How to draw Walt Disney cartoons. How are cartoons made? Everyday life at the TouchFX animation studio

A couple of computers, “smart” programs - and a film masterpiece is ready? No, making modern animated films is much more difficult. CHIP visited the Disney studio and is ready to talk about the fusion of filmmaking and programming.

Snow White, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Bambi and Mickey Mouse - they were all created in the studio, where, together with other equally famous characters Disney stories, cartoon characters they joyfully greet us from the closets, from the shelves and from the drawings on the walls. Modern technology and the traditional idyllic art of painting - that is the essence of today's Disney.

CHIP visited the studio with long history, located in Burbank, Los Angeles County, California, at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, to learn how animated films are born. Over the past two years, the company, founded in 1923, has been producing its 52nd animated feature, Wreck-It Ralph, in which a disillusioned video game villain seeks public acceptance.

Here, in the “Silicon Valley” of the American film industry, over these two years, through the efforts of 200 animators, programmers and artists, 188 characters and 79 locations were born. More than 10,000 computers processed scene by scene. The action takes place in four video game worlds. It all starts in the eight-bit pixelated game Fix-It Felix Jr., reminiscent of the arcade Donkey Kong. Then main character, Ralph, sneaks into the realistic shooter Hero%u2019s Duty, and then finds himself in the racing simulator Sugar Rush - a mixture of Alice in Wonderland and Japanese anime. The inputs and outputs of these games are located in the fourth world - the Central Gaming Station. Each universe had its own design, movements, colors and effects. “It was like making one movie out of four... very complex film", describes this almost impossible technical and logic problem Renato Dos Anjos, animation team leader.

Between slot machines and jelly banks

In order for the presented worlds to be noticeably different from each other, but at the same time consonant, the production of the cartoon began with a lengthy study. "We were looking for elements evoking emotions or nostalgia,” says director Rich Moore, already familiar to the public from the popular animated series “The Simpsons” and “Futurama.” In Barcelona, ​​the team of creators was inspired by the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. The developers also visited International exhibition confectionery in Cologne, went to a go-kart track and played a variety of video games. Moore is especially proud of the arcade machines throughout the studio that feature the Fix-It Felix game, developed by members of the film crew. These scratched boxes, supposedly from the 1980s, show animators, designers and programmers jockeying for record numbers during breaks.

In 2010, after meticulous planning, production of the film began. The script was already ready, and the actors voicing the characters, including even Oscar-nominated John C. Reilly (Wreck-It Ralph) and Sarah Silverman (Vanellope), began reciting each scene. Most often they did sound work together, in the same room, which is unusual for animated films. This led to some interesting improvised dialogue. In addition, the actors were filmed so that the animators could capture their facial expressions and gestures - a good help for subsequent work. At the same time, layout specialists superimposed computer-generated base character models onto scene locations, set camera positions, and set timing for sound recording.

Click the mouse - and... it's removed!

Finally, it's time to start animating the crude and still ugly scenes. In a darkened mini-studio equipped with a half-dozen computers, director Rich Moore explains to the animation team what the characters in a certain scene are doing, what they are thinking and feeling. Employees watch videos of voice-over artists, and some even stage the stage and record themselves. This gives you an understanding of how the character stands, when he moves his hand or blinks, as well as how he behaves in a particular situation. “Creating animation is not so much a technical task as it is an artistic flair,” explains animation department head Renato Dos Anjos. All 67 animators working on "Wreck-It Ralph" sit down at their computers straight out of prep to model the movements on a base character model and create rough facial animation. These initial models are digital dolls with a skeleton that moves by clicking on the head or joints with a mouse. For implementation, it is necessary to have control structures in the model of each of the characters. Such sequences, defined in the animation program, transform all simple and complex movements of the character's skeleton - from bending the arm to choreographic dance. “If we can't implement a movement, there's always someone smart enough to create a suitable control structure,” says dos Anjos. One of these “saviors” is Jan Berger, Technical Director of Characters. He studied his profession at the Film and Television Institute and has been working for Disney since early 2012. Ian designs controls called "rigs" and customizes them to suit the animators' desires. “For major characters this process can take a couple of months, with secondary characters we do it in a few days or weeks,” says Berger. When creating the moving models in Wreck-It Ralph, the team deviated a bit from Disney tradition, focusing more on video games. This is most noticeable in the world of the game Fix-It Felix. Here the heroes move only by jumping with sharp turns at an angle of 90%B0, as in classic arcade games, where there are no smooth movements housings. Other worlds are also making their demands. “When we animate, we constantly have to move between cartoon, realistic, simplistic, emotional and comedy styles,” explains Zach Parrish, lead animator, on Wreck-It Ralph. At the first stage of work, the so-called “Blocking Pass” appears - rough, non-smooth animation at a speed of only 10 frames/s. Rich Moore studies it and gives his opinion, as well as the acting on film set. Only the scene changed, taking into account his comments, is converted into 24 frames by the animators - in this form the film will be shown on the movie screen. So what are 67 people needed for? With a tired smile on their face, they explain to us: everyone creates only 80 frames a week, which corresponds to three seconds of film. It takes an average of a month to animate a 12-second scene.

