Phase One

When planning your 3D animation, pre production is by far the most important part. Script, storyboard, design, research, and the all important sign off.

  Story Board
  This is the first step in visualizing the written script into pictures. It is at this stage that we 'nail down' angles, movement, and ultimately define how the script and ideas transfer to screen. Without a storyboard, it is very easy to misunderstand the focus and action of the script.

  Design and Modeling
  From the initial design, our modelers will construct the digital 3-D model that will be used for planning and animation.

  Rigging
  The modelers start with the wire frame sculpture that we call an armature, that breaks down our design into workable geometry and allows us to “rig” the figure, which will give the animator the ability to move our 3-D figure in whatever way is necessary to get the articulation we want.

  Basic Surfaces
  Once we’ve set up the armature, we can begin to add basic surfaces. It is this simplified “puppet in a box“ or digital marionette that we use in our next step.

  Layout
  Layout artists use rough "stand-in" shapes to block out the movement of the character in the scene. This rough layout or animatic is the blueprint from which we determine camera movement, character placement, spacing, lighting, geography and scene timing. The animatic maps out the entire movie, giving us a digital picture of each scene before we actually begin the character animation.