April 9, 2015 authors of a cartoon series "Eskimo girl" held a workshop within Skill Bill Pro on "Commercial animation. TV Animation. Production features, scripting, directing animation for children". Directors Alexander Ruban, Evgeny Ermakov and project supervisor Oleg Trush gave a lot of useful insider information on creating animated series. We are pleased to share with you photos and theses.
1. Production consists of the following stages:
- Development (concept development, creation of the project Bible and synopsis);
- Art-development (artistic solution for an animation product, work on locations and characters, character sketches for their future 3D-models - forms and behavior, movements, facial expressions, etc.);
- Pre-production (the stage prior to the shooting of the project). Pre-production includes writing a script, developed costumes and character models, approved virtual locations, storyboard, animatics. At this stage, also 3D-model are created, as well as UV layout and shading. One of the most critical periods.
- Production (shooting, animation, voicing and sound mixing);
- Post-production (compositing, lighting and rendering, as well as a large number of edits to all of the above points of production).
2. Animated series "Eskimo girl" is created for 4+ audience. The peculiarity of this animated content, in addition to 3D technology, is that the characters speak a fictional cartoon language. This simplifies the sales to other countries and gives interesting results in working with actors. At the vocing stageit turns out into a lot of improvisation and searching for special voice for each character.
3. When creating a script, you must clearly remember the size and details of each character.
4. You can not force your character to do what it does not tend to.
5. Scriptwriter must know all locations, where the characters live, know the exact abilities of the characters, understand the magnitude and peculiarity of their movements and actions.
6. For children's animation it is better that the story was simple, without unnecessary actions, assessments and minor subjects, unless their presence does not help to reveal the essence of the story.
7. Each episode has its storyboard, animators draw the key frames. The result is a sequence of images with text commentary, like a comic book. Storyboard gives a clearer idea of how 3d animation will look like. At this stage, you can still easily make changes to the script.
8. Every scene is divided into smaller logical and comfortable segments for shooting.
9. There are two ways to animate characters:
- Manual
- First shoot the actors using MoCap, and only then by hand, with the help of specialists, animators.
10. Scoring, noises and music are a part of a very creative process, which involves director, sound engineer, composer and, of course, voice-over actors.
11. Once all the details of an animation process are completed, the material is rendered.
