While drawing, animation artists imagine themselves to be inside the character, to think like them. Glen Keane, imagined the anger and strength of the character from Beauty and the Beast. Take a moment to study the master animator's sketch, shown above. Each bold pencil stroke brings the character to life. Notice how lighter lines show the position of the Beast's body. Darker pencil strokes show facial features, strong claws, clothing, and dramatic shadows. Every line shows how this actor will move. Shown above is a storyboard, drawn by Chris Sanders. It shows key moments of scenes to animators and directors for Beauty and the Beast. Look at the entire storyboard.

Drawing and Animated Movies page 1 2 3 Great Ideas Start With the Stroke of a Pencil At the heart of every great animated movie you'll find talented artists. All of them have been drawing since they were kids. And all of them will tell you the same thing: Great animated movies start with brilliant ideas that flow quickly from the tip of a pencil. When a writer has an idea for an animated movie, the story is told with simple drawings. These drawings are called rough sketches. The rough sketches are drawn on cards and attached to large bulletin boards. A team of artists and writers can move the cards to different places in the story, or add new cards to change parts of the story. The parts of a story are called scenes. After the story is completed, the creative team presents it to an animation studio such as Pixar Animation. The creative team presents the story to studio directors and producers. Above Left: The team members use character voices, make sound effects, and even sing songs to present their ideas. Above right: Storyboard pictures are drawn inside frames. Notice how simple lines show the key poses of characters. After the story is approved by the studio, storyboards are created. Storyboards show the emotions and dialog of characters in a scene. They also show the timing of scenes and important movements of a character. The movements are called key frames or key poses. Storyboards communicate instructions to many people involved in making the movie. Before starting production of the movie, one of the most important creative phases begins. This phase is called character development. page 1 2 3 About Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy TM & © Copyright The Scribbles Institute, All Rights Reserved