Traditional Animation Workflow

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In a traditional workflow, many steps are done manually. Harmony is used for the digital portion. Familiarize yourself with this simplified version and then move to the next graphic explaining in more details how the various steps connect.

The traditional workflow is a very straight forward pipeline. Many of the steps cannot be done simultaneously, meaning they must be completed before continuing on to the next step in the process.

In the following illustration, all the purple steps are done via software (like recording) or on paper (character designs, animation, backgrounds, etc). The storyboard is typically done on paper, but scanned in using either specific software or animation software. Everything in yellow and grey is done in the animation software.

The following descriptions will help you understand how the work is divided and give you a base to start building your own traditional pipeline.

Script

All projects start with a script. It is the foundation of the whole project. This comes from either the studio itself or the client requesting the project.

By closely following the script, the design team will begin the character, props and locations and design. The storyboard artist will start working on the storyboard. This process is similar to any other workflow.

Designs

The design team will take charge of the character, prop and location design as soon as the script is locked. For a traditional project, the designs can be done on paper or digitally. They are cleaned up, added to the model pack and sent to colour styling.

Colour Styling

Colour styling can be done before or after the animation. It doesn't really have an impact on the pipeline. It can be done on paper or directly in an animation software.

If the backgrounds are painted in an external software, it is recommended that you do the locations (key backgrounds) colour styling in that same external software.

Audio Recording, Dialogue and Nat Pause

The dialogue is also recorded from the script. The voices are often recorded outside of the studio. If there is dialogue involved in the project, the final version must be recorded soon enough to import it into the project before the animation. This allows the animator to do the sound breakdown and animate the mouth and expressions, as well as the storyboard that's required.

Nat pause is a generic audio read-through used by the storyboard artist to hear what the characters are saying and how it is said. In this way, they can draw the correct facial and physical expressions to coincide with the dialogue. It is important to minimize the revision to the visuals during the animation process.

Storyboard

The storyboard is the illustrated script of the film. It can be started in parallel with the design and the audio recording, but some studios may wait until the designs and the audio recording are locked.

Animatic Reel

The animatic reel, or leica, is made from the storyboard. Each scene is timed along with sounds, dialogue and music. Before the animatic can be created, the storyboard must be completed, approved and locked. Only one person is in charge of the animatic production to ensure consistency throughout the whole production.

If the storyboard is done on paper, a person must be added to the team to scan the storyboard and prepare it for the animatic.

Background Layout and Posing

For a traditional production, the layout and posing step is very important to communicate the storyboard information very clearly to the animators. The layout contains all the information needed to complete the animation in the scene: background, overlay, underlay, and key poses (usually referenced from the model pack).

In both small and medium sized studios, background layout and posing is handled by the same person. The background layouts are done by one person or team and the posing by another. For the small studio with a limited amount of resources, the storyboard artist or the animator creates the layout and posing.

The layout and posing process links the storyboard artist and the animator. The layout artist uses the storyboard and prepares an organized folder for the animator. This folder contains a field guide that shows the proper camera move and the right size of the scene. It also includes the character's main poses from the storyboard following the official design, and the effects, backgrounds and all the other information necessary to the animator.

The backgrounds are done directly out of the storyboard and location design. A background is a section or an angle of a location. The background artist refers to the storyboard and draws the background for each scene. Once the background is completed, it is added to the layout folder.

In a cut-out or paperless animation process, this step can be done digitally or traditionally. This will depend on the user's preferences.This step is mainly applied to larger productions. An individual user can move directly from the storyboard to the animation.

Background Painting

The backgrounds can be painted in the animation software or in an external software. On a small team, one person can handle the background painting and on a medium-sized team, there will probably be two people painting the backgrounds.

Animation

Traditional animation is done on paper. The animator receives the layout folder and uses the references to animate the scene. The animator will draw each frame of the animation or each pose of the character. If there is dialogue in the scene, the animator will follow the breakdown and animate the mouths and expressions.

Depending on the studio size, the animation can be divided in different ways. Sometimes the animator will do all of the work, from the key poses to the in-betweens and then the clean up. Bigger studios will have the animator doing only the key poses and then send the scene to the in-between department and finally to the clean up department.

Once the animation is completed, it is sent to the digital part of the process. This applies only to modern processes. In the traditional, old-fashioned pipeline, the animation was sent for hand-inking and painting. The animation was traced with ink on transparent cels and the colours are painted with brushes on the other side of the cel to fill the zones. Today, using Harmony, you can still use this technique by utilizing the digital Line Art and Colour Art feature.

Line-test

During the animation process, the scenes are regularly passed through the line-testing process, which consists of quickly testing the rough key poses of an animation to see if the animation is going in the right direction.

Digital Exposure Sheet

The digital exposure sheet is the first step done in Harmony. This controls the timing of the animation. The traditional animator creates a paper exposure sheet in order to create the timing. The person in charge of the digital exposure sheet reads the paper version and recreates it in Harmony. Once the drawings are all in place on the exposure sheet, the scene is ready for the scan.

Note that a single user will scan the drawings first and then set the timing in the exposure sheet. The digital exposure sheet is only created first in a larger animation studio using the advanced scan features available in Harmony.

Scan

The scan step is the gateway between traditional and digital animation. To import the animation drawings into the project, a person is assigned to the scan task.

Scanning is the second step in Harmony. The cleaned-up drawings are scanned and imported in the software in a simple step that incorporates all of the drawings in the scene. When all the drawings are scanned, they are ready to be inked and painted (coloured in).

The scan is either done prior or after the exposure sheet. Once the drawings are scanned in, the person in charge of the exposure sheet will see the timing. If the timing was set prior to scanning, the drawing will already appear on the right frames.

Inking and Painting

At this point in the process, the colour models are ready and the drawings are scanned in and properly exposed. Using Harmony's optimized tools, the colourist can clean the scanned artwork and start applying colour to the different drawings. When the drawings are cleaned, as well as inked and painted, they are ready for compositing.

The ink and paint process is probably the longest digital step. It requires cleaning all of the drawings, inking lines and filling all of the colours on all drawings. The length of time this procedure takes depends on the complexity of the drawings; if there are a lot of details and lines to be inked, the colour step will be longer.

Compositing

The compositor imports the coloured background, animatic reference and sound as required. Referring to the exposure sheet, animatic and animation, the compositor assembles all these elements and creates the camera moves and other necessary motions. Finally, the compositor adds any digital effects required by the scene. These can include tones, highlights and shadows. When the compositing is completed, the final step is the rendering.

Export - Render

Once the compositing is completed, the last step is to render the scene as a movie or an image sequence. Generally, the compositor will be the same person doing the render.

Post-production

When all the scenes are rendered out, the user assembles them in an external application and adds sound to the project. The final effects and filter are added. The final step is to render out to the master and distribute it, unless there is dubbing to be done. Very often, the final transfer is done by an external post-production company.