Animation pipeline

#1

Hello, guys!
On our first film, each animator works with the particular shot, so he animates all characters in the given scene.
With such workflow, the animation of any character was done by several different artists.
Now we would like to “link” each main character to his own animator (to get animation consistency for each character in the film).

So I would like to know how to build a workflow which will allow several animators work on the particular scene(shot) at the same time.

What is come to my mind for now:

  • Layout artist make a layout for the shot, for each character in the scene
  • Next, shot splits on several scenes (separate scene for each animator)
  • Then, shot animations combines on rendering stage

But I can’t imagine, how the animator would animate one from the several interacting characters in the shot (not seeing the animations of other heroes)?
Is it common workflow in general?

If anybody has any tips about this topic, please, share your experience!
Thanks!

#2

Hello,

When characters do not have contact interaction with each other the workflow you described is the most common one. The problem arises when two characters (or more) have contact or close interaction. This could be done by several animators guessing the position of the other characters by using the initial layout or blocking as a reference. But inevitably later when you combine each characters animations, a cleanup animator will have to correct the contact and close interaction frames.

When producers prepare the schedule they take into consideration this specific moments where characters have contact, and allocate more time for these shots. since only one clean up animator can work at the same time with a scene.