How Disney Animated Movies Are Made
Let’s take a look at some of your favorite animated movies! What makes them special is their incredible storyline, lovable characters, and most importantly, how much skill and talent it takes to make each one. It takes a lot of people with different skills to bring these stories and characters to life!
Many movie studios have internal departments that handle specific tasks-visual effects (or “VEX” as they are called), music, writing, editing, etc. But what few know about is the animation department. This is where all the cartoons are made!
The writers write the story, directors direct, and VEX artists create the scenes for the movie. The animators then turn those written notes into actual drawings!
There are many types of animators such as inker/inkers, matte painters, background artist, character designer, and keyframe artists. Each one brings something unique to the film!
Character designers design new or refreshed versions of existing cartoon characters, while back ground artists add detail and texture to the set designs. Inkers and inkes draw directly onto the painted layer of the image with black paint to give it definition, whereas mattes cover entire backgrounds and be used to blend textures or shapes together.
And finally, Keyframers use computer software to animate individual movements and actions.
Art director
An art director is in charge of looking at the movie that is being made and choosing which parts need to be redesigned or replaced. They are also responsible for creating new designs for existing scenes and characters!
Art directors typically have several years’ experience under their belt, making it easier to pick up new styles and genres. Even if an artist was already working when a project comes around, they can always look into what qualities the film wants and find ways to add them into their work.
Some things that artists tend to do are adding more detail to something or changing the color palette used for a scene. Both of these changes help make the piece feel better by incorporating more textures or using colors that match well with the setting.
For example, let’s say there is a scene where someone walks down a beach. The person walking away could use some darker shadows, so an art director would go into photoshop and create those. Or maybe there are too many bright lights, so the art department would change the lighting to fit that theme more.
The goal of this article is to tell you how animation is done, not only as a fan but also as a professional who will one day work in the field. So, we shall now take a closer look at how animators (the people who draw the pictures) get hired.
Voice actors
As we mentioned before, most animated movies have more than one voice actor to provide their characters’s voices. An example of this is The Lion King, where you will hear the character Mufasa (aka “Daddy”) voiced by John Williams, as well as Timon and Pumbaa who are both voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Williams also provides the voice for many other major characters in the movie such as Simba, Nala, Zazu, etc. Similarly, Ejiofor supplies the voice of Rafiki (a wizard-type creature), Makuzi (the hyena tribe leader), and others. These additional speakers are referred to as dubbing artists or voice directors.
The role of a voice director is to match up the script with the vocal tone and qualities of the person delivering it. They may suggest changing how an accent sounds, using different tones, etc. This process is very time consuming, so there are usually only few individuals that work on individual lines or segments.
Visual effects
One of the most important parts of any animated movie is its visual effects (or VFX for short). These are things like adding new scenery, creating computer-generated characters or creatures, and replacing existing ones with digital models.
Most big studios have their own in house artists that handle this work, but many hire freelance VFX companies to help finish projects.
These outside vendors create scenes using pre-existing images or software as sources for textures and shapes. They then add additional styles to make everything look more realistic. A lot of these additions also require you to apply special effect filters to conceal the artist’s handiwork!
There are even some apps that allow people to design their own creature features or cartoon avatars which get tweaked and polished by professional graphic designers and animators! It’s definitely not easy doing it well, but there are plenty of resources out there to learn from.