These are my notes that I’ve written up for a workshop I gave at the studio.  It’s just a look into my thought process and approach to traditionally animating a scene.

There are many ways to do it, some better than others, but this is what I’ve found to be most effective for me.  Hopefully, this method will help give you some ideas when tackling your own shots, scenes, and sequences.

Get Organized
It’s easy to get lost, especially when you’re working on scattered scenes.  More often than not, the [client] storyboard won’t be clear enough to understand the action.  There will be missing characters, no background, obscure scene timing, missing props and camera directions.  

Having complete a complete understanding of the scene you’re working on is the key.  You’ll save yourself a lot of time and frustration.    

If you’re unsure about what’s happening, ask.  

Get Prepared
Like a chef preps ingredients to cook their recipe, you need to prep your scene as well.  Once you have a thorough understanding of your scene, check to make sure that you have the right characters, props, settings, audio and storyboards are all up to date and approved.  

If the Layout process was done correctly, many of these elements should be in the scene folder or file.  Always double check though. 

Thumbnailing & Timing
In the glory days of traditional animation, you’d thumbnail out the scene on another sheet of paper, plan it all out on an X-Sheet, blown it up to size on a xerox and clean up your drawings.  That same idea still exists minus the extra sheets of paper, the x-sheet, and the xerox.  

A simple approach would be to zoom out to 50-75% of your scene size and crudely sketch out thumbnails right on the timeline.

Every scene has a unique beat and tempo.  That can be the action happening on screen, the dialogue and sound effects (if there are any), or in the soundtrack.  When you start the thumbnailing process, a good place to start would be to work over the initial poses in the storyboards and or layouts.

If you’re working over the storyboard, you’ll need to put the character and or props on model, and draw the action in the proper perspective.  If you’re working from a layout, double check to make sure that the design is consistent throughout.

The concept behind thumbnailing is that you’re trying to figure out the action.  This is where you can get a lot of the major key and breakdown points in.  When you Key out the actions they should be able to describe arcs, head turns, change in shape and whatever effect you’re going for.  

I tend to work on thumbnailing and timing at the same time as I go shifting frames until I have something that feels right.  This helps me get to my end result a lot faster.

Clean up & Notations
Once you’ve got something that you’re satisfied with, clean it up.  Mark up any timing charts and notions that you may have.  More often than not, the next process will be handed off to someone else.  If you do end up taking your scene to completion, it’ll be handy to have these notes should you have to come back to it later.  Plus having clean drawings make it much easier to animate with.

Animation
By this point, you should have a thorough understanding of your scene and character(s).  The next approach is to bring them to life.  Remember the basic 5 principals of drawing:

1. Gesture
2. Shape
3. Volume, Mass & Proportion
4. Overlapping Objects & Foreshortening
5. Perspective

And also the 12 principals of animation:

1. Squash & Stretch
2. Anticipation (a.k.a Antic.)
3. Staging
4. Straight ahead action and pose to pose
5. Follow through and overlapping action
6. Slow In and Out
7. Arcs
8. Secondary Action
9. Timing
10. Exaggeration
11. Solid Drawing (see above)
12. Appeal

Put yourself in the place of your character, associate with what’s happening in the scene if you can.  If you don’t feel it, don’t draw it.  

Above all else, keep it simple.  

Art is about communicating.  You want to express the most important part of the scene -  the essence of it - clearly.  That should be your focus.  If its started to get too busy, too distracting, cut things out.  Get it down to things we can’t live without.  

We’re also in a deadline driven industry.  We have to make good artwork, so we have to keep to the essentials and make every drawing count.

Written by Esteban Valdez

We live on a razor thin line between art and business.  On one side we get to create, invent, and express.  On the other its about execution, decision making and meeting deadlines.  

Depending on the project, we’ll either be creative or we’ll be meeting deadlines or we’ll be creative and meeting deadlines at the same time.  No matter what: deadlines will always be a constant.

As projects continue to increase in size and scope;   the deadlines become more and more demanding.  This is where many young, and even senior, artists and animators tend to run into trouble.  Echo is a pretty relaxed environment, or at least that’s how I try to run things.  The current policy has been “so long as the work is done and the clients are happy,” and with that people come in when they are at their most productive.  Some folks get in around 9 in the morning, some get in around 11; sometimes they work at the studio and sometimes they work from home.  Personally, I get in around 7 or 8 in the morning, during the quiet hours, and tend to stay until about 8 or 9 at night. However, we’ve recently brought on a few new faces, some of them interns, and although the laid back atmosphere has worked for us thus far, it doesn’t really work to well with our newly acquired young bloods.  Because our resources and time are limited, it’s had me reflect on the way we schedule our projects.  It’s also has me seeing a potential problem in the future.  

When I was freelancing, I would work all throughout the night when it was quiet.  But when crunch time came, being a night owl often had some serious draw backs, staying up for days on end was one of them.  It has serious effects on your health (i.e., learning and memory problems, depression, increased risk of heart disease and stroke) and in this industry our health is all we really have when all is said and done.  Another issue that comes with the graveyard shift is that you are always, always, behind schedule and you end up having to pull all nighters in order to meet or beat that ticking clock.  If a client or project comes to you, after all the negotiating and detail combing; you’re already late.  Like many clients, or clients of clients, they wanted the end product weeks ago.  The client has this assumption that you are going to be working around the same hours as they are in order to keep communication smooth and flowing.  If they’re starting at 9am, and you start work at 1pm, you’re already 4 hours behind schedule.  Even though you’re staying up all night pumping gallons of coffee into your system to finish, you’re still late.

Working all night and staying up for days on end is a young artists’ game.  It’s a status symbol that comes with bragging rights but offers very little in terms of value and professionalism.  There is nothing noble or honorable or praiseworthy about seeing people slumped over their desks, lying on the floor or passed out in their chair from pure exhaustion from being over worked.  I understand and get the concept about putting your all into your work, but if you’re looking to do this for a living then you want to live a long and healthy life in order to do so.

We, as artists, need structure.  That structure often comes in the form of direction or limitations, and time.  Directions set the track for where we can create.  It establishes the finish line and without it we could keep running in circles never knowing if we’re close to our goal or not.  

We structure ourselves in the form of time, whether that be the 9 to 5 schedule or the deadline.  Some would argue that we can’t clock in creativity; I use to be one of those advocates.  The reality is, yes you can.  It takes  a little bit of work, but it is possible.  I’ve been doing it for several years now.  In order for some plants to grow healthier, taller and have a proper stalk, a post will be planted right next to it in which to wrap itself up in.  The post isn’t a limitation, it isn’t a crutch, its setting the course for growth.  Likewise for us, as artists, we need those limitations, restrictions and directions in order for us to find, culture and nourish our creativity while at the same time developing a “professional” attitude and solid work ethic.  Waking up early, working distraction free, taking breaks, eating healthy, exercising and getting proper sleep … As boring as that may sound, its the difference between being a working artist and not.  The well adjusted artist or animator will embrace the challenges that come with production with a good solid stride.  The amateur will be struggling all night to try to get it done, like a sprinter running a marathon.

When your day is structured, you build a routine, and when you get into a routine, you’re able to work better because you’re not rushing, getting distracted, feeling tired or worrying about your deadlines.  

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work … But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.” 

-Chuck Close

Written by Esteban Valdez