022 - Hack - What the hack is an Animatic?
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Speaker 1
Welcome back. Hello! To a hack.
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Speaker 2
Hello!
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Speaker 1
It's the Hotti Bugatti of Hacks. Is it? People are using it, man. I hear. I hear some rumblings about, you know, how to use this.
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Speaker 2
I have heard... My little. I'm part of the Big Brother Big Sister program. Congrats. Oh, thank you. And I had to teach her the word bodacious recently because everyone.... It's a cool word. So. But everyone, it's gotta trend back. Right? IPs are coming back. You don't think like words are coming back?
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Speaker 1
Slang is coming back? Yeah, yeah.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. 90’s slang. It'll be there.
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Speaker 1
But you got to. You got to remix it a little bit. That's Bodi.
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Speaker 2
It's bodi?
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Speaker 1
or dacious. Dacious.
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Speaker 2
We're not going to get through this next episode at all.
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Speaker 1
We're prolonging this hack. All right, here is the hack.
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Speaker 2
Well, do we want to explain what a hack is? We probably should. Sure. If you're listening for the first time, welcome. I know we tend to banter a little bit. Yes, we do. But you are hopefully here to learn a little bit about animation and the process behind it. So we are doing a hack episode which typically are shorter formed videos that just give you a little bit of a deeper insight into a specific topic, whether that's on the business side or the creative side.
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Speaker 2
And so today we are on the creative side. Yes. Because there is a mysterious stage that happens in animation.
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Speaker 1
I wouldn't call it mysterious. I think sometimes people have heard the word. I think they're confused about the word. They're not sure what it means. Or maybe they're like they conflate it with a different word or a different thing. And you know, it is confusing.
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Speaker 2
It's confusing. That's why today's hack is “What the heck is an animatic?”
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Speaker 1
Wow. What voice is that? I don't know.
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Speaker 2
I was like, we're having a day. Yes. So but yes, we're going to talk about animatics, not animation, not storyboards.
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Speaker 1
Animatics, animatics.
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Speaker 2
Yes.
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Speaker 1
Yes.
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Speaker 2
So an animatic. Yes, simply put, is a video file that combines storyboards with sound.
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Speaker 1
Storyboards with sound.
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Speaker 2
You can also think about it as static and animation. Animation, static, animatic. You see what I did there? I don't know if that's actually where it comes from. That's maybe.
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Speaker 1
Where it comes.
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Speaker 2
From.
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Speaker 1
That's when I didn't do any research for where that.
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Speaker 2
Came from, probably.
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Speaker 1
But that might be it.
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Speaker 2
You know, that's an interesting quick point that a lot of times in the industry, like, you get taught words and you're like, this is what it is and here we are.
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Speaker 1
That's true. So it's an animatic is used in a lot of industries. You'll see it in pre-production for films, for feature films, you'll see it in commercial advertising work. It's always in the stages prior to what they call production, right? Starting work, depending on the type of production that you're using. So we're working with.
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Speaker 2
Yeah, you'll see it a lot in animated feature films.
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Speaker 1
Animated feature film, big, big spot, big animatics. They'll do a whole scene in an animatic, see if it's working mashup all the animatics together, see if they're working.
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Speaker 2
And so what is an animator?
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Speaker 1
Yeah. So an animatic sits between the storyboards and the animation stages in our production flow. And it's a, it's really used to give the viewer or the reviewer or the client a sense of timing and pacing of the video. You want to make sure that you understand how how is this flowing? That's really the question.
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Speaker 2
Yeah, there's a couple of different questions that you need to ask yourself. Right. So you're you're getting a video, right? But it's of these storyboard images and it's being timed out over time. So you're seeing kind of what it looks like, but you're not really thinking about the design or what the characters look like or how it, you know, how that feels.
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Speaker 2
It's more like asking yourself, Do parts feel too fast? Do they feel too slow? Is the story overall from shot to shot, from image to image? Is it cohesive? Is it saying the message that you're trying to get out or do you need to add things or switch it up for clarity sake?
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Speaker 1
So if you do have a character in your piece, usually it is in the storyboards as well. Like they design characters within the storyboards very roughly, almost always animatics with characters in them are going to be very, very rough. We don't do that.
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Speaker 2
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Speaker 1
In our workflow. We do it a little bit differently where we're designing final frames and then we're putting that to an animatic file. And this is where scratch tracks come in. We did a hack on scratch tracks that's first hack. Scratch tracks are used within an animatic, mostly again for timing and pacing and making sure that those are working well.
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Speaker 2
Yeah. So an important thing to note when you're in animation production and you're watching an animatic, it's important to note that this should be the very, very last place that you make any changes to the script, right? Any time you're like, Oh, it's not flowing here because the way we're narrating this is incorrect, or we have to change out things for pacing.