Simulation and manual optimization

Animators submit their work to the technical animation department. His team attends to Ralph's hair blowing in the wind as he races across race track in the world of Sugar Rush, or the placement of the folds in his clothes when he sits down. Here you remember the characteristic Disney physics - not realistic, but cartoonish, which at the same time should look convincing. Jan Berger is also involved in technical animation: “My experience is that the best results are achieved with a combination of hand animation and modeling.” The latter means that the program first indicates the initial position of the object. A physical force, such as gravity or wind, is then used to determine the stiffness of the material, such as hair or clothing. “Now adjustments must be made until the ideal result is achieved,” Berger explains briefly. Like most of his colleagues, he uses the most popular 3D animation program for these purposes - Autodesk Maya, for which he even developed his own plugin.

As Ralph and the other characters awaken to life, the world still dead. A team of effects specialists led by Cesar Velazquez will work on it. They animate everything that is not related to the characters: fire, water, smoke, destruction, explosions. Even these effects look different in each world of the film. In the shooter Hero%u2019s Duty, for example, Ralph's fight against aliens is depicted as realistically as possible. “To do this, we apply several layers of effects: first smoke, steam and fog, then particles and small debris, and finally light, flashes and sparks,” says Velasquez. It's worth noting that Wreck-It Ralph was the first film Disney studios, in which a so-called effects designer participated. At the same time, the creators wanted to give each world a unique style while maintaining the Disney tradition of drawing even in the special effects, without relying entirely on computer graphics. Velasquez and his team had to test some effects in analog mode. The result is a combination of computer-generated and hand-drawn effects. This is especially noticeable in the scene where Ralph falls into the chocolate river. Computer animated river in the classic way, like a liquid, looks realistic. The chocolate drops on Ralph's clothing, however, are done in typical Disney fashion. cartoon style- they were drawn by the effects designer.

The effects animation is handled by Hendrik Panz, who joined the Disney team after completing his studies at the Ludwigsburg Film Academy. Pants is one of the few who works with animation program Houdini, which is better suited for complex effects than software from market leader Autodesk. Such effects also require enormous computer power, so the animation team works on real “monsters.” For example, Panz's workstation, running Linux, is equipped with 48 GB random access memory and an eight-core graphics processor.

Let's add lighting to the basement too

On last stage Adolph Lusinski's lighting team illuminates the scene and characters, creates shadows and reflections, and makes colors pop. All work begins in analogue mode - in a Disney photography studio, where various lighting schemes are tested for the subject. Armed with this knowledge, experts shed light on a specific scene in two stages. First, a real-time renderer (another Disney proprietary design called Figaro) creates shapes of light and shadow based on camera positions. “We're talking with director Rich Moore about how the lighting works,” Lusinski says. “The lighting technicians then work out the details for the final rendering.” For this Disney movie developed a new pixel shader. It calculates the parameters of individual pixels, allowing you to create a specific color, change light values, display shadows, translucency, highlights and reflections. After animating the movements, effects and lighting, the stage is sent to the studio basement. “Here we have about 10,000 computers that just render images,” explains Adolph Lusinski. And since even this power is not enough for such a labor-intensive film, the studio has to rent another computer center in Los Angeles.

