Animators speak on craft

Venturing into animation requires flexibility, patience and a big deal of imagination. Phil Lord, who co-directed and co-wrote ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’ with Chris Miller said, "We always joke that you make an animated film backward: You start with editing the film, with the animatic (mock-ups); and then proceed to shoot it. That's the beauty of the animation process: It takes so long, you have so many chances to improve it".

Like any movie, animation begins with a character, which develops into a screenplay. For a live-action movie, a finished script usually ends in production, but for animated films, it only marks the beginning of a collaborative process.

Storyboarding comes next, in which the story will be broken down into 30-40 sequences. The boards will go through a scanner and will be edited; effects, music or voices are added into the story for the final product.

"It's almost an extension of the scripting process", said ‘Up’ director and co-writer Pete Docter.

Reworking is not something new to Docter, or to Ron Clements and John Musker who started working in 2006 for ‘The Princess and the Frog’.

"It's collaboration to a degree that might be unfathomable in another medium", said Musker. "We just try to keep it cohesive with a singular viewpoint".

Even the writing process could be tedious. Wes Anderson, who co-wrote and directed ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ said, "With an animated movie, you record all the voices and you cut them to storyboards, and while you're shooting you can change it and add new scenes. The writing process really continues".

Source: http://omg.yahoo.com/news/animators-rewrite-filmmaking-book/33562