The Animation Bible: A Practical Guide to the Art of Animating, from Flipbooks to Flash

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Now, a tagline isn’t mandatory, but a strong one will make your pitch stand out and not easily forgotten. I’ll never forget the poster to Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It simply read, “I, Chihuahua”. Painfully simple, yet, it lives on in my mind years later. For our students, a series bible is primarily a pitching document designed to help you sell your great idea for a TV series. A good pitch is like throwing out a hook, helping your potential investors and partners to understand the context of your idea and build excitement about its potential. Our first year students must create a animation bible as part of pitching their pitch for an animated TV series - part of the "Movement and Narrative" module in year 1.

Consider including a piece of art that serves as a snapshot for each episode. As the unforgettable saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand something-somethings. If it’s a comedy, that character better be doing something funny. If it’s an action show, that character needs to be doing something active. If it’s an action show about fighting hats, you better show some fierce hat-on-hat action.

Jan 2018 Character Reel

For example, the character section of your animation pitch bible gives your client an idea of how the characters will look and behave in the final output. This can be done by providing rough sketches of the character, listing down their traits, discussing their motivations, and more. It’s also a chance for you to distinguish your character and showcase what makes them unique from other characters that have been pitched to your animation client. Because you have to. Seriously. This book is an animator’s bible. It thoroughly covers the basics of spacing, timing, walks, runs, weight, anticipation, overlapping action, takes, stagger, dialogue, animal animation and much more. It’s not called a “survival kit” for nothing. This book will teach you EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW to start your training as an animator. You have the perfect idea for your animation, and you think it will make the most significant impact on the market—it’s going to be a huge win. However, when you start pitching your bible to a studio, they reject it without hesitation. Why did that happen?

Shorescipts.com have collated a number of animation bibles - follow this link to see their full collection. Gather work you already made and analyze it. If someone has to draw in your style, what should they definitely include? Use these elements to build your art bible. See if you kept your layers if you worked digitally. You can use them as a step-by-step for an easy explanation! This book (produced and written for Bloop Animation) is a step-by-step guide to becoming an animator (even if you’ve never animated before).

Escape Studios Game Art

Cover art– If you can draw, (or know someone who can), that cover image can make or break your idea. People do judge a book by its cover. Execs judge a pitch by the first piece of art they see. Make it amazing. For example, you can choose to include multiple character model sheets. These character sheets can depict your character in different poses. This can help shine a spotlight on the character’s personality, and give the animation client a clearer idea about how the character will behave. Secondly, you must time the actions of your on-screen elements well. Characters should react naturally, in time with any stimulus. For example, an insulted character shouldn’t wait too long to show a reaction; else, it leads an audience to become disconnected from the events unfolding on the screen. Preston Blair was a predominant animator in his time and worked in many big studios such as Disney and Hanna Barbera. He worked on famous scenes in the original Fantasia such as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the hippo – alligator dance. Main Character(s) – Arguably the most important section in your entire pitch. Your show needs a main character who is not just interesting, cool, and/or funny, but who execs can see as a representative of their network. Someone their audience will love, want to root for, want to be, or want to be with. How does your main character see the world that you just set up? Again, similes and metaphors are your squad homies here.