Essay on Animated Movies

Animated movies are quite simple at first glance, but once you dig deep and actually start realizing how much work goes into them, you start to appreciate them even more. This was the case with me as before studying this topic, I didn’t realize just how many steps there are to producing one of these films. From storyboards to brainstorming, animated movies are truly revolutionary, and I’m going to explain to the best of my ability how one of them is made. The reason that I chose to do my research on animated movies is because I was always intrigued by them, as they can do things that live action movies cannot, which is not having a limit on your creativity. Some of my favorite shows are animated and I find it cool how they can portray a story by drawing it and only using voices.

Before doing the research on animated movies, I knew I had a decent amount on them but it was really only the tip of the iceberg. I knew that there were lots of storyboards and a lot of work on a computer, but I had no idea what any of it was. The storyboarding part I knew because even regular movies have storyboards. For a good amount of time I thought that these movies were fairly easy to make as to me it was just drawing stuff and making them move but as time went on I realized how much work actually goes into little things like one of the characters blinking or moving a body part.

My resources consisted of some of the most reliable sources that I could find on animated movies. First thing I did was I googled how animated movies are made, and I looked for a website that was clear with the steps which led me to my first resource. My primary source where I got most of my information was motion cue, which is a website dedicated to explaining the process of animation and the steps that go into making something that’s animated. It focused more on the steps like storyboarding and scripting and less of the actual animation like rendering and all of that tech stuff. The website also has a learning course and a quote as well which I didn’t get my research from, but it shows that they have a good idea of what they are talking about. My second source was the science behind Pixar, which I used for more of the animation itself and all of the details on the rendering, modeling, rigging, and many more. This website is set up like an exhibit, and it has each of the steps broken down and split into separate parts. The last resources I used were more used for additional facts rather than the actual animation. This website was Disney animation, and it’s an Official Disney website that gives information on the movie Encanto and all of the little details that come out of making one of these movies.

For animating a movie, there is a boatload of steps that go into it. In the article,”How are Animated movies made?”,  (2020) it stated the following. The first step that occurs before anything is the brainstorming process. This process consists of Writing down ideas without really holding back anything. This starts with a team coming together and trying to find the main idea of the story that is going to be told. Some ideas may be irrelevant, but the point is to just throw them out there and hopefully find some that work. After this they eliminate the bad ideas and try to combine ideas to form a bigger picture of what the plot is set out to be. Animation is important for plot because it’s supposed to create a world where there are now limits to what is done so the plot must stand out compared to a normal live action movie. It’s also important to have a relatable but interesting main character with a unique backstory. The next step is scripting. Scripting or screenwriting, is the outline of all the events that take place in the film. This is things like the dialogue, sound effects, musical score, and all of the other audio occurrences. A good script helps to sell the idea to directors and studios. Though the animators are those who get the praise, the screenwriters are really the ones that carry the story out. The third is concept art. Concept art helps create all of the directors and screenwriters' visions into real life. Concept art is more design centric, and is sort of a downgrade from an illustration. The main point for concept art is that it gives the movie makers and animators a reference throughout the movie making process. It also can be seen as a stepping stone for improving upon the animations. For example, the concept art for buzz and woody were way different than the actual final product. This is due to improvements and changes made to the animation based on the general flow of everything else. The fourth step is storyboarding. Storyboards help finalize the development of a storyline and it serves as the backbone for the animating process. Storyboards also draw out plots and it makes a visual timeline of the events that are going to occur in the movie. The last step before the animator's job is the pre-vis. Previsualization is figuring out the film's visual plan. The animated films are most of the time, laid out in an array of stills that are custom to the director's vision, and the premise is what makes the vision of the director clear. Now I’m going to start explaining the actual animation itself and its steps. In the article, “The Science Behind Pixar, it explained how each of the Technological steps are brought to life. The first thing done after the pre-vis and concept art is the modeling of each of the characters. A model is a “virtual wireframe of points and the edges that connect them”. So the concept art is transferred over into this modeler that makes them 3D. The digital modelers create a model of the character and they have to understand the bone structure and the specific shape of the character and they have to do this for every character in the movie. The next step is rigging which is basically the bone structure and muscles for a specific character. The better a rig, the more flexible a character is, but the more flexible, the more time consuming it is the pose the model. Next is the surfaces and sets and cameras which involve many of the previous steps. The surface is what it sounds like, which is the surface of a character in gray and white. The animators then set up the scenes and the characters move around but their mouths aren’t working. All that is next is the lighting, which actually makes the animation look somewhat real as shadows are added and just light like the sun and the moon are added as well. And lastly is rendering which is just throwing all of the steps together and setting all the simulations together so it’s ready to run. That’s really all there is to it but again each step takes a while. And now I’ll just toss up some fun facts about the making of these movies using the example of Encanto, which is a Pixar production. Encanto has a run time of 90 minutes. There are many sequences in the movie made up of various different shots. Each of the shots are around 0 to 30 seconds long. Within the shots, there are frames, which are approximately 0.04 seconds. Encanto has a whooping 133,709 frames throughout the whole movie. From the storyboarding to the final frame, each film takes an average of 3 to 5 years to create, which after reading this, is easy to see why.

To conclude, Animated movies aren’t an easy thing to make. It takes a lot of time and talent to produce a product that is considered good in today's time and date. Though they are so hard to make, the final product of an animated movie can be such a great form of art as they enhance the stories of those that can’t be made with just regular actors and a camera. I am glad that I got to research this as I had a great time finding out all of the steps that occur while making these movies, and it makes me appreciate ever more those who do this for a living.