What makes an animated film

From the majestic Pride Rock to versatile 3D characters, animation has been an integral part of our childhoods. You may have always wondered how people manage to create such epic works of art for thousands to enjoy.

With teams of people working tirelessly to bring a massive undertaking into fruition. In this post, we have broken down animated movie creation into simple steps so you can get an idea of everything that needs to happen to bring a masterpiece to life. This is the phase where you refine your main idea.

You take your concept, specify it, and then turn into a feasible plan. The premise of this process is simple — you have to write as many ideas down as you can. It can take several rounds of brainstorming to find ideas that click and to uncover diamonds in the rough. Animated cartoons are fun to watch, but quite a great challenge to create. And the main reason is the plot, as coming up with an engaging plot requires creativity; innate talent, and keen attention to details.

Remember, in animation, rare and unique ideas add life to your characters. Avoid familiar plot ideas that you might have come across. Create a main character that has prominent personality traits. Also, provide your main character with a back story that will make them stand out. Also called screenwriting , scripting involves creating an outline of all of the events taking place in your animated film.

This includes everything from detailing all audio occurrences, such as dialogue, sound effects, and music score, to mentioning any other important details crucial to unraveling your story on the screen. In commercial animation, a script presents you an opportunity to accurately express your storyline and plot for the first time. Also, execution of a successful animated cartoon begins with a good script that enlivens its characters, setting, and plot of the story.

Every creative endeavor begins with a concept, especially an endeavor as grand as a movie. When directors or production designers come up with ideas for a movie, concept artists help them turn those abstract ideas concrete.

Concept art is a type of illustration, but not quite exactly an illustration. Unlike illustration, concept art is more design-centric, and involves a lot more idea iteration and figuring. In short, concept art offers a constant visual support for movie makers that acts as a reference throughout the movie-making process.

A storyboard helps you to finalize the development of your storyline plus concept art and serves as the backbone of your animation process. You can create your storyboards by drawing your plot in the form of a comic script. This will help you visualize the animation timeline. Also, a storyboard provides a visual record of the original plan, which acts as a point of reference as you move forward. This helps everyone involved in the production to have a unanimous idea and grip on the purpose of complex sequences before production actually begins.

Now that you have done all your background work, this is where the real work begins. A prototype of the squeaky- and baby-voiced cartoon queen voiced for most of the 30s by Mae Questel was introduced in the 7th Bimbo Talkartoon entitled Dizzy Dishes - with her appearing un-named as a long-eared puppy dog! She also appeared again with dog ears in Talkartoon's and Fleischer's Mysterious Mose the cartoon was slightly risque - while shivering with fright, Betty's nightgown jumped up off her body, and when a mysterious figure appeared under a blanket next to her in bed, she rubbed its belly to see if it was real.

In the early cartoon Betty Co-Ed , she was called Betty, and in another pre-Code Bimbo cartoon entitled Silly Scandals the title spoofed Disney's Silly Symphonies , she was named Betty Boop for the first time but still with puppy dog ears - she sang You're Driving Me Crazy from the musical comedy Smiles while her dress top kept falling down to reveal her lacy bra.

In Talkartoons' Any Rags , she was transformed into a human after losing her floppy dog ears they became hoop earrings , and her nose became button-shaped and flesh-colored. In Stopping the Show , she appeared under her own credits banner for the first time she had previously appeared only in Talkartoons and Screen Songs.

Betty Boop's voice was modeled on the voice of another actress, Helen Kane, who created a sensation on Broadway in with a "boop-oop-a-doop" rendition of the hit song I Wanna Be Loved by You. The cartoon character with a high baby voice, large child-like head and eyes, signature wink, fluttering lashes, shimmying body, and spit curls appeared in a series of short cartoons and became the top Fleischer star, with more than films shorts in the s:. Unfortunately, the cute, titillating 'boop-oop-a-doop' Betty with an exposed garter and strapless frock was destined to be censored with the advent of the enforceable, conservative and puritanical Hays Production Code in The Betty Boop cartoons were stripped of sexual innuendo and her skimpy dresses, and she became more family-friendly.

As a result of the drastic changes to her character after , her popularity declined, and her demise came with her last cartoon appearance in Rhythm on the Reservation - often criticized for its potentially offensive Native-American characterizations. The Fleischers also obtained the rights to the tough, one-eyed, spinach-loving sailor Popeye with over-sized arms who was introduced in mid-January in creator Elzie C.

