What is Animated Storytelling?

Animated storytelling has mainly been associated with the film industry and discipline, through animated films with character-driven stories. These stories are featured on screens from TVs to movie theaters, as well as animated games on gaming consoles. Animated stories can also extend to the study of motion graphics in graphic design, which is used in branding and content promotion in advertisements, broadcast graphics, and titles. Both of these disciplines of animation and motion graphics work hand in hand and both provide important lessons that benefit both disciplines, from creativity to deadline. 

Pre-Production

Before jumping into animation work, pre-production is an important step that must be taken first. Animated storytelling requires planning. Some important questions to answer in this stage are: What is it? What does it look like? And What is it made of?

Creative Brief

When working with a client for a piece, a creative brief is essential, as it allows for the client and creative to be on the same page with the work and prevents confusion. The creative brief can also be very helpful for individual pieces, without clients, as well, as it helps with organization and planning. The creative brief should consist of the client’s (or your own) aims and objectives, target audience, and deadlines. You need to answer the questions: What must it be? Who is it for? How long must it be? What is your objective with the piece? When is it due? After these questions are answered, you can proceed to make a calendar that contains weekly milestones to hit.

The Big Idea

This next step is where you discover what your project truly is. It is where you explore your depth of creativity and where you track every idea that pops into your head. It is important to write down anything and everything. What might sound silly at first, the more you think through it and let your mind wander, the more likely you are to think of something or find inspiration for what becomes your final idea. A great way to start to dive into this is with the help of the “yes, and…” rule. Commonly used in acting improvisation, this rule is a commitment to saying yes and following up any crazy idea that pops into your head and then building upon it. While it might not be the big idea you were looking for, it forces you to explore a more creative place and could lead to inspiration for the final idea. 

Tone and Story Objectives

To start to clarify your tone and story objectives, there are a few exercises that can help. First, it is helpful to come up with an elevator pitch for your story. Imagine you were on an elevator with a studio head and you had a one-floor ride to pitch your story, what would you say? Your elevator pitch should include the tone, plot, and theme of your story. Here is a great example that combines these elements to make a great pitch: “Jaws is a terrifying movie (tone) that pits a man-eating shark against a small beach town (plot) with an underlying man versus nature idea (theme).”

Another great exercise is the six-word story. A great example of a six-word story is by Hemmingway, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” While short, this story definitely hits you in the heart, leaving the reader both worried and concerned at what these words imply. Breaking your idea down into a six-word story helps you get down to the soul. 

Lastly, it is helpful to create a tagline for your animation. This means boiling your animation down into a few words that draw in your audience. It is like a catchphrase or slogan that a company would use to help sell their product, such as Nike’s “Just Do It” or Apple’s “Think Different.” Just as their slogan helps them sell products, your tagline will help you sell your story.

Previsualization

Once you have done these steps, the next part of pre-production is to begin previsualization, which is the visual development or concept art. This stage helps to define the look and feel of your project. This is a very important step in the process, as it defines the style and aesthetic of the animation, which will greatly impact the piece. It is useful to look for inspiration from other artists and to see what types of styles there are, which can help you in forming your own unique piece. During this step, it is also important to experiment as much as possible. Explore your creativity and treat your designs like a science experiment. Try to see things from different points of view. 

Asset Building

Finally, there is asset building. In this stage, you will be building the pieces you need to begin animating. These include logos, fonts, colors, designs, props, backgrounds, sounds, and more. It is helpful to rough out a style frame, which is a single image that embodies the look and feel of your animation. It is not the final version, but it is polished enough to convey your ideas to others, like helping a client understand the color palette, texture, and mood you are trying to achieve. 

These steps are just a general overview of the pre-production process. There is so much time and effort that is needed in this stage, before moving to the production of the animation. All of this planning and experimenting is necessary so that you don’t begin blind and have your big idea come in later, having to redo work you have already done.

Beginner Animation

Before jumping into a huge animation project as a beginner, it is easier to start with smaller projects to understand the programs and creation process. A perfect way to begin animation is through the creation of GIFs, which are a few seconds of a looping animation.

Animated GIF Examples

Here are some strong examples of GIFs I found in my research that have been created by different artists. It is important to do research on styles, types, lengths, loops, and more, before attempting your own animated GIFs.

This is a cute and simple illustrated GIF. It is a short loop that is comedic and adorable as it brings life (or you can say, takes it) to inanimate objects. The GIF is also pretty relatable, as we all have probably burned toast at least once in our lives.

Unliked the first illustrated piece with texture, this one is very clean and sharp. It has a unique setting that fits the style that adds a level of comedy through the funny idea of an astronaut reaching for a trophy in space.

I added this GIF because unlike the previous one, it is created with a photograph instead of an illustration. This is also very eye-catching due to its hypnotic nature. It never completely lines up, which keeps the viewer watching it continuously.

This GIF is one that you just can’t help but stare at. Its hypnotic motion and style draws you in to keep viewing it as it seems to turn endlessly.

Lastly, this one is my favorite of these GIFs. I love the sketchbook style of this GIF, and how it tells an emotional story within only a few seconds. It is powerful and beautiful at the same time.

My GIFs

These next GIFs are examples I made that were inspired by the upcoming fall season. With the beginning of September, and pumpkin spice again making its debut, I thought there wasn’t a better way to welcome fall than with some cute animated GIFs.

Everyone loves a huge pile of leaves to jump in, and I thought it would be cute to honor the spooky black cat, by making a cute black kitten jump in the leaves. I created this GIF in multiple programs, starting off by drawing the frame-by-frame animation in Procreate and then putting it all together in Photoshop. I love a textured look with art animation, so I made sure to incorporate that into the piece, through textures on the cat and leaves. I ended up going back and forth between Photoshop and Procreate, as I played around with the GIF, adding in the bouncing leaves later, as I felt it needed just a little extra movement in the leaves.

For this GIF, I found a fall background I loved and added in cute little pumpkins. After that, I used many different images of leaves, blurred them to match the background, and animated them to be falling behind the pumpkins. I cut out all the images on Procreate and put together the final product in Adobe Premiere.

This GIF was so fun to make, as I love pumpkins, and carving them at Halloween is my favorite thing, I wanted the animation to go from day to night in a loop, showing the change from a cute jack-o’-lantern, to a spooky night glow. I animated the whole piece and there is nothing that is static. While not all of it moves, all the colors change from day to night. I wanted the movement of the piece to be in the bouncing of the moon and sun, while the rest stayed stationary, but still changing. I also made this one in both Procreate and Photoshop, first drawing it in Procreate and then uploading it to Photoshop. It consists of 14 different images that I put together to create this GIF.

Source:

Blazer, Liz. Animated Storytelling: Simple Steps for Creating Animation & Motion Graphics. Peachpit Press, 2020.