Pre-Production

An amateur's guide to getting ideas from page to screen.

This is Amelie,

Amelie has an idea for a cartoon that she absolutely loves and she's finally ready to make it real.

There's only one problem...

Amelie has no clue where to start!
Seriously, how do you turn an idea into a show? It seems impossible!

Well, how about we find out?

Most animated TV and films start out with a pitch Bible. A pitch bible is a short document outlining the basic concept , episode ideas and character and location designs.

HOWEVER, it’s important for a pitch Bible to not be too detailed as most networks and film studios want to be able to make changes to a concept, so keeping it simple is key.

Excerpts from the pitch bible for 'Summer Camp Island' by Julia Potts

So, Amelie's show has been picked up! Now what?
On average, a single episode of an animated series takes 2 years to make. So how does a pre-production team ensure a series doesn’t take 20 years to make? The animation pipeline!

Every single episode is worked on at the same time. Every episode is boarded at once, animated at once etc etc. Some studios do this differently, for example, some Indie animated studios will work on episodes one after the other as they’re dependent on donations from viewers to fund episodes, but generally the animation pipeline is the most streamlined and effective method of pre-production.

Let's take a deeper look into the various parts of this timeline, shall we?

This means staying away from completed scripts and finalized concepts. If you're pitching to a studio, always be ready to make changes to your ideas.

What a waste of my time!

Concept Art and Artist Briefs

Once your show or movie has been picked up by a studio or network, concept art begins! Concept art is basically early designs for things like characters, backgrounds and environments. This is the most experimental part of production and things often change a lot from the start to the end of the concept stage. Some movies or shows are borderline unrecognizable from where they started, and that all comes down to experimentation during the concept stage. If you are an illustrator working in pre-production (either for a studio as a concept artist or as a freelancer commissioned by a studio) you'll receive briefs based on what the showrunners would like to convey. For example, Merlin Crossingham, the co-director of Wallace And Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, described a brief given to a concept artist for the police office as 'recognizably British but with LA lighting'. Briefs are often very specific and concept artists are often inspired by very specific things based on what they're working on and what instructions they're given by the showrunners. Sometimes the concept art stage lasts for years until it's just right.

Expect to get A LOT of notes from the higher ups during this stage.

Pixar concept art, various artists

So, what goes into making a show and what is it like working in pre production?

So, what materials do you use as a concept artist? Up until the early 2000s, almost all concept art was done traditionally, with gouache and pastels being very common in Pixar’s early concept art as they’re bold and colorful. However, as the animation industry as a whole switched to digital animation, so to did concept art. Nowadays, concept art is almost entirely digital and is the industry standard, though traditional art is not dead in concept art.

For example, Pixar makes physical clay sculpts of their character designs before building them digitally, as it helps visualize this character into 3D before messing around digitally.

Clay Sculpt from Coco (2017)

Research in concept art has always been standard practice, from Walt Disney bringing deer and dalmatians into the studio to draw for anatomy to Pixar’s numerous trips abroad for culture research, finding inspiration during the early stages of concept art is key.

Klaus Concept art, Torsten Schramk

Research allows concept artists to find multiple sources of inspiration to draw on. For example, the film Klaus by SPA studios, extensive research was done into the Sami people, which gave the character artists multiple options for costumes and environments for the Sami characters in the film.

Okay, our concept art is done, now what?

Storyboards!

A storyboard is a sequence of drawings that essentially plan out what’s going to happen in the final animation. Majority of animated shows are either storyboard driven or script driven, and storyboard driven shows will often come up with dialogue as they’re boarding, whilst a script is still written, it’s far looser to allow experimentation with it during boarding. Whilst storyboards are often done digitally these days, traditional storyboards are still around as it allows for wider collaboration amongst the writers.

These storyboards from Spongebob Squarepants' pilot episode are a great example of what goes into storyboards.

The scene number and panel letter are listed above the key poses of the scene, with extra lines showing directions of moving elements. Below the panels the dialogue is written, as well as any camera tricks that may be needed for the scene. The more detailed a storyboard is, the less headache it causes the animators who have to take these outlines and make them into actual animation, so these elements, whilst not essential, are incredibly useful.

These storyboards will be taken and turned into an animatic, which is essentially a moving storyboard set to temp voices, and this is usually done before the voice actors have even recorded their dialogue. This helps to visualize everything in motion for the first time, and like the storyboards, these get revised and changed multiple times.