Popeye became so popular in the comic strip that it was renamed "Thimble Theatre, Starring Popeye. Popeye first appeared on film alongside established cartoon-star Betty Boop in July, in Fleischers' Betty Boop Cartoon series titled Popeye the Sailor , in which they danced the hula.

The same year in September, the first official Popeye cartoon, I Yam What I Yam was released - the first in a long series of animated shorts. Popeye's first Technicolor cartoon was the two-reel special release Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor , noted for its experimental multi-plane 3-D backgrounds, and for being the first Fleischer cartoon to be nominated for an Academy Award - Best Short Subject - Cartoon.

The cartoon character became well-known for his theme song excerpt below :. The character Wimpy provided the name for an unpopular type of British hamburger.

By , Popeye had replaced Mickey Mouse as the most popular cartoon character in America. Paramount's Famous Studios continued the series beginning in , and Popeye's movie career lasted until Dave and Max Fleischer, in an agreement with Paramount and DC Comics, also produced a series of seventeen expensive Superman cartoons in the early s. The Fleischers were responsible for the first ten Superman cartoons up through Japoteurs , with the remaining shorts produced by Paramount's Famous Studios during The first 10 minute Superman short, Superman , which premiered in , introduced the narrator's exclamations of "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

The most famous of the series was the second entry, The Mechanical Monsters with the super-hero battling giant flying robots. It also included a redesigned, more sensual Lois Lane and marked the first time that Superman would change into his classic red and blue costume in a telephone booth. It was also the only time that Superman was shown using X-ray Vision in a Fleischer short.

Also notable was The Bulleteers , the fifth entry of the 17 shorts. The Fleischers were in direct competition with Disney. Two feature-length animations with whimsical characters and advanced animation techniques by the Fleischers deserve mention, although the Fleischers are better-remembered for their shorts than for their only two features:.

As a final footnote, the struggling and insolvent Fleischer Studios was acquired by Paramount Pictures in The studio was restructured and renamed Famous Studios , and returned to New York after being in Florida since Work continued on the Popeye and Superman series. The studio also produced cartoons based on Harvey Comics characters, including over two dozen Little Lulu Moppet cartoons in the 40s, and over 50 Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoons that stretched into the s Casper made his debut in Izzy Sparber's cartoon short The Friendly Ghost All rights reserved.

Filmsite: written by Tim Dirks. Search for:. Facebook Twitter Email. The History of Animated Films. No surviving copies individually, hand-painted frames. Pauvre Pierrot Poor Pete 15 minutes in length. Milestones in Early Film Animation. Matches: An Appeal , UK.

The Enchanted Drawing The Electric Hotel , Sp. Humorous Phases of Funny Faces The Haunted Hotel Fantasmagorie , Fr. Gertie the Dinosaur Memorable Felix the Cat Cartoon Shorts. Feline Follies Felix in Hollywood In Gollywog Land , UK - a lost film. It was essentially a live-action film with puppet-animated sequences.

It was the first animated short genuinely made in color using color film. Drawings were made on transparent celluloid and painted on the reverse, then photographed with a two-color camera. Fiddlesticks MGM's and ex-Disney animator Ub Iwerks' debut short Fiddlesticks was the first animated film released using the two-strip Technicolor process. It was also the first complete animated short to combine color and synchronized sound. Newman Laugh-O-Grams Logo. Little Red Riding Hood The Four Musicians of Bremen Alice's Wonderland never shown theatrically.

Oswald The Lucky Rabbit - Transitions. Disney's Milestone Mickey Mouse Cartoons Plane Crazy Steamboat Willie The Gallopin' Gaucho The Barn Dance Dinner Time At about the same time, the first publically-shown 'synchronized' sound-on-film cartoon released theatrically was Dinner Time It was notable for being among the first cartoons produced and released as a sound cartoon, using the RCA Photophone sound system.

Memorable Fleischer Brothers Documentary Animations. Please log in with your username or email to continue. No account yet? Create an account. Edit this Article. We use cookies to make wikiHow great. By using our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Cookie Settings. Learn why people trust wikiHow. Download Article Explore this Article methods. Tips and Warnings. Related Articles. Article Summary. Method 1. All rights reserved. This image may not be used by other entities without the express written consent of wikiHow, Inc.

