2D Animation Process

The music video animation I was working on is finally complete and being cut into the final sequence. Several people asked me how long it took and so I thought it would be interesting to roughly explain what goes into making such a 2D animation sequence as the one I was working on mostly on my own. Several months can go into preparing less than one minute of animation and most people I know who aren't involved in animation wonder why. It's worth mentioning that it takes a lot less time if there is a focused team working on the piece, but I happened to undertake this particular endeavour with little outside support.

Here is a graphic, for those who don't like to read too much :)

First of all, there is the conception phase. The director, singer/songwriter and I spent about three weeks just looking at different films and artwork and figuring out what suited the style of the music we had to make a video for. Parallel to that, a storyboard was made which is basically a visual representation of the script written by the director. The storyboard pictures are then set to the music and the scenes are cut according to the beat or the lyrics. For example, when the singer starts singing about the stars, we've reached the night-sky scene. Everything has to be timed correctly before starting actual animation.

Second of all comes the designing of the characters and backgrounds. For this project, there was about a month of back and forth of feedback with new versions being created until a unanimous decision was reached. All the artwork was original without the use of any stock footage. Some of the artwork was trashed as a result of eliminating what we didn't want. Usually, in order to have one finished background, the background artist usually designs a few options and then starts refining the chosen option, going through several versions until the solution is reached.

Third of all comes the animation, which has to be planned and timed again to the beat and lyrics. There were four types of animation in this case:

1. effect animation (such as northern lights, water splashes, confetti etc...)
2. character animation (which has sub-categories such as animating the face for emotion and secondary animation of the hair and clothes which move along with the head and legs etc...)
3. camera movement, which I include in the animation because the camera plays a big role in conveying the message. It could be sweeping across a landscape or shaking when two objects collide. These movements don't happen on their own...someone is "animating" the camera.
4. background animation, which includes fishes in the background, clouds drifting by or waves in the seawater.

The animations aremade up of 25 pictures per second. Some frames are held which means that sometimes there are less than 25 actual drawings per second. The first animations are always rough and sketchy.

Fourth comes cleaning the animation and colouring it. Clean lines are drawn on top of the rough layer below. Then, the line drawings are coloured with the palette that was agreed upon in the conception phase. Finally, some highlights and shadows are added to give an indication of where the light from the environment is coming from. These highlights and shadows also have to be painted or masked on frame by frame to suit the movement of the character. I find that cleaning animations takes a longer time than rough animation, because the hand has to be precise. This also means that the person cleaning and colouring has to take breaks from the computer to prevent muscle cramps and inflammation ;)

The fifth phase and one of the most fun phases for me is when everything comes together: compositing. All the layers; background, animation, effects, shadows, light reflections are stacked on top of each other in front of the camera. The music is played with the animation to make sure the editing is right and everything is synced. Then everything is exported and packaged into a file which can be previewed by the director and singer/songwriter. Again, in our project, there were a few revisions to go through before the final product was reached.

All in all, the animation and compositing phase of about 930 frames took three months because our team was very small. Ideally there are seperate people filling in the following roles:

Director/Writer, Art Director, Storyboard Artist, Background Artist, Character Designer, Character Animator, Effects Animator, Clean-up Artist, Compositor/Editor, et cetera. I personally had to take on  7 roles as this was a low-budget production. The two roles which I thankfully did not have to take on were: director/writer and character animator for the most part. I ended up actually rough animating some sequences. Switching between roles also takes time. Getting into the flow of animation for example, takes a very different mindset than planning how to composite a shot and bring all the elements together.

In numbers:

The animation of less than 40 seconds took 5 months.

3 scenes. 10 shots. 6 backgrounds (some backgrounds where used for more than one shot). Some shots were combined in flowing transitions without cuts which is a lot more challenging than cutting to different shots.

2 main character designs (human) and 5 side character designs (freely moving tree, different fish, etc...)

625+ character animation frames (counting seperate frames for seperate characters. Loops constitute roughly one third of this number)

100+ background animation frames (fish, jellyfish, etc...)

800+ effect animation frames (not chronological, but parallel to other animations).

15+ postproduction files (one for each shot, some for seperate effect animations and then one for the whole pre-final sequence and another for the final sequence)

I hope if someone reads this far, that a) they are not tired out by the information which I tried to present in clear terminology and b) they appreciate a bit more the amount of work that goes into a bit of their entertainment time.

Below are two stills. Overall I'm satisfied enough with the work to let it go and dissatisfied enough to be motivated to do a better job next time :)

Peace out.

Thoughts about Sustainable Art

I've long been a fan of street art. And I love to discover works in the corners and alleyways whenever I happen to be strolling around the city where I live or when I get the chance to travel. But it always bothered me that the medium conveying the striking colours and strong messages to my eyes and brain was toxic-- because more often than not, the message that the well-meaning artist was broadcasting contradicted the ill-meaning paints. Okay, yes, paints can't have a will or evil thoughts and maybe the artist was not all well-meaning...there are many gray areas, but I hope the reader understands what I mean.
When I was living in Amman, I was practising illustration as a hobby with the occasional commission but I decided to leap into exhibiting in 2006. My guilt about using toxic materials led me to making a series of illustration works made using only eco-friendly paper, charcoal and ink, all of which are harmless enough. To contrast those three materials there are three things I did which were not very ethical. I fixed the charcoal with some of my mother's left-over hairspray. Then there were the four digital photography collages that I printed in colour. I couldn't help myself...I had to have something with striking colours in the collection. And thirdly, the frames which I had custom-made were not 100% eco-conscious. Sure, I got a local framemaker to make them for me so I have to give myself some credit for buying regionally, but it was not and is not enough. I seriously started thinking that the next time I would hold an exhibition, it would be with more eco-friendly materials.
Well. The second solo exhibition has yet to happen, even though the whole experience of exhibiting, getting interesting interpretation of the work through feedback from visitors and actually selling most of the work was very fulfilling. It's just that I now work mostly digitally and for platforms different to galleries so it's probably going to be a while before something happens on the traditional-medium-front. But at least I can work long hours at the computer with a good conscience, knowing that it's being powered by hydroelectricity. Cheers to German conciousness and proactivity!
But enough of me, on to this post which might just catalyse that shift in my traditional art making.
http://this.org/magazine/2010/05/26/stefan-thompson-eco-friendly-painter/