OK, heres where Deitch the teacher addresses a classroom of wannabes, laying down the basics. If you cant get this stuff into your head, you might as well go into another line of work.
The best thing I could do to teach you how to make animated movies would just be to help you find your own way.
There are unnumbered ways to make animation. The only limit is your own imagination. When I was a young animator, in 1949, a mindless "veteran" of 10 years in the craft said to me, "Gene, when you've been in the business as long as I have, you'll know you can't get away with your crazy ideas!"
A lot of my "crazy ideas" of those days are already old-fashioned ideas today. I'm well over 50 years in the craft and I know that "crazy ideas" are what keep us all alive!
But there are some rules that do stay. They are basic to any kind of film, video, or computer-generated animation. If you can learn just the basic rules of how to harness the technology that gives the illusion of life to still drawings or objects, and how to string together individual shots and scenes to tell a story, or create a homogeneous, meaningful sequence or mood, then you can use these rules in your own personal way.
The whole thing about making animated movies is to somehow find a way always keep in your mind the amount of time any action is going to play on the screen. You will of course be working incredibly s1ow1y in comparison to the time your drawings, models, images, or whatever, will actually be seen. The one rule you cannot break is that 24 individual pictures go whizzing by on the screen each and every second.
(In Europe, where 50 cycles per second is the electrical standard, the video and TV projection rate is 25 frames per second. The difference is visually undetectable. 24 frames per second is the internationally standard film projection rate, except for special presentation systems, such as IMAX.)
If you are going to make drawings, or move objects that will be registered one frame at a time, then each drawing or each phase of movement, has to have a number that indicates on which frame of film, tape, disk or memory chip it will be registered.
But how are you going to know which drawing goes with which frame or frames? Well, the answer to that will make the difference whether your movie will just move or whether it will seem to live! I can tell you how to gradually find the answer. You have to start with the idea that you are an actor, a mime. You will need to have a stopwatch for timing. Nearly every cheap digital watch usually has a stopwatch feature.
Just as the strip of film or videotape records 24 individual images per second, so can each story or action be broken down into sections, which we can call sequences, scenes, shots, actions, bits of action, or poses. When you are planning your movie, you will gradually break it down into smaller and smaller bits. You can do all of these things by acting it all out with a stopwatch; doing it over and over again until you are sure that it has just the timing you want. When you get it right you must write down the timings into finer and finer bits. This usually is done on forms called exposure or "dope" sheets, with lines representing each frame.
You can then create the images of the key positions of the character or object you are animating. The key positions, or "poses" are the main "way-stations" along the line of action, from the beginning to the end of the scene you are animating. The frame numbers assigned to these key poses are attached to specific film or tape frames, and establish the basic "acting" and timing of the scene. To connect those poses, "in-between" images must be filled in, so that there will be a phase or position on each and every film frame. This may seem simple, but improper in-betweens can completely destroy the best animation. Invisible arcs connect one pose with another. The in-between images must follow those arcs. But that is just one aspect of proper inbetweens. The spacing of the inbetweens is where either "living" or mechanistic movement is achieved. It must be the animator who indicates the spacing, with little pips marked along the arcs. Wider or closer spacing will make the action faster or slower, because the projection speed is constant. The deftly spaced phases of action become a counterpoint, a shifting obbligato to the rock-steady ostinatto of the projection speed. Therein is the illusion of life!
How do you animate?
How do you build a house?
Every job can be broken down into steps.
Have a plan. Think ahead. Make sure every action is in accordance with the plan.
When you animate an individual scene, know what comes before your scene, and what comes after it. Make sure your action fits into the continuity. Know the character. How he, she, or it is supposed to think, move, act. Find the action idiosyncrasies; how would the character walk? Are there some special gestures, body attitudes, quirks and disabilities, facial expressions you can build on? The recorded voice (if there is dialog) is a strong impetus to an animation key. Make sure every move is in character.
The director should tell you all this. If you are the director, you should know all this.
How you do it is the step-by-step approach. Analyze the action. Act it out physically if you can, or at least in your mind. Have a stopwatch in your hand. First, time the overall action. Often, you will be given an exact scene-length by the director. Then, step by step, break down the action into logical sections and bits. Your rough drawings or computer positions will then be anchored to exact frame numbers. So-called "straight-ahead" animation, without first laying out key poses along the way, is for experienced experts or wild card beginners. It's fun, as is flip-book animation, but is difficult to control in a scene of precisely set-down length.
Knowing your scene will be shown at the constant rate of 24 or 25 frames per second is what makes animation possible. Think of that steady frame rate as your (very fast!) rhythm section. What you will do with your animation poses and spacing against this steady frame rate is your counterpoint. Closely spaced phases of motion will appear to move slower when played back, and widely spaced phases will appear to move faster. Here is your basic animation tool in a nutshell: You are doing a counterpoint to a steady beat!
