The Animation Process in Comparison

The previous posts have talked about the fundamentals of animation, the start of the digital era, and how technology has effected the industry thus far. So now we begin to get back to animation as a process and move away from the idea that it is a product created by one person.

The original animation process with pen and paper required up to one hundred animators or more to complete the Disney feature films due to the shear amount of drawings and coloring that needed to be done. For the film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" there were roughly 1,500,000 drawings and water color paintings to complete the film.^[1]

Now art teams are now typically around 30-40 people strong for a feature film and less for a television series. The animation team could be broken down into 3-7 animators for an entire film.  Along with the technology of motion capture now animators don't always have to find references to what movements look like. Actors are now able to fill a decent portion of the animation process and the technical animators will go back and clean up the movements.^[1]

Before digital animation because popular the art team used lead animators to make the pose by pose pictures and the other animators would make the filled in frames of the animation. This took a lot of time to complete due to having to wait on a few artist to finish their work so that the others can start working on their part.^[1]

Much like before digital animators still use animatics and blocking to get the animation ready before they spend time making final versions. Animatics are drawings of the animation with basic movement showing the direction of camera and characters. Blocking is small increase from an animatic where the 3D animation is happening with rough shapes of characters or primitive shapes to replace an object in 3D space so that the animators can get a feel for the performances before adding the final finesse to the project.  This keeps animators from wasting time working on shots that the director does not like for production.^[2]

This video is a good example of a blocked out animation. Going from pose to pose just getting the major parts down.^[3]

References:
1.Making of Snow White
2.About Animatics
3.Animation Blocking "WIP Lever"