All images are from Animation Background Layout: From Student to Professional by Mike S. Fowler. Reprinted with permission. © Mike S. Fowler 2002.

This month AWN continues a series of excerpts from Animation Background Layout: From Student to Professional Author Mike S. Fowler has especially adapted his book for our readers. In this essential and educational easy-to-follow guide, Mike, an animation layout artist, supervisor and college instructor illustrates the purpose and function of animation layout. He creates an easy to follow format with so much information and diagrams, people of any animation skill level should be able to learn something new. Whether an inquisitive beginner, the college animation student who wants to better prepare for a job or an animation industry professionals, everyone can learn something new in this book.

In this chapter, we focus on the support material for layout including storyboards, location designs, character designs and prop designs. To understand the role of the layout artist and the use of the previously mentioned support material, here is a process of how animation layout gets started.

The storyboard is presented to the director, supervisors, animation staff and occasionally the investors of the production by various methods. Each studio presents the storyboard differently depending on the production type and restraints. One presentation method is to have the storyboard acted out live. The panels are posted on large walls or moveable corkboard panels. As the board creator points to each panel, she/he acts out the dialogue and action. This has many names including storyboard review, board presentation and story pitch session.

Some studios only create a realtime video of the storyboard panels. Each panel is filmed for a predetermined amount of time and then combined with the rough audio track. This is called a leica reel. All studios use this at some point in the animation production.