Write out a script. This is often easier said than done, but you need to write down your ideas clearly and give them structure before you start working. Unlike in live action, it is almost impossible to "improvise" an animated film, as it simply takes too long animate everything. Your script doesn't need dialog, but it does need: A theme. What is the "point" of the short film? This doesn't need to be grand, profound, or complicated.

It can be anything from "the loss of childhood innocence," or "boredom is a state of mind," to "I want to make people laugh with this joke. What will hold the attention of your audience?

This can be anything from a person or an animal to a squiggly line, like the Oscar-winning short "The Dot and the Line: A Romance. Where does the short take place? What's the mood, or atmosphere? A screenplay needs to tell the story of the short in full so it can be used as a blueprint for future work. This sounds obvious, but that's the point -- almost all stories are told in three specific, delineated parts, or acts.

This doesn't mean you must have a three-act story, or even "characters. Act 3 provides resolution to the problem they find a sandwich shop, they save the world, the boy meets another person, etc. Sketch character models. Before starting to animate, you need to know what your characters are going to look like.

Sketch them in a variety of poses, costumes, and expressions to get a feel for what they will look like. Still, you want to develop your characters ahead of time so that they look consistent when you animate them. Draw up a storyboard.

Storyboards are individual drawings for every bit of action in the script and are used in the production of almost every film -- animated or otherwise. They are both simple and comprehensive, as you need one for every change you want in the film.

They do not, however, need background detail or color, unless it is essential to the story. You can find and print a variety of free storyboard templates online, or draw your own. Each frame of the storyboard has two parts: The Image: In a rectangular box, draw the principal action of the shot, ignoring background images for now.

You can also draw notes or arrows to indicate movement. The Dialogue. Underneath the shot, write down what needs to be said in the shot, the proposed length of the shot, and any effects zoom in, shaky camera, etc. Import your storyboard into a filmmaking program, saving each frame individually. Once you have your shots planned out, import them into your computer. Make sure to name them appropriately Act1. Use your storyboard to make a timed slideshow, or animatic.

Animatics are the rough cuts of animation -- they get the pace and rhythm of the short together and allow you to to get the timing right for your final short. This sounds complicated, however, they are really just slideshows with proper timing. Put the images of the storyboard in order on your editing software and extend, cut, and play with them until you have a "rough" cut of the final film. Almost all animated movies are made into animatics first. Otherwise you risk spending hours fully animating a scene that needs to change, get longer or shorter, or get deleted.

Add the dialog and sound effects and adjust the timing of the animatic as needed. Once you have your rough timing down, it's time to pre-record the dialog. This doesn't have to be perfect, and you can even fake the sound effects with your mouth and hands if you want. What matters is the timing. Do you have enough time in the "shot" to get all the words out? Extend or shorten the length of your slides as necessary.

The closer you can get the dialog to perfect, the better, as most good voice acting requires proper timing. That said, now is not the time to worry about the finer details of voice acting. You need to get your animatic together before moving on to full production. Review your animatic as if it were the final film. The final animatic should tell the full story of your film, minus the trappings of color, backgrounds, and details.

If you are knowledgeable of video editing , you can add pans, zooms, and transitions right now to test them before your final editing. Consider purchasing a tablet. Tablets are small computer pads that come with an electronic pen, allowing you to "draw" straight into your computer.

Drawing well with a mouse is nearly impossible, and unless you plan on small projects or stop-motion work, you will almost definitely need a tablet. Method 2. Determine your animating medium. This usually depends on your expertise and hardware. For example, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a beginner with an older computer to make 3D animations like Pixar. There are many, many animating software and styles, and all of them have intricacies and techniques unique to the software.

The characters are flat line drawings. Originally, they were drawn frame by frame, but now there is a variety of software that makes the process much faster, such as Synfig, Pencil2D, ToonBoom, or even Adobe Photoshop.

Traditionally, you use drawings per second of film. You also need to add lighting and textures. Most 3D animation is the result of large teams working together. When the pictures are played back to back at high speeds, it looks like movement. It is incredibly time-consuming, however, as you often need upwards of 12 photos per-second of footage to make it look smooth.

You can use cut-outs, clay models, individual drawings, or real people to make it.