I tried to learn more and I understand animators have to draw each frame but do they draw every single movement that happens in a different frame? How do they record the drawings from paper to become an actual film. Do they draw the background/scenery the same time they draw the movements of the characters or are they drawn separately and tacked on?
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different animators use different techniques on different projects, and technology has advanced over time.
in general, the most common pre computer form is called cell animation. scenery and characters are drawn on transparent film like you’d have for an old overhead projector. they’re then layered on top of each other to create a scene and a camera looks down from above and takes a single picture. that’s one frame of animation done. the cells are then adjusted for the next frame.
for body movement, in this form, each frame needs the character to have a new drawing, but they work carefully to avoid redrawing anything they don’t need.
things like mouth shapes and faces are constantly reused: the base face drawn blank and the mouth layered on top to provide speaking animations and expressions.
once computers started to get involved, the cells only provided what were called “key frames” and the computer was used to do the tedious work of moving between the frames, called “tweening”, as in “the inbetween bits”.
now of course, they’re usually entirely done in computer. using similar techniques maybe, but with much more sophisticated software to help out.
it’s actually quite fun to find common characters and animations between Disney films. mowgli and christopher robin are basically the same character, as are baloo and little john.
1. do they draw every single movement that happens in a different frame?
2. How do they record the drawings from paper to become an actual film.
3. Do they draw the background/scenery the same time they draw the movements of the characters or are they drawn separately and tacked on?
Okay, so:
1. Yes. Sort of. These days, you might not have to draw every single frame, because computer animation-assist software is kind of smart enough to look at a frame, look at the frame a quarter of a second later, and go, “Oh, so you want this to move this way, this to move that way, and… And it gets some stuff wrong, and somebody has to go in and fix it, but it really cuts down on the number of artists needed to draw frames. And then coloring is even easier, because computers have gotten *really* good at that, so you don’t have to paint each individual frame of animation anymore.
2. With a camera. Or a scanner. Or the artists do the drawing on a computer tablet and *voila*! it’s already in the computer.
3. I don’t think anyone’s drawn the backgrounds on each frame of animation since cel animation was invented back around 1915. So, the background (at least in traditional animation) gets done once, and it gets locked down, and other animation cels get laid over the top of it. It’s really no different from computer animation, where the person animating the characters probably isn’t the same person who builds the backgrounds. So, backgrounds aren’t really tacked *on* so much as they’re tacked *under*.
Old technique is to draw the background separately and overlay moving parts (such as characters) on transparent sheets that can be moved around and replaced. You can even build a scene out of many movable details. When you are done constucting the frame, you take a photo of it. Hardcore but the most realistic way, like Disney did it, is to draw every frame of movement separately, it looks [like this](https://youtu.be/90LK0_vQq4g).
You can save time and effort by only replacing parts of the character (say, the face) and moving other parts around like a ragdoll but it’s noticeable and it’s a different visual style.
Digital 2D animation works kinda similar but it’s easier to organize layers and computer can aid you with organizing the movement for the animation. 3D animation is different in a lot of ways, you build a scene out of animated 3D models.
I would recommend checking out YouTube tutorials on Adobe After Effects to learn about how one style of animation is done. The way it uses keyframing to create animation is both insanely cool and insanely easy. I recommend Peter McKinnon, Ben Mariott, and Dope Motions to start (there are tons more.) Also [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYlzk7rfn0w) directly from Adobe shows the fundamentals as well. Very cool stuff indeed.
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