And now two years of production are over: the computers have completed rendering, the Disney Christmas movie for a generation of video game lovers has been edited, and at the end of 2012 it opened in cinemas around the world.

Four stages of creating an animated film

Disney is not only one of the most influential companies in the world, but also a studio that for many people is synonymous with the concept of animation. When we say cartoons, we mean Disney, when we say Disney, we mean cartoons, and out of the blue, you must admit, this would not have happened. In our article we will tell you about how the studio achieved this success. And if you, inspired by the achievements of Walt and K., want to make a cartoon yourself, you can order it from experienced animators and screenwriters from the Kinesko studio!

The first feature-length animated films produced by Disney

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937)

My creative activity The company, founded in 1923, began with short animation that debuted classic characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. In the 1930s, the studio's staff and production greatly increased, and Disney was able to afford a full-length cartoon for the first time. Walt Disney's favorite fairy tale was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, so there was no doubt what kind of cartoon this would be.

The budget for “Snow White” was a huge one and a half million dollars for that time, for which Disney even had to mortgage his house. The stakes were high - the studio employees, led by Walt himself, worked seven days a week, and in order to make the cartoon in color, they used the Technicolor system, which had previously been used only in the production of short-format cartoons. The high stakes paid off - Snow White recouped its budget several times over and became an all-time cult classic.

"Pinocchio" (1940)

After the huge success of Snow White, Disney decided to film another children's classic. This time - the famous Italian fairy tale by Carlo Collodi “The Adventures of Pinocchio. The history of a wooden doll." It should not be confused with “Pinocchio” - this is not another name, but an adaptation original fairy tale, written by Alexei Tolstoy.

In Pinocchio, mass animation was used for the first time - now not only objects in the foreground were in motion, but also the background. The cartoon itself, although it could not repeat the box office success of Snow White, still entered the pantheon of Disney classics.

"Fantasy" (1940)

In the same year, Disney prepared new cartoon- large-scale and very ambitious. “Fantasia” was planned to be made into a short film adaptation English fairy tale about the sorcerer's apprentice, in which the apprentice was "played" by Mickey Mouse, and all this action was accompanied classical music performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra.

When the studio realized that the budget for the cartoon had grown too much, it was decided to make it full-length film, expanding the plot with several additional lines. Leave for two and a half hours symphonic music And abstract stories It was difficult for children, so the cartoon failed at the box office, collecting even less money than Pinocchio.

"Dumbo" (1941)

After the box office failures of the two previous films, the next cartoon was created in great haste and with limited resources. This is quite noticeable - the animation began to look worse, the songs from the cartoon almost disappeared, and the running time was reduced to an hour. The plot is also not very original, being an adaptation of the classic story about the “ugly duckling”. But, oddly enough, all this does not make the cartoon worse. “Dumbo” is a simple but sweet and kind story about a very charming elephant, which managed to attract the audience and recoup its budget, reviving Disney’s financial reputation.

Cartoons made during the war

"Bambi" (1942)

In 1933, MGM bought the film rights to the original book from Felix Salten, intending to make a film based on it. feature film. However, the technology of that time did not allow this, so the studio turned to Disney with a proposal to draw a cartoon. The creation began three years later and took a lot of time and effort. Disney wanted to surprise everyone with the quality of the cartoon, and dozens of animals walked around the studio's pavilions, helping the animators study their anatomy. But soon the course changed, and the emphasis was placed not on realism, but on emotionality. Disney himself even cried during the test screening (by the way, this cartoon became his favorite).

"Bambi" was predicted to be a big box office success, but it flopped at the box office, failing to make back its budget. However, this is not surprising - at the end of 1941 the United States entered the Second World War and Americans had no time for cartoons then. After the end of the war, “Bambi” was again released into wide release, and then the film took its toll, beginning to rapidly gain popularity. In 2006, Los Angeles Business conducted a poll in which Bambi was voted the best Disney film of all time.

"Salute, friends!" (1942)

During the war Nazi Germany actively tried to make friends with the governments of the south American countries ami. US authorities have resorted to emergency measures to prevent this. Including the creation of animation, instructing Disney to make a cartoon that could improve relations between the United States and other American countries.

