Rendering An Animated Film: Timelines Explained
Many people talk about how much animation takes so long, but they never give you clear answers as to why. They’ll say something like “it takes a lot of time to make all those frames,” or “animators are very slow,” but that doesn’t really explain it.
Why do animators take so long? What is the process for creating an animated movie like? And what makes up the length of time it takes to create one?
This article will try to answer these questions by breaking down the different steps involved in producing an animated film and how each part contributes to the final product. By understanding the parts of the production process, you can begin to formulate your own theories as to what causes the delay at individual stages.
There are several reasons why it may seem like animating a whole scene is taking a long time, but a lot of this perception is due to misunderstanding the process.
The length of time it takes to render a film depends on a variety of factors
There are many different components that go into creating any animated movie, with most of them requiring several people working together to ensure everything comes together smoothly.
One of these parts is animation. An animator creates individual frames or pictures of what an object will be doing or saying in a given scene. These scenes are then put together into motion so that you can actually see the characters performing their actions.
By having enough panels or individual images, your audience won’t notice anything too fast - the picture quality must be good enough!
However, once things get longer than one frame (or “tick” as some call it), this becomes more difficult.
The type of film
Different movie styles work at different speeds depending on what kind of movie you are making. For example, a narrative story-based movie will take longer than an animated feature like Monsters Inc., or Anomalisa, which have fewer stories but more stills.
A short movie like Inside Out has very few scenes compared to other features, so it takes less time to render all those frames.
The length of time it takes to animate a specific scene depends on how many layers exist in that particular shot. There can be people, backgrounds, objects, etc. All these things take time to render separately before they are put together into one frame.
With films, when the camera is moving, it requires even more computer power to track and process each individual frame because there’s more going on. This is why most movies use some sort of special software or hardware to do this for them.
The complexity of the animation
Another part that takes time is creating, finding, and editing all of the different animated sequences or scenes in your film! There are many ways to do this, but most start with drawing a picture or making a clip.
A very common way to begin animating is by starting with something you know how to make already. For example, if you can draw then you could make a running scene or a battle scene.
Running scenes are ones where two characters are walking or running away from each other. A lot of them have special effects like waves, explosions, and reflections.
Battle scenes are when one character is attacking another so there’s usually a lot of action going on.
After those basics, advanced artists create new types of scenes such as collapsing buildings or cars, people swimming, space battles, etc. These are called cut-scene animations because they are typically shown separately from the rest of the movie.
The skill of the animator
There are many different qualities that contribute to the length of time it takes to render an animated film. What is the average budget for most feature films? About $20-25 million. So how long does it take to make a movie depends on just how much money you have!
The quality of your final product matters, but so do the people working on it. A lot of times artists in this field will be given very little resources and deadlines, which can sometimes lead to subpar work.
There’s also the matter of what kind of animation style you want to use. Different styles require different amounts of production time. For example, hand drawn animations typically take longer than computer generated ones.
It really comes down to individual artist’s skills and timing constraints. If someone with less experience wants to become an animator, they should look into it more seriously.
Other factors that affect the length of time include
Length of the movie
Length of the movie Width of the screen
Width of the screen Resolution of the device running the film
Resolution of the device running the film Browser settings (e.g. mobile or desktop browser, fast or slow processor)
Fast processor = faster computer
Faster computer = better quality video
Quality of the internet connection
Some apps take longer to load than others due to overhead
Overhead is what we call extra features in software that take up space and use resources (like CPU power). These are things like graphics rendering, memory allocation and management, file loading and so on.
The budget of the film
When it comes down to it, how long it takes to render any given scene or sequence in an animated movie is mostly dependent on two things: 1) The budget for the project and 2) What kind of look you want to achieve.
The first thing that can have a big impact on how quickly or slowly your animation will go is the budget. If the producers are paying very little money for filming then chances are they do not have much money to spend on graphics and overall production.
Budgets like this usually limit what grade of equipment and software is available to use during the production process. This could be due to cost, there not being enough funds to buy new pieces of technology, or both.
If the filmmakers have limited resources, then it may take them longer than normal to draw the same amount of frames. They might need to re-do some scenes or even start over because there just isn’t enough money left at the end of the day.
But hopefully everyone involved in the production team works together to contribute as much as possible so that the final product does not suffer due to low budgets.
The audience's attention span
There is a very short amount of time that anyone, let alone an adult paying full price for movie tickets, will truly focus on the film you are showing them.
This is especially true if the film has some kind of special effect or animation involved in it. These effects can be expensive which adds up over several runs.
If a viewer does not understand how the effect was done they may feel cheated because they have paid money to see this effect and it did not work!
There are many things that could play a part in the length of time it takes to render an animated film.
The length of time it takes to produce each individual frame, the number of frames produced per batch job, and how long it takes to compile all of these frames into one fluid whole are just some examples.
Any of these factors can add up to longer than expected waiting times for your viewers.
The theme of the film
A common critique of animated films is how long it takes them to get into anything substantial. If you watch a lot of movies, you will probably have already noticed that most animated features start off with a very broad setting or scene.
They are usually set in the world outside, or somewhere close to home for someone living there. This is their context and environment, and they use this as a way to establish characters and relationships.
But what people may not realize is that these settings and contexts take a while to develop. They do not come quickly after the initial idea stage.
It takes time to create something meaningful within the story, so it makes sense that it takes longer than just writing a short movie about your life or the beach.