Why Animation?
Animation is storytelling without limits. It enables creators to build worlds, characters, and experiences that go far beyond the constraints of live action. While exaggerated stunts or impossible scenarios can feel unrealistic on screen, animation embraces creativity in a way that makes the extraordinary feel authentic. It invites audiences to suspend disbelief, turning imagination into a compelling and immersive reality.
This element of fun and relatability feature of animation sells a unique sense of belonging to the viewer–in this context, a customer–where life feels lighter, stripped of its tiring, everyday realism. The stack of hard work modern animation companies put into achieving that level of client engagement and satisfaction for their brands, studios or independent projects is massive, to say the least. Here’s where the Animation pipeline comes in.
Animation Pipeline
Animation is a complex task often involving a bunch of departments and experts. From concept to a finished product that you see on screen is achieved through streamlining the various tasks efficiently. This process is called the animation pipeline. Basically split into 3 major parts, it helps production companies plan and execute every step with precise planning and cooperation.
Pre-production
Ideation and Scripting
This is where it all starts. The writer works out a story skeleton based on the requirement. After approval, he comes up with the full story often explained using bullet points highlighting the main plot points.
Different writers follow different methods of writing. While some follow a more structured method in a 3 act structure, others might be comfortable focusing on a non-linear progression so that they can keep the unpredictability and the dynamic element of the story.
In this process, the story is thoroughly analysed to ensure no plot holes are left behind. Once you make the narrative bullet-proof, the process moves onto storyboarding.
Concept Art and Storyboarding
With Concept Art and Storyboarding, we move into the next step of our professional animation services. This is where the environment where the story is happening along with character animations, sketches, props, costumes, lighting and color are designed. Concept artists translate the writer’s vision onto a preliminary design which the production process can use as an aesthetic guide or a creative destination.
Character Design and Development
This phase in the animation pipeline involves carving out the character independent of the writer’s imagination not only in terms of the colors and costumes, but also its behaviour, personality and even the history as well. This way, the whole pre-planning part before the production comes full circle, with clear story objectives, character development and world building.
Production
Production is building the professional animation world envisioned in the pre-production stage and giving it life. A handful of artists work round-the-clock following storyboards and scripts and animate the characters and worlds into existence frame-by-frame. Though the technicalities of 2D and 3D animation may differ, they both follow the same animation pipeline to ensure the production is organized and smooth.
In 2D animation, the production usually involves:
- Concept & Storyboarding
- Character and Background Design
- Layout Creation
- Keyframe Animation (main poses)
- In-betweening (frames between key poses)
- Coloring and Cleanup
- Compositing
- Sound and Final Editing
While in 3D, it becomes:
- Concept & Storyboarding
- 3D Modeling
- Texturing
- Rigging (adding a digital skeleton)
- Layout and Scene Setup
- Animation
- Lighting
- Simulation (hair, cloth, smoke, particles)
- Rendering
- Compositing & Final Editing
Post-production
Post production is where the movie reaches its destination. Everything from rendering, editing, sound design and other technical finishing touches take place in this phase. What everyone agreed upon in the pre-production stage is achieved in the post-production. In production, the world and the characters envisioned in the pre-production come into existence whereas in post-production, these places move, speak and the whole movie ideally comes together into its final form.
Conclusion
Any 3D animation company in the UAE follows the same pattern in creating your stunning brand videos. With animation pipeline, the complexity of the animation work is properly streamlined, works perfectly delegated and the overall vision is effectively prioritized.
If you’re looking for the best animation services in the UAE, keep in mind to choose the ones who follow a properly streamlined work pattern to ensure the quality and timely delivery of your brand video.
Being a competitive animation expert in the UAE, Big Leap’s character animation speaks for itself. Our portfolio consists of a wide range of projects that showcases our expertise in character animation and delivering animation services in the UAE that encapsulates brand aesthetics, audience preferences and contemporary market trends.
If you’re keen on knowing more about how our professional animation services can elevate your brand reputation, relatability and visibility amongst the UAE audiences, feel free to reach out to our experts.