2D Animation

2D Animation Process
Venus Samawi
Isra University
 The 2D Animation Process
 Every animation studio has a slightly different animation process, but the steps
for going from a simple idea to a fully animated film are pretty much the same
anywhere you go.
 The animation process differs slightly depending on
 the scale of the project,
 the type of animation used and
 the size of the team creating it.
 Most animators have adopted Walt Disney’s animation process as the standard
approach to creating an animated film.
 It is by no means the only way to do it, but as a new animator it will be useful to
learn the steps that are still in use by major animation studios today.
 The 2D Animation Process
Step 1: Storyboards

 Drawing out a storyboard is an important first step for creating the final product.
 Originally developed by Walt Disney in the 1930s, storyboards as graphic organizers
to pre-visualize their work and pitch their idea to movie directors and other animators
who want to work on the project.
 Creating an animated feature is an expensive and time consuming process and can
take anywhere from a few weeks to entire years to create. Storyboard is the best way
of editing the story before its been animated.
 An animated film will of course be edited throughout the creation process, but
scraping an entire animated sequence is costly in terms of both time and money, so
editing at the storyboard stage is doubly important for studios on a budget.
 The 2D Animation Process
Step 2: Audio Production
 After the story has been laid out with a storyboard and pitched to a team of
animators, directors, and producers, it’s time to start recording the dialog.
 At this point, if they haven’t already, the writers and director will adapt their
storyboard into a written script, complete with an outline of what each
character is doing during each scene.
 After the script has been finalized, it is provided to the voice talent for the
film, who works closely with the director to nail down each character’s
individual personality.
 Though it may not be apparent to the audience, voice actors play a huge role
in fleshing out their characters’ on-screen personality.
 The 2D Animation Process
Step 3: Visual Development
 The process of visual development has evolved considerably since the 1930s.
 Originally, artists and animators would draw thousands of sketches of characters (Sketching is the practice of
drawing a rough outline or rough draft version of a final piece of art. ), scenes and objects to perfect the aesthetic
of the film.
 These sketches would only be slightly more detailed than the original storyboard and serve as sort of a halfway
point between the extremely rough storyboard and the actual animation of the film.
 During this phase artists strive to perfect the appeal of each character, taking into account any personality quirks
or changes incorporated by the voice actor. Some characters receive massive makeovers over countless
iterations, while others are sketched, inked and ready to be animated.
 Today, visual development requires much less manual labor, but is no less an important step in the creation of an
animated film. Artists use specialized tools to digitally draw and refine the characters and scenes, saving them
hundreds of hours of sketching, inking(Inking is done when an artist goes over the lines they used to produce a
rough sketch with thick, dark ink to make it more distinct) and painting. After the designs of each character and
scene have been finalized, the production process can begin.
Sketched and inked image from left to
right
 The 2D Animation Process
Step 4: Production
 During the golden age of animation, the production process was an extremely labor
affair.
 Every shot in an animated film will have anywhere between ten to twenty drawings,
which all must be inked and painted by artists before the filming process could begin.
 The top animators at each studio would only have time to draw the most important
frames in the animation, called keyframes.
 The frames between the keyframes, known as tweens, would be filled in by junior
animators, then all the frames are put together and photographed to create an animation
sequence.
 This process would be repeated for every shot in the film, often making for hundreds of
thousands of final drawings, each one requiring a sketch, coloring, inking and
photography.
 The 2D Animation Process
Step 4: Production
 The modern production process is a whole lot easier and requires much less
manpower than the classic method.
 Thanks to advances in 2D animation technology artists can draw, ink, paint
and animate a scene all by themselves without ever having to leave their desk.
 Massive digital drawing tablets enable animators to draw their keyframes
digitally and create the tweens automatically using 2D animation software.
 Characters and backgrounds are drawn separately using this method, then
transposed on each other and saved as a video file, saving the studio both time
and money over traditional methods and allowing for more flexibility during
the last step of the animation process.
 The 2D Animation Process
Step 5: Post Production

 The characters have been colored, animated, and set on their backgrounds.
Each scene has been painstakingly composed and optimized.
 Every key is colored, every tween in place, and the animation is essentially
complete! All that remains is to edit and polish the final product with special
effects, sound effects and visuals to perfect the animator’s artistic vision.
 Post-production is usually when the entire team sits down to review their
work and make whatever tweaks are necessary to call the film complete.