to keep the drawings in place. A key animator or lead animator will draw the key frames or key drawings in a scene, using the character layouts as a guide. The key animator draws enough of the frames to get across the major poses within a character performance.While working on a scene, a key animator will usually prepare a pencil test of the scene. A pencil test is a much rougher version of the final animated scene ; the pencil drawings are quickly photographed or scanned and synced with the necessary soundtracks. Pencil tests were originally shot on film with animation cameras, so the animators had to wait for the developed film to come back before they could see the results. But in the late 70s the industry switched to a video system which stored the drawings on analog tape, making it possible to see the tests immediately. At first reel-to-reel tape was used, but was soon replaced by U-matic and VHS. By the early 90s, the animation tests were stored digitally, and eventually as files. These tests allows the animation to be reviewed and improved upon before passing the work on to their assistant animators, who will add details and some of the missing frames in the scene. The work of the assistant animators is reviewed, pencil-tested, and corrected until the lead animator is ready to meet with the director and have their scene sweatboxed.
Once the key animation is approved, the lead animator forwards the scene on to the clean-up department, made up of the clean-up animators and the inbetweeners. The clean-up animators take the lead and assistant animators' drawings and trace them onto a new sheet of paper, making sure to include all of the details present on the original model sheets, so that the film maintains a cohesiveness and consistency in art style. The inbetweeners will draw in whatever frames are still missing in-between the other animators' drawings. This procedure is called tweening. The resulting drawings are again pencil-tested and sweatboxed until they meet approval.
At each stage during pencil animation, approved artwork is spliced into the leica reel.
This process is the same for both character animation and special effects animation, which on most high-budget productions are done in separate departments. Often, each major character will have an animator or group of animators solely dedicated to drawing that character. The group will be made up of one supervising animator, a small group of key animators, and a larger group of assistant animators. Effects animators animate anything that moves and are not a character, including props, vehicles, machinery and phenomena such as fire, rain, and explosions. Sometimes, instead of drawings, a number of special processes are used to produce special effects in animated films; rain, for example, has been created in Disney animated films since the late 1930s by filming slow-motion footage of water in front of a black background, with the resulting film superimposed over the animation.
Ink and paint
Once the clean-ups and in-between drawings for a sequence are completed, they are prepared for a process known as ink and paint. Each drawing is transferred from paper to a thin, clear sheet of plastic called a cel, a contraction of the material name celluloid. The outline of the drawing is inked or photocopied onto the cel, and gouache, acrylic or a similar type of paint is used on the reverse sides of the cels to add colors in the appropriate shades. The transparent quality of the cel allows for each character or object in a frame to be animated on different cels, as the cel of one character can be seen underneath the cel of another; and the opaque background will be seen beneath all of the cels.Disney experienced a setback to its ink-and-paint department due to World War II. When peacetime resumed, much of the original equipment went to waste as more economic solutions were sought, leading to the [|xerography] process pioneered by Ub Iwerks.
Camera
When an entire sequence has been transferred to cels, the photography process begins. Each cel involved in a frame of a sequence is laid on top of each other, with the background at the bottom of the stack. A piece of glass is lowered onto the artwork in order to flatten any irregularities, and the composite image is then photographed in stop motion by a special animation camera, also called rostrum camera. The cels are removed, and the process repeats for the next frame until each frame in the sequence has been photographed. Each cel has registration holes, small holes along the top or bottom edge of the cel, which allow the cel to be placed on corresponding peg bars before the camera to ensure that each cel aligns with the one before it; if the cels are not aligned in such a manner, the animation, when played at full speed, will appear "jittery." Sometimes, frames may need to be photographed more than once, in order to implement superimpositions and other camera effects. Pans are created by either moving the cels or backgrounds 1 step at a time over a succession of frames.Dope sheets are created by the animators and used by the camera operator to transfer each animation drawing into the number of film frames specified by the animators, typically 1 or 2 and sometimes 3.
As the scenes come out of final photography, they are spliced into the animatic or leica reel, taking the place of the pencil animation. Once every sequence in the production has been photographed, the final film is sent for development and processing, while the final music and sound effects are added to the soundtrack.