The plot of the film takes place in an atypical setting for Disney in Latin America, and in addition to Donald Duck and Goofy, the main character is new character studio - a parrot named Jose Carioca. In addition to the animation part, “Salute, friends!” includes documentary video footage of Latin American cities, which, to the surprise of US residents, turned out to be not villages with frail shacks, but completely modern metropolises. Many believe that by creating the cartoon, Disney did much more for the friendship of American countries than their governments, and this says a lot.

"The Three Caballeros" (1944)

This cartoon continues the cosmopolitan line of “Salute, friends!”, again using not only animation, but also live action. Donald Duck continues to travel around Latin America, however, now not only the Carioca parrot has been added to his company, but also a new animated character made for the cartoon - the Mexican cockerel Panchito. If your cartoon, game or commercial also needs a memorable and well-drawn character, you can order it from the Kinesko studio!

The era of batch animation

"Play My Music" (1946)

Disney realized that creating cartoons consisting of several small stories, much easier and cheaper than with one large one. They understood and started releasing them one by one. After recent international projects, the studio returned to the musical theme of “Fantasy”, making a cartoon consisting of 10 absolutely different stories with musical accompaniment.

I would especially like to mention “Peter and the Wolf”, based on the symphonic fairy tale by Sergei Prokofiev. Like many other cartoon packages of the 1940s, Play My Music was never released into wide release. Instead, his stories were split up, released as separate animated shorts or used in Disney television programs.

"Merry and Carefree" (1947)

And again a batch cartoon. This time, consisting of only two plots that are interconnected by the story of Jiminy, the cricket from Pinocchio, who finds two sad dolls and decides to cheer them up with the story of Bongo the bear who escaped from the circus. Jiminy then meets famous ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (another live-action Disney character), who tells his dolls a story based on the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. True, instead of Jack there are Mickey, Donald Duck and Goofy.

"Tune Time" (1948)

Do you think Disney finally released a full-fledged cartoon after this? You guessed wrong. “Melodies Time” is another collection of short music stories, among which: a surreal version of “Flight of the Bumblebee”, a story about Johnny Appleseed, who planted apples all over America and others. The animation is not as impressive as Play My Music or Fantasia, so it is not surprising that Disney decided to stop producing batch animation. But only after the next cartoon.

"The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (1949)

The cartoon combines two stories based on works significant for English-language literature: the Scotsman Kenneth Grahame's fairy tale “The Wind in the Willows” and the Gothic story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving. The Disney adaptation turned out to match the original: the same dark and atmospheric fairy tales that impress even now. Even adults.

With “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad,” Disney ended its not always smooth “package” stage on a positive note, and with it the forties ended. In the fifties, the studio experienced real success, but that’s another story, which we’ll tell you about in the next part.

Need a cartoon or animated video? Order animation from Kinesko studio!

In the history of animation they always like to say “it all started with a mouse.” But in fact, it all started with the pioneer and visionary Walt Disney. The Walt Disney Animation Studio was created by him. At that time, Americans very much liked to call their companies by their first and last names, and the Disney studio was no exception.

Walt Disney's legacy is large collection cartoons that shocked the whole world: “Snow White”, “Donald Duck”, “Pinocchio”, “Alice”, “Bambi”, “Cinderella” and, of course, “Mickey Mouse”.

Now we will tell you about how these cartoons were created at the Walt Disney Animation Studio.

The process of creating animation or where miracles were created!

1. When the preliminary script was ready, all the directors and animators got together and discussed the storyboard, that is, the storyboard. The storyboard itself represents the story itself in pictures. ()

2. When the story is already ready and the characters' dialogues have been recorded in advance. That is, this is done so that the animators know what the characters are saying in advance, so that it is easier for them to animate and create correct image cartoon characters.

3. When all the dialogues have been recorded, the animators draw sketches (the Americans call them sketches), and only for the characters. Often, animators draw rather sloppily and without color, or even without a background. For one cartoon, as many as 50 thousand individual drawings with characters could be drawn!

