Short Cel Animation “Free From Doom”

Traditional Techniques in modern Animation: What I Did and What I learned

Free From Doom is a passion project as well as spec work for a potential client who wanted to see my illustration style animated. What I discovered was a process of creating animations that brought my hand-made illustration into the world of movement. Y’all. This gets me so excited!

I have cataloged the process I developed to create Free From Doom because I want to show y’all how to make this work for you and your animation work. In this post, I walk you through what each phase of the digital cel animation process is like from beginning to end, define terms along the way, and then detail how I created Free From Doom specifically.

Here are the skills and tools that I use in my process.

Skills:
• Hand-illustration
• Graphic design
• Visual identity design
• Branding
• Buckets of patience

Tools:
• Adobe InDesign
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe Premiere
• Wacom Tablet Intuos 4
• Pen and paper

Step 1
Animation starts with Knowing thyself and thy client

Know thyself. You are an animator. Why you create animations and the kids of animations you create matter. Remind yourself that you are a creative-for-hire, that you contracted to create something because of your craft in animation and style. You are not merely a plug-in-ready creative, you have a particular set of skills and processes that define how you work. Respect that. Accept work and create work according to your natural skills, aptitudes, and financial needs, accepting work that does not meet your desired style to pay the bills when necessary.

Know thy client. You are being paid to do a specific job by a client who most likely has an established brand and a marketing strategy. What you’re being contracted to create, for whom your creation is being targeted, and what goals the client has for the animation define expectations for the animation that you as the animator must take into consideration. Know the client’s expectations and a sense of their brand. At the end of the day, you are contacted by someone who sees you as a valuable asset to creating something that they hope will reach their audience and their goals. (Perhaps I can write about how to address the scenario where the client doesn’t know what they want or doesn't have an established brand).

Step 2
Pre-Production: Discovery Phase

This part of the animation-making process is a really exciting moment for me. It’s similar to the feeling that you get when you’re meeting someone for the first time and who also shares your love for something you’re passionate about. There’s something daunting and magical all at once about starting fresh.

The discovery phase focuses on defining what the animation will look and feel like with your client before you create any cels.

My creative process begins by gathering the ideas and symbols that are revealed in the client’s script. The ideas and symbols are then put together in various combinations to craft illustrations and style boards that give visual snap-shots of what animations are possible. These snap-shots are the springboards for creating storyboards and animatics that present rough-draft visual summaries of possible animations. All of these steps are done in anticipation of the nitty-gritty work of cel animation. Here are explanations of each of these steps.

• The script is the beginning of every animation—even short animations! The script communicates the desired message in words. It can be as simple as a phrase or as deep as a summary of the themes present in The Power and the Glory—it only needs to be clear and to the point. The client provides this.

• Illustrations and style boards are lumped into one. They rely on one another and occur more or less at the same time.

• Illustrations showcase the essential messages of the animation from different takes on the script, emphasizing some ideas and symbols over others and sometimes cutting out some ideas and symbols all together between illustrations. You can imagine this as the “movie poster” or “comic book cover” shot that captures the overall message of the animation as defined by the style boards chosen by the client.

• Style boards lay out possible moods, color palettes, visual styles, and animation styles for the animation.

**This is where knowing the client’s brand, target audience, and goals, and why they want you to do the job are super important. You don’t want to work this step and not take into consideration the client’s expectations and needs. This is also where your craft and style dictate the possible directions for the animation. Work smarter not harder!**

• Storyboards are a wide range of possible animation progressions that show the stages of the animation. This part is about communicating the message of the script using what is defined by the client-approved illustrations and style boards in numerous still images. You can think of this step as having multiple iterations of the same frames of a comic book to discover which stills in what sequence work best to communicate the script. If you are not familiar with 12 Principles of Animation, watch this 24-minute tutorial by AlanBeckerTutorials before you create any storyboards.

• Animatics are a visual rough draft video. It uses storyboards that best communicate the client’s vision and assembles them into a video. You can think of it as a visual spark notes of the animation. What is shown are the most important moments and the in-between stuff is cut out.

Step 3
Production: CEl creation Phase

This is where the mode of work turns discovering the big-picture of the animation to creating the small-detail of each cel. The field has been laid out by all the previous work and now it is time to create the animation cel by cel.

The cel creation phase has two sides: the black and white and the colorful.

The two sides to this phase have different processes, with the onus weighing heavily on the black and white side.

• Black and white side

This is where you get to bring everything you assembled in the discovery phase and bring it to life using the 12 Principles of Animation as your guide on how to fill the gaps.

• Colors

The colors seen pull from a palette that I had created for the series of illustrations I was working on at the time (will have a link to the pieces).

My Process Specific to This Project

For my process, a script was found, then illustrations were created, and then one illustration was selected to go through the rest of the entire animation process. NOTE: This is not a typical process but it can be a timesaving process if there isn’t enough money in the client’s bank to do the whole pre-production process for more than one set of ideas and symbols. The style, colors, and mood are built upon what I have already developed in previous work, so there was no need to create a style board.

The Script

“Let the groaning of the imprisoned come in before you; in accord with the greatness of your arm preserve those doomed to die.” Psalm 79: 11

The Ideas and Symbols

The ideas that spoke to me the most come from the end passage: “in accord with the greatness of your arm preserve those doomed to die.” It speaks of freedom from doom, which becomes the text for the animation, “free from doom”. Preserving people from death communicates the idea of removing something that causes death so that it cannot cause death any more. Symbols inspired from this idea are a scorpion’s stinger and its deadly poison being removed. The greatness (or "strength”) of God’s arm communicates the idea of absolute power over death. Symbols inspired from this idea are a flaming sword plunged into the skull of a snake that has been killed.

The Illustration That Moves On

Two of my illustrations are presented here. I left out the sketches to save space and get to the point faster.

At the end of the day, only one of these is animated. The snake with the sword through its head won!

There are five distinct symbols that play their own role in the animation:

1. a snake

2. a sword

3. flames

4. death

5. text

Storyboards and Animatics

At this point, the illustration moves into storyboards are drafted, animatics are created, and all of it is presented to ensure that the visualization agrees with the script and its main ideas.

Production: Symbols are the Actors

This part is where things get crazy. Many digital cels are drawn using a tablet, the relationships between symbols are developed and exaggerated. The illusion of movement is being nurtured. Lots and lots and lots of cells were made and a select few were recycled to create the illusion of organic movement.

Post-Production

I’m unsure if this is the proper name of this part of animation (happy to be corrected). Basically, this is where the title slides were added in and final touch-ups were made. I know in videography that post refers to everything done off-set and in editing software.