Here at Austin Visuals we promise you top quality animation with a quick production time, sometimes you, the customer, are a little mystified as to what the animation process entails. This blog article series will be explaining the creative process we go through to make your animation. I will be using our animation for 10rm Fitness to illustrate our methods. This entry will be the first step, pre-production.
The pre-production is the most important step to any animation we do. It starts out as us setting up a meeting in order to get a good idea of what our customer wants. At this Phase, we take notes about their ideas and specific needs then we propose several options that will fulfill those purposes. We will also refine their ideas so they have the best impact on the audience and are more effective for the customer. The we start assigning people to the team and setting up role. This part is quick and takes almost no time at all. A group leader will be assigned and will report their progress to either a team leader or an admin. A team is then organized. It’s size depends on the scope of the project. A script will be made and approved. Once that was done we would hire a voice actor or actors to read the script out. A sound editor will then go over that audio file and make sure every word is perfectly enunciated so every consonant and vowel is clearly heard and understood.
The next step is planning the project. This usually consists of gathering research and reference and using that to plan a rough idea of what the animation will look like. Research is important; as it helps you create either realistically accurate animation or simplified yet still accurate representations of objects in animation for more cartoon-like productions. This animation would require the reference of gym equipment and a photo of the gym trainer. In this part we also come up with several styles that could be used in the animation whether it is realistic, cartoonish, sketchy, or some other visual style.
This is illustrated by storyboards or very rough animation of key frames. Key frames are the frames of an animation that depict important poses or actions in the animation.This is also a time when we make animatics, or basically a slideshow of the storyboard with the script being read as an audio. There is little actual animation during this stage. This is done so as to not waste everyone’s time. If we fully animate the storyboard or rough animation it will take longer. Not only that if the director or customer decides to change things whether it is because they change their mind or decide that it didn’t look like they thought it would, time spent carefully animating the storyboard will have been wasted since the goal has now changed. Rough animations are much easier to change and edit and are simply more cost efficient.
Once this part of the planning is done, everything is sent up to the higher ups or customers for review. At this time the storyboards can be sent back and forth between the animation team and the customer in order to get it just right. It will continue until the storyboard is approved. This is the end of the pre-production stage as the team waits for word back for any changes that should be made.
At absolutely no cost to you, we’ll give you thirty minutes of consultation time. We can talk about your marketing and animation needs, and see if Austin Visuals is a good fit to fulfill those needs. Contact us Today to request a free quote and to learn more about how Austin Visuals can help you with your business. Call us today at 512-591-8024 or CLICK HERE to request a FREE quote online or email us at : [email protected] to explore how we can help you with any graphics or 3d animation needs you have.
