Make Animations a Success

Animation is a tricky process and involves a lot of (smart) work. You may have heard about what you should stay away from while you do make your animations but in order to succeed, you should be concentrating on doing the 8 things mentioned below. There are more but these are some of the most important things that you need for your animations to succeed.

1.    Don’t forget to plan

You can’t have too much planning when it comes to animations. Everything from the storyboard to thumbnails can save you a lot of effort down the road (however short that road is). Doing a well-planned scene once is way better (budget and time-wise) redoing the same unplanned scene 10 times without planning.

2.    Not being picky with your shots

The way animations work is that the viewer sees one scene and makes it a benchmark for the other. So you’re only as good as the last scene that you did. If you spend a ridiculous amount of time on one scene and blaze through the next one (in a bad way), the whole animation will go downhill from there. Consistency in scenes is the best way forward.

3.    Concentrating on the Body’s Motions

When a character is talking you have to focus on their lip movement. People overuse this approach to animation, A LOT! What they ignore is the fact that animations are like real life, body language still counts for the most part and lip-synching can be added later after you animate the body movement of a character. Shift the focus on lips at the end.

4.    Don’t over-stuff references

Use references, whether it is a reference in your character’s dialogues or animations. But don’t blatantly copy, it, add your own take to it and make it work. References are just that: REFERENCES! They aren’t meant to be used “as is”.

5.    Leave subtle gaps for your audience to think

You have to allow your audience time to think and ponder on what the character has said. This means that you have to allow a gap of a few seconds (4-6 frames) for the message to sink in. Dora the Explorer does it best, keeping the age of the audience in mind!

6.    Emphasize audio earlier if not perfectly in sync

Try to hit sound effects and syllable emphasis in dialogues in your animations like you would the nail on a head. If that becomes too difficult, it should be a bit early but not after. Sound brings energy to a shot and captures the emotions in the scene.