How are animated films made

Have you ever wondered about the animated film “The Lion King”?

Have you ever thought about how the creatures, characters are beautifully animated in the film?

Excited to know about the magic behind the animation studio? Let’s unwrap the secret processes for making an animation film.

Story and Scriptwriting

The foremost step of making an animation film is coming up with brainstorming ideas for a story. Frame the story and delivers it with scriptwriting. The story is discussed with groups of animators and directors to spot any errors in the story.

Moreover, the story script is written in such a way that it engages the people by triggering their emotions. By providing strong personality traits to every character, gives an outstanding story to the audience.

Also, writing the story with keen details such as background for every scene, assigned materials for 3D model characters, even lighting details make it easier to analyze and review each scene whether it is relevant to the film’s main story.

Concept art and Storyboarding

Concept artist aids the directors to convey their ideas more effectively by designing each shot. Exactly, visualizing the movie in art. Concept artists know the color psychology to grabs the attention of the audience. Each scene is picturized and also helps to evoke more creative ideas to be implemented in the shot.

After drawing each scene, the next step is to form a storyboard. Arranging all the scenes on a storyboard, previsualizes the film as well as aids in optimizing the story as per the director’s intention.

Moreover, it also provides distinct details of each shot and plans the animation timeline. With the help of a storyboard, directors easily demonstrate their ideas to the producers.

Can you guess the next phase? It’s all about production.

Production
The crucial stage of creating an animation film is animatic. The mechanism of devising an animated film involves modeling, texturing, lighting, rigging, animation, rendering, and voice recording. Let’s throw light on each phase.

Modeling
Animators design 3D models for the characters with the guidance of conceptual artists.3D modeling for background, characters in the animated film are created with 3D software like Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender, etc.

3D Modelers develop the skeletal framework, muscle, skin for characters and also add facial expressions as per scene requirements.

Texturing
Once the models are ready, texture them to feast one’s eyes. To stimulate people’s emotions as well as to engage them with animated stories, texturing artists enhance the visual appeal of 3D models.

Every nook and corner is textured with specific paints in a distinct manner. Even small parts on character like wrinkles, sweat, etc textured in detail.

Lighting
There is a surprising paradox that lighting shifts the mood of human beings as well as uplifts their emotion. Indeed, lighting is the critical component of producing an animated film.

Different types of light sources are used to improve the virtual three-dimensional environment to be more realistic. The main scenes or characters can be highlighted by pinpointing lighting on specific characters or backgrounds. Ultimately, the end message can be conveyed directly to the viewers by awe-inspiring visuals.

Rigging
In order to animate the objects or characters, all characters have to be rigged with controls. With the help of rigging, the individual components of 3D characters are interconnected with digital bones, making them to move as a whole or partly like hand or leg movements.

Hope you got what is rigging? Yes, it controls the movement of a character or object.

Animation
Further, no delay, start to animate the character. Add life to all characters by animating them based on the scenes.

Before setting up for 3D animation, ensure the characters works for a basic movement. Directors scrutinize every frame and refine any design as per their needs.

Animations are made using computer-generated images. Do you know how many images are used per second of an animation video? It is claimed that 24 to 30 frames per second. In the National television standard committee,(NTSC)30 frames are transmitted per second.

Rendering
Before making the images, the crucial stage is rendering. Rendering is the process that converts 3D models to images or frames with the use of specific software.

Animators ensure the characters are aligned with suitable background lighting, texturing and camera positions. Rendering is a long and tedious process since the computer needs to run for a long time without shutting down.

Voice Recording
Record the perfect people’s voices for every character. Have you ever wondered about the fictional character Hiccup horrendous’ voice, played by Jay Baruchel in the film” How to train your dragon?” Matching the best voices to the main characters fascinates as well as engages the people with feeling.

Post-production
Finally, polishing the film with editing. Combines all the shots and scrutinizes them with color correction, background correction, camera position, and various factors included in the shots.

Composting is a technique that creates a complete animation video by merging all the shots as per the directors’ vision. Edit and realign the scenes to transform the video into a stunning animation film. Also, adding background music to the film connects the audience with strong emotion.

Sound editing and video editing play a vital role to deliver an amazing animation film to the audience.Any miss-match sounds with video can be easily detected and rectified in the final edit. Mind-boggling animation film is ready!

If you're interested to create 3D animation or Modeling for your project, we are here to aid you to animate your fiction model.