The best animators drew only a few drawings or sketches to create the animation, for example, after two or four frames, and left empty frames. Then there was a person who was directly involved in filling out these empty frames (he is also called an inbetweener or the one who fills in the empty field).

4. When the entire cartoon was drawn on paper, the animation drawings went straight to the ink department. Here, animation drawings (that is, character outlines and shapes) were transferred to a transparent film, onto which gouache can be easily applied.

5. And after the ink department finished applying the contours to the film, he sent them to the painting department. The artists would put paint on the transparent film there, but before applying it, they would turn them over to the other side so as not to blur the outlines of the characters and so that they could see where the different parts of the characters were.

6. Before these animation drawings or a series of drawings were sent for photographing, a background had to be added to them, because there is nothing else on the film yet except the characters. Basically, the background was painted with water-based paints and tempera. In some Walt Disney films, the backgrounds were painted on glass and combined with other backgrounds that were painted separately to give a sense of speed and extremeness. Walt Disney Animation Studios used this technique in Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs.

7. When all the elements were combined into one whole, then it was possible to move on to photographing. But the final product itself is not a finished film, it is what was made precisely with the help of a projector that shines onto the frame. The background and character were fixed separately from each other. So the character could walk and not leave this frame, moving only through this environment. And the pictures of the character themselves were changed and inserted under glass one frame at a time and photographed on a camera so that each frame was recorded on film.

8. After all the frames were shot with a camera, the cartoon itself was ready for showing. Of course, you will need to add music and edit moments later. But these are minor things.

9. Walt Disney Animation Studio created and released hundreds of its cartoons this way.

Last week, the head of The Walt Disney Company, Robert Iger, speaking at a meeting of shareholders, said that the company's animation studios are not working now and do not plan to work on full-length hand-drawn 2D cartoons in the near future. On the one hand, Iger’s statement, in general, cannot even be called news. Disney company and so on Lately It’s not often that he pampers viewers with hand-drawn animation. However, when the corresponding plans are voiced not by someone, but by the head of the company himself, it becomes a little sad.

The Walt Disney Animated Classics series now includes 52 feature films. It began back in the late 1930s with “Snow White” (although the films were not numbered then, since there was no talk of any series yet). Later “Pinocchio”, “Fantasia”, “Dumbo”, “Bambi”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Cinderella” and many other wonderful films appeared. The latest film released under the Classics label to date is “Wreck-It Ralph.”

Computer graphics came to the Disney studio in the mid-1980s. You can recall, for example, the 1988 film “Oliver and Company,” in the creation of which modern (at that time) technologies were already fully involved. It's still a 2D cartoon, but individual 3D objects - like cars and skyscrapers - were computer-generated rather than hand-drawn.

In the 2000s, computer animation took over the Disney studio entirely. Over the past ten years, the “classic” series has been replenished with nine titles. Only four of these cartoons were made using hand-drawn techniques (and even those - not without adding computer graphics). These are the films “Brother Bear” (2003), “Don’t Hit the Hoof” (2004), “The Princess and the Frog” (2009) and “Vinnie Bear and His Friends” (2011).

It’s easy to see that the Disney company has previously paused several years between two hand-drawn cartoons, so you don’t have to be too scared by Iger’s statements. Yes, there are no plans for new hand-drawn films right now, but Iger does not exclude the possibility that they may appear in the future. The audience can wait - in general, they are not used to it.

Among other things, the film "Vinnie Bear" - Disney's last hand-drawn work to date - failed at the box office. The film, which cost $30 million to create, managed to earn only $33 million. This figure is not high in itself, and comparing it with the box office of computer Disney cartoons is somehow awkward. “Wreck-It Ralph,” for example, grossed $435 million (against a budget of $165 million), “Rapunzel: Complicated story"- 590 million (with a budget of 260 million).

At the same time, “Vinnie” was quite liked by critics, as well as by those viewers who did watch the cartoon. This is evidenced by the ratings: 7.2 on IMDb, 90 on Rotten Tomatoes, 74 on Metacritic. That is, everywhere is not below average (and certainly not below the corresponding indicators of some box office hits of recent years).

