1, overall design stage
1) script. The first step in any film production is to create a script, but the script of an animated film is very different from a feature film performed by a real person. Dialogue in general movies is very important for actors' performances, while in animated movies, we should try to avoid complicated dialogues. The most important thing here is to express visual action with pictures. The best animation is achieved through funny actions, in which there is no dialogue, but visual creation stimulates people's imagination.
2) Storyboard. According to the script, the director will draw a sketch of a story similar to a cartoon (a shot drawing the script) to show the actions described in the script. The storyboard consists of several segments, and each segment consists of a series of scenes. A scene is generally limited to a certain place and a group of people, and the scene can be divided into a series of shots as picture units, thus constructing the overall structure of an animation. While drawing each shot, the storyboard should have the corresponding action description, telling the truth time, photography description and picture connection as its content. Generally, if there are about 400 shots in a 30-minute animation script, a storyboard with about 800 pictures will be drawn.
3) Shooting table. The production schedule is the schedule of the whole film production compiled by the director, which is used to guide the unified coordination of all parties in the animation creation group.
2. Design and production stage
1) design. The design work is to determine the form and modeling of background, foreground and props on the basis of storyboard, and complete the design and production of scene environment and background map. Design characters or other characters, and draw several standard pages from different angles for other animators' reference.
2) sound. In animation, because the action must match the music, the sound recording must be completed before animation. After the recording is completed, the editor must accurately decompose the recorded sound into each picture position, that is, the second (or first) picture begins to speak, how long it will last, and so on. Finally, the whole sound course (or track) should be decomposed into a list, which corresponds to the sound of each picture position for the reference of animators.
3. Specific creative stage
1) Original painting creation. Original painting creation is some key pictures of animation drawn by animation designers. Usually a designer is only responsible for a fixed role or other roles.
2) intermediate illustration production. Intermediate illustration refers to a picture starting from two important positions or frames, usually between two original paintings. The assistant animator makes the middle diagram, and the rest artists interpolate and draw the connection diagram of the role action. Interpolating the continuous action of the painting between the original paintings to meet the specified action time and make it close to the natural action.
3) reputation and tracing. The animation design completed in the previous stages is pencil sketch. After the sketch is completed, print the sketch on acetate film with a special electrostatic copier, and then. Then manually ink the picture lines printed on the film.
4) color. Because comics are usually in color. This step is to paint the film after tracing.
4. Shooting and production stage
1) check. Inspection is the first step in the shooting stage. After each picture of each shot is painted, the animator needs to check every movement in each scene in detail before shooting.
2) shoot. Cartoon shooting uses a special camera with several layers of glass in the middle and a camera at the top. When shooting, put the background at the bottom, and put different roles or foregrounds in the middle. When shooting, you can move each layer to produce animation effects, and you can also use the camera's movement, scaling, rotation, fade-in and other special effects to produce various animation effects.
3) edit. Editing is a post-production film. The editing process mainly completes the connection, sorting and editing of animation clips.
4) recording. After editing, editors and directors began to choose sound effects to match the animation. After all the sound effects are selected and can be well synchronized with the action, the editor and the director copy the music together. Then sound, dialogue, music and stereo are mixed into one channel and finally recorded on film or video tape.
Traditional animation production, especially the creation of large-scale cartoons, is a collective labor, and the collective cooperation of creators is the key factor affecting the efficiency of animation creation. The production of a full-length cartoon needs many people, including directors, producers, animation designers and animation auxiliary producers. The animation assistant producer specially adds the middle picture, that is, the animation designer draws the two extreme pictures of an action and the animation assistant draws the middle picture. The sketch is proofread by the graphic designer, traced by the line painter, and colored by the colorist. Due to the long production cycle of long-form animation, full-time colorists are needed to make consistent colors for a certain character in the animation. In addition, there are stuntmen, editors, photographers, producers and administrators.
4.2D computer animation
Generally speaking, according to the role of computer software in animation production, there are two kinds of computer animation: computer-aided animation and modeling animation. Computer-aided animation belongs to two-dimensional animation, and its main purpose is to assist animators to make traditional animation, while modeling animation belongs to three-dimensional animation. Two-dimensional computer animation also goes through four steps of traditional animation. However, the use of computers greatly simplifies the working procedures, is convenient and quick, and improves the efficiency. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects.
Generation of key frames (original painting)
Key frames and background pictures can be digitally input through cameras, scanners and digitizers. (CCTV Animation Technology Department uses a scanner to input the original pencil painting, and then uses a computer production line for post-production. ) can also be drawn directly through the corresponding software. Animation software will provide various tools to facilitate your drawing. This greatly improves the production process of traditional animated pictures, and can store, retrieve, modify and delete any pictures at any time. The role design and original painting creation in traditional animation production are completed in one step.
Generation of intermediate image
Interpolating two key frames and automatically generating an intermediate picture is one of the main advantages of computer-aided animation. This is not only accurate and smooth, but also liberates the animator from the tedious work.
