17 - Making the animation

At this step, we will take the scene where Ernest is waking up, a scene that you could see at the storyboard step. As a reminder, here is the scene as it was in the Layout

At first, I explain the Lead animator what I want for this scene

He is then giving those informations to the animator who will work on the scene

I sometimes pass so I can give more informations on the scene

The animator will make a rough version of his or her scene, rough version that will gives us an idea of what the scene will look like.

Patrick can see the scene in work in progress and give corrections if necessary

Finally we have the cleaned animation, ready to be colored

This is how the color team will start working. Greg was the lead colorist

They start coloring each moving characters and objects. You will notice that the lines of the drawings are not closed so the volume of the characters is not always defined. The lead colorist has to complete this volume

The colors will complete the volume

After the shadows will be added

So here is the final result at this step

This is how we worked on animation. We were lucky to make all those thing in only one studio in Paris. Our biggest advantage was to work among the animators so we could work precisely on the acting of the characters. Even if I was not really clear all the time...