When an animation studio like Pixar has multiple dozens of people, all with their own styles, working on a project, how do they keep everything uniform?
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If it’s CGI, then all the objects are 3D models, so multiple artists aren’t drawing them; they’re just making the models move. That said, they have internal consistency in the way they move because they’re working from “motion bibles”, as others have pointed out.
Hello! I work in animation and I can help you answer this question 🙂
Every studio has its own pipeline but we all pretty much go through a similar process. I’m going to just talk about a general process.
There is a stage called development stage or blue sky where a small group of artists will come up with ideas and styles that might work for the project they are working with. This is when different art styles can be played around with and whatever is chosen, that is the style the artists they are going to hire are going to development upon. This means the oncoming artists will take that blueprint and work with the art director and production designer to make it a final design.
This leads to a process called pre-production. It’s basically the artists ( visual development artists, character designers, background artists etc.) will take that chosen style and create everything they need for the movie/show. For example character design, the artists will create model sheets and turn arounds ( it’s like if you put a character on a turntable and you take a picture of all the angles). That will be the final reference for that character for everyone else who is animating or 3D modelling that character to have to follow. And this process goes on for all that needs to be designed ; sets, props, vehicles etc. It’s like a packet.
Then it goes into production 🙂
If you happen to have an art of book from a Pixar movie you will see all the sketches and breakdowns of everything they designed. That’s what it is 🙂 some don’t even make it to the final movie.
Hope that answers your question!
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