Layered production synthesis
A frame of traditional animation is composed of pictures on multiple transparent films, which is a method to ensure quality and improve efficiency. However, due to the influence of light transmittance, the number of transparent films does not exceed four. In animation software, the layered method is also used, but the alignment is very simple, there is no limit to the number of layers in theory, and it is also very easy to control various layers, such as movement and rotation.
put colour on
Animation coloring is a very important link. Computer animation aided coloring can alleviate boring and expensive manual coloring. Using computer to draw lines and color boundaries is accurate, without drying, cross-color, easy to replace, and does not affect color because of the number of layers, so it is fast and does not need to worry about color changes before and after. Animation software generally provides many painting pigment effects, such as pen spray, palette and so on. This is also very close to traditional painting techniques.
preview
Before generating and making special effects, you can directly demonstrate sketches or original paintings on the computer screen, and check the animation and time limit during the animation production process, so as to find problems and make corrections in time.
Use of Kutu
All kinds of character shapes and their animation processes in computer animation can be stored in the gallery for repeated use, and it is also very convenient to modify them. By applying animation to animation, you can use the gallery to complete it.
1. Start with the script, director and lens.
If the script is the soul of the cartoon, the director's shot version is like the skeleton of the cartoon, and the general movements and expressions of the characters in the story will be reflected in the shot version.
When the reporter walked into director Wang's office, director Wang was designing a shot version according to the script of the animated film Warrior. Taiwan Province's books don't look elaborate, even a little scrawled, much like four-grid comics. Wang Dao's brush made a few strokes in the picture frame, and a man in Mongolian clothes appeared pointing to the shape of the sky. Next to the picture frame, Wang Dao would make some comments. Wang Dao explained that the concretization of Taiwan Province's book was the next step, and he was only responsible for expressing the words with rough images. Annotation is to let the colleagues who created the original painting better understand the director's intention.
2. Attacking original paintings, painters and animation production.
The creation of original painting is an important link to show the effect and style of comics. When you see a cartoon, your first impression is whether the characters are beautiful or not, and whether the facial features are well-defined. These are all carefully made by the original painting staff.
It is understood that an ordinary 85-minute cartoon will cost at least 6.5438+million yuan, and the main cost is the artificial creation cost of the original painting.
The creator of the original painting works 8 hours a day, and if he wants to catch up with the work, it will be more than 10 hour. Usually 50 to 65,438+000 people start working at the same time in a blockbuster. The animated blockbuster "Warrior" under production started in March this year and is expected to be completed by the end of next year. According to the investment of 6.5438+million yuan, the director and screenwriter spend about 2 million yuan, excluding the post-production cost of more than 2 million yuan, and the original painting creator will get nearly 6 million yuan.
The original painting studio in the film studio is a place with a large population, and Zhang Zhenhui is one of them. In front of his desk, there are many cartoons he has participated in before, such as Astro Boy and Detective Conan. Zhang Zhenhui's desk is also very special. In addition to large and small drawings and pencils, there is a glass plate with fluorescent lamps on the front of the desk. When drawing, Zhang Zhenhui will overlap two pieces of drawing paper and spread them on the glass plate. The picture below is the background picture that has been completed, and the picture above is the character image that needs to be elaborated by Zhang Zhenhui.
The original painting of characters is the biggest project, which takes a lot of time. When Zhang Zhenhui paints, he should not only take care of the director's lens notebook, but also draw according to the characters provided by the film. A scene in which two people talk is impeccable: how big and how big the eyes are, whether the eyes are big and small, how crooked the corners of the eyes are, whether the brows are wrinkled, and what the hair looks like … have to be compared repeatedly. This is just drawing some static expressions. If you encounter action scenes, it will be more complicated. For example, a bicycle pedaling action must be broken down into five original paintings. After the director's acceptance, the five original paintings need to be decomposed into 10 original paintings. Only when the action is decomposed more, the effect will be better and the action will be smoother.
3, production line shooting, computer playback, review
For animation, "moving" is obviously its characteristic. In order to make a single original painting move, it is necessary to go through the process of line shooting. This is also the place where directors watch films. If they find that they are not satisfied with the results of online shooting, they can also make corrections immediately. A line camera is like a large microscope, with a ruler more than one meter high in the center, a camera near the top and two lights near the bottom. Put the completed manuscript under the lens, shoot page by page, and then use the computer connected to the camera to release the draft page by page, which becomes a familiar animation.
Because the action design of some "action plays" is very complicated, sometimes a five-second play needs more than 80 drawings. Line shooting is a step that directors must monitor. If he has any comments on the expressions or movements of the characters, the director will propose to modify them when watching the filming of the lines.
4. Post-coloring, special effects processing and shooting
The first three steps of the birth of an animated film take the most time. After the online shooting is approved by the director, there will be a final draft. From the picture, these manuscripts are all complete, only the coloring and lighting effects are left.
At present, coloring and light effect treatment are not very troublesome, just leave everything to the computer. According to the color distribution of a suit, the computer will soon get all the colors of the same suit. Light effects are the same as movies and TV works. During the period, some director's meaning will be added, but it will not be a major revision, just some color processing or special effects.