How to Make an Animated Short Film

So I recently released my third tastefully

animated

short

film

and I thought I would

make

a video that shows all the different steps behind creating a 3D

animated

short

film

from start to finish and explain them as simply as I can so that even if you're not from the animation visual effects industry, you can get an idea of ​​what it takes to

make

an animated film. Oh, and there's a cool surprise at the end, so make sure you watch it from start to finish so the first and probably the most important part of making any movie is a good story, if you don't get it right, it doesn't matter how good it gets. watch your movie, people won't enjoy watching it.

Make sure your story is good and works before continuing. Go ahead and believe me, even if you think it works now, it will change a lot as we move forward with production, so the first thing we do after we have our story is write it down into a script, it's important to transfer your idea as soon as possible. As best you can so that you can spot any problems with your story before you start production, there are some programs you can use to write your scripts, such as Final Draft or Celtics. Personally, I like to use Scrivener, which is probably the best all-purpose writer.

There is a program, but the program doesn't really matter. Then, once I've written my script, I try to create as many pieces of concept art as I can to start establishing the visual style of the film and when I say "I mean" my concept art team. of incredible artists who were the ones who created all the film counterparts. It's a really fun step and the first opportunity you have to see parts of your film come to life on paper. It's about exploring and trying things. Next is creating a storyboard which is probably one of the most important steps in discovering your film.

Storyboarding allows you to look at your film as a whole and the sports story and pacing issues. Making one also gives you something you can show other people for feedback. Most people react better to a movie. a storyboard than a script, at this point I modify my story and make changes until I'm happy with the boards and ready to move on to making an animatic. an animatic is the film version of your storyboard. the storyboard is more like a comic and the animatic is like a movie, take all the boards into an editing program and edit them over time, add some music and temporary sound effects, just enough to convey the different rhythms of the story, when you're done, you'll have the first version of your movie ready to go.

Look at it as cool as a storyboard, it's an animation that really gives you a first idea of ​​what your movie will be like. Show it to people again. Get more comments. Modify the timing and pacing until you are very happy with how the movie looks. works, then it's time to get into 3D, we start with the modeling, we basically create all the digital models for the film, the environments, the sets, the props and of course the characters, we use the concept art on model sheets that We previously created and modeled based on them, the models.

When they are first created they can really do a lot, we can place them in our scenes but they can be moved around until we equip them and that is our next step. When we talk about assembling a model, we mean creating a kind of digital skeleton with different controls to move it. Before we assembled our models, they were like statues, but now there are more action figures, just with much more nuanced movements. The rigor ensures that we have different controls for each part of the body and face so that we can create every action and expression we need.

We then take our platform models into the 3D program and start creating our shots. You place all the assets where they need to be and create a 3D camera to capture the shot. We put the cameras and characters in place just as we would if we were. filming a live-action film and then it's time to bring the shots to life with animation before starting the final animation, although there is a more important step to ensure the story works and that is to create a preview or preview of this. is the next incarnation of our animation, this time using their 3D models, we set up all the shots in the 3D program with all final and moving camera angles and created very basic animations for the characters, just enough to convey the action that is taking place. suppose.

To do, we bring all of these shots into the editing program just like we did with the animatic and now we have an older version of our movie with the correct 3D models and camera movement. This is really the last step where you can still make changes. because animation takes a lot of time and it would be a big waste if we had to make changes to the story after that, so again I show it to more people to get more feedback and make sure I'm completely satisfied with the movie and now there's The time for animation Animation is my favorite part of the filmmaking process and that's where we finally bring the film to life, the characters start moving and we get to see the soul of the film come to life in front of us.

It's an incredible thing to watch, but it's also time-consuming and doing it right can rule out your movie. Bad animation is like bad acting, even if the writing and story are solid, people won't watch it if the delivery is wrong, the The way we animate the character is by moving the controls that we create when we manipulate the models, we manipulate those controls so that our characters have the correct pose, we create a keyframe that captures that pose in the computer and then we move the controls to the next pose and we repeat, since, of course, we allow for more technicality. but this is the gist, before we can export our shots, we need to texture our models, which means creating different materials that we assign to different parts of the models, some that simulate metal, some plastics and even some for skin, they we give the right. colors and we illuminate our shots with virtual lights that replicate as closely as possible how lights work in the real world, a main light for the entire scene that acts as sunlight and some spotlights are on our points of interest, as if it were the stage of a film, then when our shots have texture and lighting, we start rendering.

Rendering is the process in which the computer calculates all the data for our scenes and creates still images from them. We then take those images into a compositing program like Nuke or After Effects, extract the necessary data and images. and combine them to create the final images. This rendering and compositing process is very technical and unfortunately too complicated for me to cover in this video, but if you are interested in that, search for these two terms on YouTube and you can find some in-depth tutorials on how the process works , so let's go back to our images once we have them, we bring them back into our editing program and we replace our previous shots with our new finished shots just like we replace the animated shots with the previous ones that we can now do.

Let's see our finished movie in the editing timeline for the first time, but it's not actually finished yet. We need to make some color and grading corrections. Color correction is the process of manipulating the colors of each individual shot to match the previous one. and after making sure that each shot doesn't have parts that are too white or too black, it basically works to get a consistent and correct color throughout the movie, then we grade our movie, which is the most fun and creative part where we try to create a visual style for the colors of the entire film to give it a distinctive look.

I tried to push the pinks and purples in this movie and create a kind of washed out look with pastel colors that I really like before We're done, there are two main things that we have to take care of that we've probably been working on the entire movie. production and are sound design and music. I've been working with my musician since day one of production to make sure. the music fits what we're trying to do with the movie and making sure the movie also works with the music a lot of the time it's dictated by the music, the music usually isn't something you can put at the end, I'd rather have it with me during the entire production so that it becomes an integral part of the story and then the sound designer finalizes all the sound effects of the film, such as ambience and voices, as well as mastering and mixing the final audio of the film, as well So this was a very quick overview. of what it takes to make an animated short film, but if you want to learn more, I have a cool surprise for you.

I've created a full 30-lesson video course that details each of these steps in much more depth, as well as many others. topics related to making a film, such as making a poster or trailer, creating a website for the film, how to submit to festivals and much more, and it's completely free, if you enjoyed this video, you'll probably like the course, it's the only course. in our library it's free, but believe me, it doesn't seem like a free course, sign up for the blue animation communication bar by making an anime.