Why Animators Need an Animatic

Animatic image from "Giles and Rupert's Prehistoric Predicament"

What is an animatic? And why do animators need one? An Animatic is something that all of our first year students have to tackle as part of PR4001, a creative story-telling module in which our undergraduate students work in teams to create a teaser or trailer for an original TV series.

Later, working on their own short films and group projects in the second and third year at Escape Studios, our students will become very familiar with the process of creating an animatic, which is an essential first step in the creation of any animated content.

Giles and Rupert's Prehistoric Predicament
The video below is an animatic created by a number of our first year undergraduate students, based on an idea by Toby Haslam. It's especially interesting because Toby and his team also produced a Previs version of their teaser, which you can also see below.





What is an Animatic?

You will likely need sound design

An animatic is a filmed storyboard,  (sometimes called a story reel, and historically often called a Leica Reel), is essentially a series of drawn images cut together to tell the story of the film. 

Sound Design

Usually your animatic will include music, sound effects, voice-over narration and voice actors - where appropriate.  Think of it as a filmed comic book or graphic novel of the final film, a blend of sound and pictures. Often, the overall sound design is as important as the visuals. To see more about sound design, follow this link.

The Lighthouse at Whale's End
Below is another example of an animatic created by our first year animation students for PR4001, titled "The Lighthouse at Whale's End".  It was written and directed by Paloma Zhu, who also created the concept art. Morgan Mda did storyboards and concept art, Konrad Peczkowicz did editing and sound design. Callum Wylie produced, and did post-production.



Why Animators Need an Animatic

Storyboard by Anastasia Gurova

The animatic is an important story-telling tool.  It helps the film-makers to visualise the scenes prior to tackling the long and complex process of animation, and helps to tease out potential problems with the story while these problems are still fairly easy to fix.  

Storyboards will tell you how long your film is, how many characters are in it, and - overall - whether the film is working or not. Does it work as a story? Is it clear? Does it have a natural rhythm? 

How to Edit Your Animatic

Edit in Adobe Premiere

Storyboards can be drawn digitally straight into software such as Storyboarder or Photoshop. Alternatively you can draw your boards on paper, scan them, clean them up in Photoshop, and then edit them in Premiere. Photoshop and Premiere are part of the Adobe Suite, which we have at Escape Studios for all our students.

Aspect Ratio

Make sure you work to the correct aspect ratio - typically 16:9. You can download a standard storyboard template from the web or use one of our templates in UG Shares/UG Animation/Assets

Animatic -v- Previsualisation
An animatic is similar to a previsualisation ("previs") of the film but there are differences. Previs performs essentially the same function as the animatic, but where the animatic is a filmed storyboard, previs includes 3D elements. The previs pass will usually include low resolution versions of all the characters and the sets, figuring out the cuts and the camera work in detail.  To see the difference between the two, watch the previs version of Giles and Rupert's Prehistoric Predicament below.





Animatic Checklist

What goes into an animatic? Checklist below:

• Storyboards, edited together and timed out in Premiere
• Sound Design, including voice talent or narration (where needed), foley and music
• Export movie file as a .mov, .avi or .mp4  

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2022, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.