The process of making a movie can be extremely difficult, while the process of making an animated movie is even more difficult. Animation is a process that requires patience, artistic ability, teamwork, and creativity from a dedicated group of working people. The process is time-consuming and can be stressful at times, but the final product, in the end, is more than worth it.

An animated movie starts with an idea. It doesn’t have to be the full concept, just a small idea, with a beginning, middle, and end. The artists then begin to create concept art. This can be a background, the environment, or the main character. This is to get an idea of what they can look like. Concept art can be interesting to look at because usually, a character will go through a big appearance change. In a movie like Monster Inc., the character Boo went through many changes, as the animators drew many variations of the little girl as they could. From there, storyboarding can begin. The storyboarding team then begins to draw rough sketches of the movie. They will storyboard each scene of the movie, so the team can see what they like, and what doesn’t work in this idea, or what needs to be changed before the animation process begins. In the original Toy Story, the storyboards are shocking. Woody was an awful character, and the movie was so bad that production stopped, and the entire story was re-worked. Storyboarding can be helpful for this purpose because it shows how the idea will work out. Many movies are scrapped in the storyboarding process.

Once this storyboard art is approved, the movie can finally be animated. Artists begin to draw the scene out, frame by frame. In older animation, this could be a very stressful, and time-consuming process because an animator would have to draw everything out by hand, for example, movies like Snow White, Peter Pan, etc. The Simpsons was one of the last television shows to switch to 3-D animation. In current times, many animation studios now use modern technology and create new programs to make the process of animation easier. For example, with Disney’s hit movie, Moana, a program just for the water was created to make it easier to animate, and really make the water an important character. Once these programs are created, animators can use them and will use them for upcoming films.

Once everything is animated, it is touched up, and the producers view the film to give it the final okay. Some scenes may not fit well in the final film, so they will be taken out. Once the movie has the final okay, it is put into the theaters for many people to enjoy. Animation can be very stressful because the entire team is given a time limit before they have to have the movie released and finished, some animators will stay after hours just to finish a frame.

One of Disney’s hit movies, Frozen, went through several changes. The original idea behind Frozen was the fairytale, The Snow Queen. That concept was used to create a storyboard. In the beginning, Elsa was evil. A lot of Elsa’s concept art shows her looking evil, and having a lot of sharp clothing making her appear scary. In the end, concept artists came up with the look of Elsa we all watch today. A lot of the snow and ice background was used in the actual movie. Once the concept art and idea was done, storyboarding took place. Storyboarding went through massive changes as Elsa was still evil and angry against Anna. Their relationship was rather aggressive than the sisterly love we know and see today. Songs that were made, were scrapped for songs like For the First Time in Forever, and the Reprise. Let it Go was added. Once the final storyboards were created, and the story was fully set, they could begin to make the 3-D animation.

Models can be created of the main characters and scanned into the computer to animate a scene. Most animators use computers to draw out everything, and animate, using many different programs and tools, constantly improving the animation. Frozen was then created, the final movie is watched, scenes are cut, and the movie was released to the public. Frozen was one of Disney’s most successful films for audiences of children and adults.

As learned, animation is a difficult process that is done in a certain time limit. It is to these creative, dedicated people that we and future generations have the magic of animation and the beloved characters that we grow up with. The process of animation is not an easy job, but with hard work and skill, the final product is more than worth it.