On the other hand, “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Rapunzel,” and other computer-animated Disney films also received fairly warm critical reviews. In other words, a particular tape production technology does not final result worse or better by default. Modern animators have mastered computers so much that cartoon characters no longer look like plastic dolls. Well, the plots are a separate issue. Whether the scenario is boring or interesting does not depend on the chosen technology.

That is, by and large, there are no serious reasons for frustration. So why then are Iger's words so sad? Maybe because computer graphics cannot yet reproduce such a nice, deliberate carelessness of the drawing, characteristic of the cartoon “The Sword in the Stone”?

Or, for example, the transforming hallucinatory elephants from Dumbo. It would seem: thanks modern technologies such transformations have become easier to implement. But the scene with pink elephants from “Dumbo” is impressive, including its handicraft:

In almost any drawing Disney cartoon there is something elusive - some kind of, excuse me, magic that computer animation still lacks. But Disney will continue to improve CGI and produce high-quality cartoons that will arouse the interest of viewers of all ages - and those who miss the “golden period” will apparently have to re-watch the classics.

Illustrations for the text – working material for the studio’s new animated film “The Mystery of the Desert”TouchFX . The project has not yet been announced anywhere, so the footage is exclusive.

About animation

Animation (to put it very roughly) is the creation of a visual series from changing images (for example, 24 frames per second). Depending on how the image is obtained, animation can be hand-drawn (the frame is drawn by hand), puppet animation (the frame with dolls is photographed), computer animation (the image is generated using computer graphics).

Visual development and concept art

Computer animation, in turn, can be raster, vector, three-dimensional (depending on the selected software and method of work). We will talk about three-dimensional computer animation - that is, the creation of animated films using three-dimensional computer graphics programs. And let’s immediately define the concepts. Animation will be the process of creating a film, and animation will be the process of “setting in motion” the characters and objects of the film. But more on that below.

Where does the cartoon begin? From an idea. The producer sets the task of developing preliminary materials on the theme of the future film. The screenwriter begins working on the story. Artist and art director on the visual solution.

The finished package is sent to the supervisor (technical director). The supervisor reviews the project proposals with a kind smile and calmly explains that the studio's technical and human resources are limited. Therefore, the film cannot have a super mega-epic battle scene involving two thousand characters. It's better to make do with a fight between the main character and the antagonist. Forty-seven unique locations is also a bit much. Three will be enough. When the shouting and swearing between romantics and pragmatists subsides, the new stage creating a cartoon is a process of finding consensus between the producer, supervisor, director and art department.

From model to render

An animated film is the result of adapting existing technology and resources (including financial ones). Classic 2D hand-drawn animation is no exception. There, too, there were problems finding ways to implement ideas. Remember the Disney cartoon 101 Dalmatians? It was the result of using black-and-white photocopying technology, new to the studio. Unromantic, but very effective. It's the same story with 3D animation. At one time, computer-generated images were seen solely as entertainment for geeks. But John Lasseter (the current head of Pixar) saw in this technology the potential for realizing his creative ideas. Thanks to the synthesis of the principles of classical animation and latest technologies the first full-length computer film was born animated film- "History of toys". The choice of the plot, by the way, is also not accidental. The technologies of that time did a poor job of creating organic characters - people and animals. But it was easy to make a plastic toy. And it was easier to animate her than a human. Then there were “The Adventures of Flick” - about insects (visually the same plastic). And only the development of production capacity and an increase in budgets made it possible to begin large-scale use of animals and people in cartoons.

Let's go back to our studio. After numerous rounds of negotiations, discussions, debates, disputes and quarrels, the concept of the future film is approved. The “pre-production” stage begins. The script is written, and visual development of the film begins.

Pre-production and production

The main feature of computer animation is that everything that is in the frame must actually exist in three dimensions. This means it must have been invented and created by someone. An animation studio is like a conveyor belt. The first person on it is the artist. He draws characters, surroundings, interior items, plants.

When there is ready-made concept art and sketches, direct production begins. In 3D animation, drawings themselves are not used. They are a kind of “drawing” or “scheme”, on the basis of which three-dimensional models will be created and visualized.

Three-dimensional modeling is the construction of objects from points, lines and polygons (polygons). It sounds boring, in practice it looks even more boring, but the result is already pleasing.

