Things that You Need to Know: How Your Best Film Cartoon Made

Finding A Voice

Once the final script is approved, actors are brought into a recording studio. They read the script’s dialogue. It may seem odd to do this before the artwork is created. You might expect that the drawing would be done first, and the voices added later. Actually, it’s much easier to sync, or adapt, the pictures to the words than the other way around. This process helps animators match the characters’ expressions and gestures to the actors’ sounds. Let’s say Homer has just dropped a donut into a fish tank. As he reaches to pull the donut out, a dish bites his hand. The actor performing Homer’s voice lets out a long howl to show that Homer is in deep pain. The animators will listen carefully to this howl. They will figure out just how to animate Homer’s mouth. The length of Homer’s howl will also tell them how many pictures they need to draw. 

In Japanese cartoons that are dubbed for English-speaking audiences, such as Pokemon, characters’ words don’t always match the shapes their mouths are making. This is because the cartoon was originally created from a Japanese script. English words were dubbed in later. What might be a short sentence in English could be a long one in Japanese. 

As the dialogue is being recorded, some basic art is being prepared. For instance, if a new character is introduced in the story, a designer will sketch what this character looks like. The designer will draw several different poses of this new character creating what is known as a model sheet. The same thing is done form a new setting. For instance, if a circus is part of the story, an artist will design the circus.

Trade Secret

For many reasons, cartoon characters may go through makeovers. Some of Bugs Bunny’s antics used to “bug” Bug’s viewers. So the warner Brothers studio decided that Bugs’s playfulness should be less annoying. Also, they asked animators to redraw him, to reflect his gentler nature. Characters may also be updated to reflect contemporary art tastes. If you compare today’s Batmen cartoons to those of the 1970s, you’d hardly recognize the Dark Knight!

Storyboards

After the dialogue is recorded, it’s time to draw storyboards. Storyboards are the animators’ road map. They look a lot like comic strips. Storyboards break the scipt down into a series of many small, still pictures. These pictures show how the action described in the script should look in the final cartoon. The script’s dialogue is usually written under the pictures of the storyboard. The storyboarding process has become the standard way of making animation. It was popularized by the Walt Disney Studios in the 1940s.

Ralph Hulett working at Walt Disney

Step by Step

Once the storyboards are finished, the pencil artists can do their job. These artist draw the key, or main, actions in a cartoon. For instance, if Bart Simpson is skateboarding don a bill, the pencil artist will draw Bart at the top, middle and bottom of this hill. 

Since animation is made up of twenty-four separate images per second, there are still many drawings that need to be created. These are drawn by artists called in-betweeners. You might be able to guess what their job is. In-betweeners create the many drawings that fit “in between” the key actions.

After the pencil-line drawings of the moving characters are created, they are traced over in ink using a brush or a pen. These inked drawings are then transferred to clear plastic sheets. These illustrated sheets are called cels. Cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn on painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. it was used during the first half of the 20th century.

Next, each cel is colored. The colors add energy and richness to the previously black-and-white images. The colors can be painted in with a brush. Today, thouh animators are frequently using computers, not brushed, to color their artwork.

Backgrounds are the scenery over which animated characters appear to move. They are usually drawn on some type of art board, similar to the ones used in schools. Some backgrounds, however, can be as simple as a sheet of white paper. For an animated series, the backgrounds are usually more collaborate.

The cels are carefully placed over the background. They are then photographed one cel at a time. For instance, animators end up with many still photos of Bart Simpson skateboarding down the hill. Each still frame differs ever so slightly from the one before. When the stills are viewed by audiences, they see the smooth motion of Bert zooming along.

Timing is Everything

An important part of making a cartoon is timing. Timing determines how many frames each action will take. If Bart is skating down the hill very fast, fewer frames will be needed to show his action. If he’s just strolling slowly, more frames will be needed. Special timing sheets and computer programs help animators figure out exactly how long each scene will take to play out. Time lets animators know just how many separate drawings each action will require. Perfect timing gives the series of frames a great flow.