For me, animation is like a bunch of keys with lots of activities to do. We create characters, environments, and stories using multiple accessories. Hello readers, this is Kuldeep Sharma, I’m an animator by profession and an alumnus at ADMEC Multimedia. I did a diploma in animation from ADMEC in the year of 2021. Today, I got a chance to tell you about some very popular activities of pre-production that we as animators follow very often. So, let’s get to read.
I think everyone know about a basic workflow in general like we create animations and add movements to the characters. But, for that movement, we have to go through various stages. The most important stage is the pre-production phase. Let’s first understand it.
Pre-Production Phase in Animation
This is the most important phase before creating an animation. It covers planning mainly. We focus on making storyboarding frame by frame, drawing characters, deciding upon theme, building the main structure. This saves our time as we have a clear path to follow, especially after storyboarding.
How I learned this stage?
My training at ADMEC Multimedia Institute, covered separate sessions on pre-production part. I explored how to sketch each frame for individual scene. It was a bit changeling in the beginning but thanks to my art instructor, Sahil Sir, he guided me very well.
I also learned, drawing human anatomy and literally, it requires good artistic skills. So, I would also suggest all new learners, please work on your art skills and try to make sketches daily. The level of drawing improves gradually. So, just keep drawing daily and understand sketching and drawing fundamentals too. If you are good at drawing, then you can bring your imagination to animation easily.
Additional part I explored in my learning journey were Claymation, stop motion, flipbook, and still life study. I’ll talk about these in detail in upcoming points.
Essential Pre-Production Activities and Tools for Animators
Multiple activities or tasks are there for us in the world of animation. But if we just focus on pre-production, then we can broadly divide them into top 6 essential tasks.
1. Sketching
Image Source: Google
Sketching is very first and important step in pre-production phase. Even still, I draw my ideas on paper first. This helps me to get an ideal of what sort of scene or animation I have to make. Just think about story, characters and environment then create rough sketches.
Follow principles of perspective, human anatomy and figure study. Never skip them as they are your guides in sketching.
Practice making proper poses, movements, and facial expressions too. Make sure that the body parts you draw are of the right size compared to each other.
2. Painting (Canvas, Digital, and Matte)
Next is painting. An animator is an artist, so you all have to be good in both traditional and digital arts. I attended special digital and canvas painting sessions from my instructors Anuradha Mam and Promila mam. They helped in getting confidence to draw paintings through real as well as digital brushes.
Through painting, we create emotions as we add colors to the sketches. I feel, colors give a good spark to our imagination that we draw roughly on paper. But make sure to study color theories especially color wheel. This will help you understand key terms like Hue, Saturation and Value. This trio adds realism in the all type of paintings. Of course, you can’t start with animation on screen directly. You can have to paint on paper first. That is why knowledge is very vital to grab.
For those who have any confusion between the names of different painting types, let me make it clear.
- Canvas painting is when you paint something on paper or canvas using brushes and paint colors.
Check paintings on canvas painting projects page.
- Digital painting is when you use pen tablets to create digital art using tools like Krita or Photoshop.
Digital Painting by Our Animation Student (Akshay)
Check more on Digital Painting projects page.
- Matte painting is also done in software like Photoshop but in this, we create imaginary backgrounds that don’t exist in real life. This helps us to create a proper scenery for our animation.
Check more on matte painting projects page.
Additional point for newbie in painting: There are multiple types of brushes, so you must be selected in the beginning. I recommend you to go for a medium-sized flat and round brush. You can all types of brushes for painting to know more.
3. Still Life Drawing
Image Source: Google
If you want to become a good artist, you must have good observation. Still life drawings help us to do that. I practiced making many still life drawings in my course at ADMEC. I used to observe still objects or any non-living thing and made their black and white as well as colored sketches using pencil colors. Still life study helps in understanding the concept of light and shadow along with shape and structure.
If you practice this daily, then I can guarantee you that you will be able to notice small things and work with deep detailing in your projects. I see in my daily projects that paying attention to even small things give me an idea to improve my animations. I also developed skills to enhance the existing real reference image through this study.
4. Clay Modelling and Claymation
Image Source: YouTube
I want to make one thing clear here, that Claymation or clay modelling is not an initial activity. It means, you should never start with it if you haven’t started sketching and painting. So, the sequence is like this: Sketching > Painting > Clay Modelling.
Now, coming on this Claymation. Well, in this, we create models using clay. We generally use baked Polymer clay or Plastilina clay for making models. With clay models, we can easily get an idea of 3D form of our sketches, especially character. This is also useful in checking whether the form is of right shape and balance. Another interesting thing is that we can actually move our clay models and create an illusion of animation. We capture every movement in photos frame by frame. Then we use software like Premiere Pro to combine the frames and present in a full video.
This part has lots of fun. You all should definitely try it. If you want to see the real-world example of Claymation then you must watch Shaun the Sheep.
5. Stop Motion Animation
Image Source: Google
Next is Stop Motion. I know many of you have doubts in this that what’s the difference between Claymation and stop-motion. Let me make it clear.
Stop Motion is one of the animation techniques and in this, we move objects with a small gap in between. We take different objects like puppets, toys, cut-outs, clay figures, etc. and move them to create stop motion. It’s an umbrella term that covers different types in it and Claymation is a part of it. Additionally, we have Puppet animation and Cut-out animation as part of stop motion.
So, the main difference is that the Claymation is limited to clay models but Stop Motion has many materials involved.
We capture every move frame by frame then join frames together and bring our still object into life. Sounds so easy, right? But it’s a time-consuming process where we have to do lots of detailing, like making facial expressions, hand movements, and much more. So, it requires patience.
The best part is that we don’t use any digital tool to create motion. I tried making some short films using this technique. Even we can make full movies and commercials using Stop Motion. Some good examples are:
2012 movie ParaNorman
Watch behind the scenes to see making of this movie
2018’s commercial by Apple (Share Your Gifts)
Watch making of this commercial.
6. Flipbook Making
Now, we are on last pre-production activity of animation. It is Flipbook Making and it is one of my favourite one. I remember, I brought a mini light pad for making flipbooks assignments during my course at ADMEC.
Photo of student working on flipbook animation.
At the institute, big sized lightboxes are given to all students for practicing flipbook making. I got interest from there mainly.
So, what we do in it? Well, we take a pack of flipbook papers and put each piece of paper on lightbox or lightpad then draw our sketches on it. Then we trace the last sketch on new paper but with a slight change for movement. Gradually, we got multiple frames with gradual movement in each frame.
It’s an effective technique for getting a closure look of visual representation of how the animation will look at the end. I loved flipping the papers after completing the story.
Closing Remarks
So, readers, I hope you understood what are some important pre-production activities and accessories involved in animation. Just follow the given tips and don’t forget to try out yourself. I know you can be an awesome animator too.
Check one example below in which Dev Goswami (ADMEC student) showing his flipbook.
My Recommendation for Aspirants
I believe in ADMEC’s guidance and course curriculum and recommend you to explore its full list of animation courses. There are short-term as well as long length programs. You can decide as per your time availability and financial conditions. For fee related information, contact with career counsellor and get your doubts cleared.
Author Introduction
Kuldeep Sharma, is a 3D artist with skills in modelling, texturing and lighting. Read more about him on his LinkedIn profile: Kuldeep Sharma on LinkedIn. Also check his 3D work on artstation.
