I’ve always wondered this. If there are x amount of people working on an animation project, how are they able to keep their animation styles, and even art styles, so incredibly consistent?
In: 6
This is for old fashioned hand drawn animation. Things are a little easier for modern digital animation.
On a show or movie, one of the first things that happens is that the chief animators/artists will decide on how the characters and backdrops will look. They create a reference book of “style sheets” which show each of the characters from different angles, with notes on expressions, clothes, motions, etc. Here is an example of a style sheet from an early Disney cartoon: https://www.animationresources.org/pics/veg11-big.jpg
Once the style sheets are created, the a high ranking animator will create “key” frames of a scene. Those key frames are turned over to more junior animators, who use the key frames and the style sheets to fill in additional frames in between the key frames. Once the scene is done, the work of the junior animators is carefully reviewed and changes are made as necessary to match the master animator’s intent.
Modern digital animation often uses pose-able character models, just like in a video game. An artist creates the original model as virtual 3D puppet, then the animators can pose and move the puppet as appropriate. This way, the same model is always being used, so the look always matches.
Latest Answers