The three-dimensional model moves further along the “conveyor”. The technical development department adds models if necessary required attributes. A virtual “exoskeleton” (rig) is created for the character, which allows him to be animated, facial expressions are developed, hair is created, and much more.

In order for the model in the frame not to look like a gray cluster of polygons, it needs to be textured and shading done. Essentially, this is painting the model and giving it light reflective properties. Any object you see is the result of light reflected from it entering your eye. Depending on the properties of the object, light is reflected differently. It's the same in 3D graphics. Depending on the reflection settings of the incident virtual light source, the ball model can be glass, stone, or iron. How more difficult material, the more difficult it is to achieve the desired effect. For example, human flesh partially absorbs the light falling on it, refracts and scatters it under the skin. All these indicators must be properly adjusted in order to get a picture that is pleasing to the eye (remember what was written about plastic characters?).

Storyboard

The character and environment models are ready. The time has come to “revive” them. Here we need to take a step back. While being created 3D world, the screenwriter completed the script, and the storyboard artist, together with the director, staged the film. A storyboard is a kind of comic book, a hand-drawn prototype of a future film. The sequence of actions in the film, the main plans are determined, and some kind of situational humor is invented. Each of us can interpret the script we read differently. For some, “fruits on the table” are apples and bananas, and for others, kiwis and apricots. The job of a storyboard is to make sure everyone sees the film through the eyes of the director. The finished “comic” is superimposed on the sound and a semblance of a rough edit of the future cartoon is created - an animatic.

"Storyboard"

Animation

This is where linguistic hell begins. Based on the animatic, animators animate the characters.

Animation literally means “animation”, from the Latin “anima” - soul.

How does animation work? Imagine a puppet in puppet theater. It’s exactly the same, only “inside” a computer program. The animator changes the position of the controllers on the character's exoskeleton in such a way as to obtain the movement he needs. The work is very painstaking. You can make a few seconds of good animation a day.

To speed up this process in animation, motion capture technology (mock-up) is used. In short, the mocap in the cartoon is the same thing that you know, heard and saw about “Avatar” and Golum from “The Lord of the Rings”. The technology used is the same. The actor wears a special suit with reflective markers, each of which is responsible for a controller on a three-dimensional character. A man moves, a cartoon character moves.

And again the conveyor. Virtual lighting, virtual cameras, and virtual special effects are added to the three-dimensional scene with objects, environments and animated characters. All this work goes into rendering - that is, into visualization.

Educational program on rendering

From physics lessons at school we remember that vision is the process of perceiving reflected light. It's the same in a 3D scene. A conditional “ray” from a virtual light source (say, a light bulb) hits the object. The beam is reflected from an object (taking into account the shading settings), hits another object, is reflected again and hits the “eye” (virtual camera lens). The number and manner of reflections depends on the complexity of the scene, the intensity and source of lighting, and many other factors. Rendering is the process of calculating and visualizing the results of this light reflection. The more physically correct the parameters of light sources, the amount of ray tracing and methods for reading them when they hit the “eye” are given, the more physically correct and photorealistic the final image will be. Rendering is technologically one of the most complex operations 3D graphics. To understand, rendering one frame, depending on the complexity and the task at hand, can take from several minutes to several hours. A second of animation is 25 frames. 25 hours of processor time. On average, it takes about three months to render a project.

Walt Disney Animation Studio, thanks to its own technical developments and programs, was able to achieve the performance of its computing power at 1.1 million rendering hours per day. For comparison, with such technologies, the cartoons “Wreck-It Ralph” or “Frozen” would have been rendered in 10 days (the total need for each of the projects was about 11 million render-hours).

The rendered video sequence is then edited, special effects are added, and color correction is carried out. If necessary, the image is stereoized so that the film is available in 3D viewing format. By the way, to obtain a stereo image, you need to render each frame twice - calculating the displacement for the right and left eyes.

The edited and processed video sequence is synchronized with sound (character voice acting and inter-noise). That's it, the cartoon is ready. Enjoy watching.

PS. I will talk about each stage in more detail, yes. But a little later. Thank you for your attention.

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