pixelaffects:"BEHIND THE CURTAIN."

No one knows where ideas come from!

And once here, the forms they follow are often as uncharted as their point of origin.

There may be little "documentation" with most everything kept in the minds of writers, artists and clients. But this approach can be frought with peril as a project size and components increase. Things have a way of falling apart. Participants can lose their way.

A more "traditional," "formal," approach can expand and contract according to what is needed. Where things get done seems to lie somewhere in between the formal and informal.

PREPRODUCTION

Concept

An airy, light hearted motivational message; or one that's technically precise. It makes no difference! We can start from the beginning, to research, analyze, and create goals and objectives. It can be a cooperative venture to develop an entire new presentation incorporating potential themes, visual styles, characters and sound. Or, we can work exclusively from existing materials and ideas furnished by you.

Treatment

Encourage us! And we'll give you a treatment which expands on the fundamental concept. We'll explore important ideas, content, and visuals, including central and support characters. Audio highlights which include music, sound effects, and appropriate narrator or actor voice characteristics are also outlined.

Script

Before actual production begins, more often than not, a script is written which includes a detailed breakdown and description of all presentation or program components including exactly what will, at any given moment, be seen and heard. Little is left out and visuals and sound, including any narration or dialog is submitted to represent our understanding of research and your wishes to this point.

Storyboard, layout, sequence and shot breakdown

This is the first real opportunity to render design, characterization, and overall flow of a project. The complexity of a storyboard varies, depending on your needs. There may be a representative visual rendering from each sequence in the script. Or, there may be renderings of key visual changes, sequence by sequence, shot by shot, sometimes even within shots, particularly to illustrate visual transitions, occasionally on a frame to frame basis.

Production elements can include:

o A "Leica" or work "reel" where a storyboard is captured or digitized for initial timing.

o A soundtrack: "smooth" (with professional voices) or "scratch" prior to beginning animation to ensure accurate synchronization. Otherwise, a soundtrack is completed later.

o Backgrounds and environmental background and forground elements are researched, developed, and created and incorporated and refined with the layout and staging of elements.

o Segments comprised of storyboard sequences and shots are animated.

As sequences or shots or significant components are completed, they are inserted in the current version of the leica or work reel. Eventually, there are no more components to be included and the reel represents the final animation.

POST PRODUCTION

Editing: music, sound and picture

If not prepared prior to production, a soundtrack with voices, sounds and music are added to the final animation. Adjustments not made earlier during the animation process itself are made during editing including, for example, trimming certain frames, or adding advanced special visual and audio effects.

INVESTMENT

Costs and approaches are typically determined on a project by project basis according to, among other things, production complexity, objectives, schedule requirements, and available fund limits.