What is an Animatic? Bring Your Storyboard to Life
Whether you’re making a commercial, a live-action short, or a feature film, animatics will help ensure a solid finished product. You’ve probably heard of storyboards and might have seen animatics before, even if you didn’t know that’s what they’re called.
So, what is an animatic and what makes them so useful?
In this class, we’re going to provide an animatic definition, discuss the reasons why any project can benefit from them and provide some real-world examples. The process of how to make an animatic is much simpler than it might sound. If you’ve already generated storyboards, you’re just one step away.
Animate a storyboard
What is an animatic? They are a crucial step to any project, including animation and live-action. They technically count as animation but don’t worry, you don’t have to be an animator to get the most out of them.
Let’s start with a quick definition of animatic.
ANIMATIC DEFINITION
What is an animatic?
An animatic is a string of storyboard images edited together with sound to illustrate how a sequence will flow in motion. It’s a next-level technique after storyboarding. They aren't always necessary, but they do provide a fuller sense of what the finished project will look like.
An animatic is basically an animated storyboard. The same images you’ve already created as a storyboard are now put into a video and can include dialogue, sound effects, and music.
Obviously, it requires a storyboard to be completed beforehand but there is a clear difference between a storyboard and an animatic. We’ll cover those differences in the next section.
Storyboards and animatics are closely related steps in the pre-production process but they are not the same thing. One comes before the other in the workflow but they are both designed for one purpose: finding and focusing the visual storytelling.
We’ve already defined animatic, so let’s quickly define storyboard.
What is a storyboard?
A storyboard is a visual representation of a film sequence and breaks down the action into individual panels. It is a rough approximation of how the sequence will unfold. A storyboard is similar to a trial-run for your finished film, video, or commercial in what looks like a comic book.
Elements of a storyboard:
Comprised of a sequence of drawings, sketches, reference images or photographs of stand-ins.
Provides visual guidance for the look, feel, and movement of the project.
Indicates the staging of actors and camera placement.
May include written dialogue and notes on sound direction.
The difference between a storyboard and an animatic is rather large in terms of how they help focus the storytelling. The storyboard becomes the starting point for visually designing your project. It allows for the broad strokes of your story to come through, including camera placement and shot composition.
The next step is to take those storyboards and animate them with an animatic. You’re now one step closer a finished film.
Having an animated storyboard is hugely beneficial to any project, especially for commercial or animated commercial.
Plan for VFX in live-action
Now we know what an animatic is and how it is used in the pre-production process. Let’s turn to some examples of movie animatics and you can see the benefits for yourself.
For a massive movie like Iron Man 3, pre-visualizations are common practice. Just like animation, action spectacles cost a lot of money and take a lot of time and effort. In commercials, you also won't have a lot of time to shoot a few takes at the production stage. If your team does not know which shot should be shot from what angle or from what distance, then you will waste a lot of time discussing how to shoot it at the location, you must not forget that time is money.
Finally, we have a really interesting example of an “animatic.” For the film Rango, director Gore Verbinski had a novel idea. He filmed the actors like a no-budget live-action film to capture their physical performance as well as their voice. In fact, this might not count as an animatic per se, but it might be a whole new way to approach animation.
A Photomatic is a series of still photographs edited together and presented on screen in a sequence. Sound effects, voice-overs, and a soundtrack are added to the piece to show how a film could be shot and cut together. Increasingly used by advertisers and advertising agencies to research the effectiveness of their proposed storyboard before committing to a 'full up' television advertisement.
The Photomatic is usually a research tool, similar to an animatic, in that it represents the work to a test audience so that the commissioners of the work can gauge its effectiveness.
Originally, photographs were taken using a color negative film. A selection would be made from contact sheets and prints made. The prints would be placed on a rostrum and recorded to videotape using a standard video camera. Any moves, pans or zooms would have to be made in-camera. The captured scenes could then be edited.
Images can be shot and edited very quickly to allow important creative decisions to be made 'live'. Photo composite animations can build intricate scenes that would normally be beyond many test film budgets.
