Creating Animation
Designing an animation
The first step in designing an animation is to write a script. The page you see here is from an iconic scene in Kung Fu Panda 2:
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Taken from the Dreamworks Web site on Production Process. |
| "Once a script page is ready, we give it to our storyboard artists. Imagining how the words will translate into actions and pictures, they make a series of sketches, a kind of comic book, to tell the story and bring it to life. Once the directors and producer approve, the drawings are digitally photographed and strung together to create what we call a story reel (imagine a flip book that lets you see how the drawings flow together). We combine that with temporary music, sound effects and dialogue, and work with the movie in this form for about 18 months." |
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Storyboard artists at Dreamworks |
Designing your own animation
When you design your own animation you must produce design documentation for your animation including a storyboard.
Design Sheet
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You need to complete this design sheet and print it out. This requires details such as "purpose of the animation" (what is the point of it? What is it for? Will it advertise something, give advice, or persuade someone to do something?) and "target audience for the animation" (who is it aimed at? Males? Females? Teenagers? Adults? A certain age group or type of person?) Click here to see an example of a completed Design Sheet. |
Storyboard
You must create a storyboard for your animation. Your storyboard should show things like:
images |
text |
colours |
effects |
created graphics eg shapes, lines |
sound |
transitions |
timings |
content of the animation |
animation size |
frame rate |
looping eg individual elements |
animation techniques such as tweening or frame-by-frame |
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Hanna-Barbera production supervisor Carl Urbano working on a storyboard, 1967.
This is an example of a storyboard for a Flash animation (thanks to Nika).
*Remember - Timings are important!
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The storyboard on the right was used to create the Flash animation below. To view the animation, Right-click and choose Play. |
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OCR Unit 20 Marksheet |