Key roles and tasks in the production process

The production of what you might ask, who knows! the booklet was not obliged to tell me, so with that in mind humble readers welcome to my outlying a random production process.

Lets do this! *puts on sunglasses*

Ok production of an amateur ANIMATION!


Creation/Design - First of all someone needs to have an idea, whether its a picture scrawn on the back of a card or a story made over 10 years in some sweaty dudes basement, this is usually the job of the creator (duh) he is the visionary who will kick start any production but especially that of an animation. Usually if the creator is a good artist he can make his own pictures of what he wants things to look like to use for either style reference or for that of scenery and the like.

Writing/Storyboarding - Depending on the aforementioned creators artistic and linguistic abilites the idea will head into pre-production phase where you can either have someone come in to write it, this person being the scriptwriter who will either work with the creator to come up with dialogue, pick apart plot holes and help to create an all round more solidified idea over a number of drafts.
The Scriptwriter who in turn will begin sending pages to the storyboard artist (please keep in mind that these roles can be filled by just one talented person) who then takes it upon himself to, using the drafted script come up with panels and characters in various poses and locations dictated by the script to give an idea of what the animation will look like when completed.

Funding/Presenting - With design work finished you can move on to (if the situation calls for it, some animations are funded by the creators/those involved) to present it your peers to give everyone an idea of where you want to go with the production and discuss the logistics of creating the animation or pitch to a company that deals with financing films and animations, and try to secure the budget needed to finance your animation properly.


Animation/ Production (the hard part) - Now bringing in your team of Animators which can begin work on bringing the scenes to life, colourists to fill in your designs and get the frames into production, this part is long and arduous and will go through many different last minute changes to story elements/designs. Animators can consist of artists, acutal animators, colourists. Then you need to think of sound design, so possibly a foley team, voice actors. Using your budget or funding to supply the equipment needed to create your animation.

Post Production - Now is the time to master all your sound, fix any resolution problems with your with individual frames, tighten up the editing, lose a few shots (if time constraints call for it).  Test screenings can be had to see the reaction to your animation, if its not liked by the audience before final release it gives you the chance to go out and make the relevant changes before release.