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Speaker 2
And it's really because once you get into animation and we probably can't stress this enough, but once you're in animation, you're actually making those storyboard images move. That's where if you change the script, you're going to impact a lot of the production. You're doing double the work.
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Speaker 1
To give you a little bit more background there is that you're getting into creating assets, generating rigs at this point. We've talked about a bunch of these concepts inside of our podcast, so hopefully you understand this, but you've generated a lot of the things that take a lot of time to create, right, the build in there. And you know, sometimes it's easier to change though.
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Speaker 1
Sometimes it's not. Depends on style. Is it too does it 3D or you motion graphics or not. But that's where you want to do your find tweaking of the script and especially if you have humor in your script or something like that, you want to make sure that you're timing that out.
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Speaker 2
You got to have those great jokes with proper.
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Speaker 1
Time to put those jokes.
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Speaker 2
In. Yeah, I recommend them highly. But yeah, I think the main important point here is that you're really just looking at the pacing, the timing, the flow of the video overall before you even get into motion. Yeah, right. So you're getting some idea as close as you possibly can before you actually see the characters move and interact how it's going to feel overall.
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Speaker 1
So if you're moving into production or you're thinking about doing an animated project, there are a bunch of reasons why you should use an animatic or at least ask for one from the production studio that you're working with. What are some of those reasons?
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Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest ones is that you have time in the schedule for it and there are a number of times we've worked with clients in the past that say, you know, we're going to jump right from storyboard approval to animation and that's totally fine, right? But if you have time in the schedule for it, it just adds an extra layer of clarity for making any changes.
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Speaker 2
If you've never made an animated video before, it is an excellent way of seeing things in motion before actually making it move.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a big one for first timers for sure.
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Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah. Definitely recommended if you're not locked in on the script just yet. Right. You you've gotten to a certain place where you're like it feels pretty tight. Maybe it's like 80% of the way there. But if it's not 100%, do the animatic see if it feels right? If you're like, Oh, now I realized that this one storyboard frame that we had an idea of what the concept would be, the sentences like.
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Speaker 1
Super long.
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Speaker 2
Way too long. Yeah. So now we have to chop chop up the script a little bit to make it more clarifying. That's definitely helpful if you're working with story driven or character driven videos. Yeah, really helpful to have an animatic because oftentimes if you're doing something story driven, you might find that the script will get you some of the way there.
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Speaker 2
But being able to see a change in pace, especially if you're doing something more action oriented or you're seeing a transition or.
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Speaker 1
Drama like any any genre that you put in there for the story is going to feel a certain way and you want to make sure that you get that before you get into acid creation, before you get into, you know.
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Speaker 2
Hardcore production. For sure. For sure. Yeah. And maybe the last one is like when you're reviewing something with a large team. Yes, right. Because if you.
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Speaker 1
What's that what's what's a large team. How many people.
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Speaker 2
You want to see. At least ten. What do you mean.
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Speaker 1
Yeah, I would say four or more for three people. You can handle something with a storyboard, maybe a PDF documents, something like that that you're reviewing. But for it's a sweet spot right there, which just like there's a little bit too many cooks in the kitchen and you want to make sure you get something out of it a.
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Speaker 2
Little bit more. I'm giggling a little bit because it also reminds me of when people define what becomes a crazy cat lady versus just a cat lady.
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Speaker 1
How many cats you.
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Speaker 2
Usually once you hit past three this for like once you get a little more, then you start to question a little bit. But you know, much love to everybody who has cats because we love.
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Speaker 1
Cats.
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Speaker 2
And dogs.
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Speaker 1
We love.
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Speaker 2
Dogs. I do. I do.
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Speaker 1
And that's a.
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Speaker 2
Nice all animals.
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Speaker 1
Sells.
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Speaker 2
Regardless. The one thing to note for us is we tend to find that the longer that we've worked with a client, they tend to put in animatics less and less. And that's because they they tend to start sort of trusting the process a little bit more to understand how the storyboard transitions into animation like that. Once, once that clicks, it's not as necessary to do the animatic, but then you take it on a case by case basis.
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Speaker 1
Still helpful. Still helpful. And again, storyboard character driven pieces. We still try to do something like.
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Speaker 2
That, but yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll have maybe examples in a description down below of the like what an animatic looks like because I think that's always helpful to see. Maybe, yeah, we will.
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Speaker 1
I don't.
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Speaker 2
Know. We're nice people, we do that.
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Speaker 1
But then I have to go get another link.
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Speaker 2
And this thing had so many buttons to click.
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Speaker 1
Thank you so much for watching.
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Speaker 2
And that's been another hack.
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Speaker 1
That's our hack.
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Speaker 2
We appreciate it. And as always, stay honest, stay creative, stay open. Open Pixel Studios.
