Writing anime and cartoons

[GCharb]

Hello tiger!

I agree, nothing is carved in stone, some director only work with storyboards and cinematic and do a great job.

I am only pointing out the easiest, and most often, safest way to produce a short. This is intended for someone who seems to be a new comer to animation.

If, with time, he or she feels it is best for him or her to work visually only, then at least he or she will have gone through the process of writing a script and see for his or herself!

Speaking of storyboarding, there is a great script for AS the he, or she, might not know of. It is called the lost doodle tool, it is a fast and practical way to make designs or full storyboards right inside AS, I use it all the time, look it up.

[tonyg]

*STILL* not produced anything but this Writing for Animation made a HUGE difference to the quality of the script.
Once I understood what needed to happen it seemed so much easier to storyboard each scene/act/beat whatever.
Horses for courses I guess but cutting out the superflous stuff before story boarding/animating seemed right.

[Rhoel]

Because animation is more of a visual media, scripts for animation are usually longer then the 1 page per minute found in live action scripts since you need more scripting to describe the scenes.

My 9 pages script is for a 5 minutes short, because I describe each scenes in a very visual and detail way.

Commercially, an animation script works 30 secs to the page. Each shot is s scene where as in live action a scene is a location with many camera angles. Once you know a page is 30 seconds, you have a very good idea if your story is long enough. With storyboarding you don't.

In the studios I worked with, the storyboard department would take each script scene and make it into a shot. Sometimes they would expand the scene into more shots or combine two scenes into one. If scene 5 became three scenes the you would have 5, 5a, 5b. Scene 6 would then tie back to the script. If Sc 5 was merged with 4, the the board had an empty panel with n/s (no scene) just so everyone knew the absence of Sc 5 was deliberate.

I do and have written films on paper, making one line action points of what happens in that scene, adding a thumb sketch of key "funny bits", reaction shots or whatever. One I have the thing plotted out, I can submit it as a synopsis or go ahead and write it.

Basically writing is about what has to happen, boarding is about how it happens.

Rhoel

[GCharb]

Rohel, always figured 1 minute per page for live action and 45 seconds for animation here. I guess it depends on formatting or the amount of detail you put in.