Animated Scripts

I use this site for my script resources.

http://sfy.ru/scripts.html?range=a

Sadly they don't have any annimated scripts that I can tell and I have yet to ever find one, I think they keep their scripts pretty tight, you might have to break down and actually buy one as I've never seen one anywhere.

Sara

RainbowDragon said:

Thanks Icerose --

I had some luck looking up specific titles and "script" or "screenplay" but of course it's hard to tell if you're seeing the actual screenplay or someone's transcription of the movie. Might be worth coughing up some dough to see a real copy of an actual script used for an actual feature. Also the page lengths vary tremendously (but they're not in standard format online, either, so who knows how long they really are). . .

You write for animation -- do you know if the standard page a minute rule applies? How much description do you include (e. g. "The light sparkes magnificently over the water's surface")? Do you find they're going to elaborate on your settings the way they want to anyway or does writing something sometimes get it into the finished product?

Anything else you've learned along the way that might help people starting out in this genre (craft-wise)?

Thanks!

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Some animation companies don't even use scripts from what I've heard, they have dialog that they put on after the animation is all done.

The company I work for, they have the scripts between 30-40 pages, which then comes out to be about 20-22 minutes after all the cuts, they like the wiggle room. For the settings, they did all the research and assigned it to me, so I don't really describe the setting itself outside the very basics, they have their vision, I deal with the characters and the actions and such, they play with the script, send it back, ask for changes, I make changes, we bat it back and forth until they're happy, then it goes through the animation department for the animation, they also add non-written action to lighten up the scenes and such.

But I'm sure experiences will vary.

My wife and I were hired to write an animated feature, the producer told us "make it longer rather than shorter" we finished at 124 pages and the producer seemed happy with that.

icerose said:

Some animation companies don't even use scripts from what I've heard, they have dialog that they put on after the animation is all done.

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That would be economic suicide for an animation studio. Animation is labor intensive and expensive to produce. While it's theoretically possible to animate everything and add lip syncs afterwards, that wouldn't take into account character body language and responses to dialogue, which no one is going to re-animate unless they have to.

I work in animation. Yes, scripts are typically longer than the finished show (I'm referring to television), to give wiggle room. Voices are recorded before a single line of animation is drawn. Then it's edited together with the storyboard to produce animatics, at which point scenes are cut and finagled, nipped, tucked, and dialogue rewritten numerous times.

Once the animatic is done, it's locked, and the timing is done, including each and every mouth position, written down on exposure sheets frame-by-frame at 25 or 30 frames/second.

The final thing may bear little resemblance to the original script. I'm right now in the middle of producing an animatic based on my own script, which is now on its approximately 20th rewrite AFTER the script was already rewritten 3 times and approved by the producer. Every studio and producer has their own methods, and depending on deadline, they may require scripts closer to the target length. That was the case when I last worked in a big studio (before the computer age when it was even MORE expensive to produce).

For feature-length animation there's a lot more pre-production work done on stories, scripts and storyboards before final animation proceeds. And it's true that they might start with either a rough script or a detailed outline, which is then worked out on a huge storyboard, with final dialogue written last. I wouldn't know, since I haven't worked in such an environment. But I've worked on shorts which followed this more ad hoc sort of development. The bad news for scriptwriters is, that's all done in-house, not from spec scripts. The good news is that many TV series do commission freelance script writers.

I've also searched online for sample scripts for some of the big studios' features and TV shows, but haven't found any. You can find fan-typed transcriptions of some of the Pixar scripts, but that's dialogue only.

Billingsgate said:

That would be economic suicide for an animation studio. Animation is labor intensive and expensive to produce. While it's theoretically possible to animate everything and add lip syncs afterwards, that wouldn't take into account character body language and responses to dialogue, which no one is going to re-animate unless they have to.

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This depends on the animation you are doing. You talk about animatics, so I assume you are doing computer, 3-D animation. But in 2-D hand drawn this is not that odd. In fact, there are many shows on TV that are just dubbed or repurposed anime shows, so in that case dialogue is certainly written afterwards.

Guys,

You can find the screenplays of several animated films including, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Finding Nemo etc right here.

I’ll post more links when I find them.

Raghu.

zeprosnepsid said:

This depends on the animation you are doing. You talk about animatics, so I assume you are doing computer, 3-D animation. But in 2-D hand drawn this is not that odd. In fact, there are many shows on TV that are just dubbed or repurposed anime shows, so in that case dialogue is certainly written afterwards.

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Then you're not talking about original animation scripts, but translations. Same as translating and dubbing live action. The translation isn't a new original script, it's the original dialogue (or approximating that) put into another language. The original Japanese or Korean cartoons are working off scripts too. They don't just animate a bunch of actions and then say afterwards, "Hey, let's throw in some dialogue now." It doesn't and can't work that way (though the majority of anime is crappy enough that it might look that way). Dialogue isn't all about mouths. It includes accompanying postures, hand gestures, other character reactions, and so on. Of course you need a finished script before you animate!

When I talk about animatics, I'm talking about good old pencil and paper storyboard drawings scanned and synced to sound. Animatics (a.k.a. Leica reels) are as old as the early Disney cartoons, not a computer-age invention. I work in traditional hand-drawn 2D character animation, as well as so-called "tradigital" animation (hand-drawn on computer). And for the length of my 25-year association with animation, it has always been: dialogue written and recorded first, then do the animation.

Raghu said:

Guys,

You can find the screenplays of several animated films including, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Finding Nemo etc right here.

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Cool. Looks like most are just transcriptions, but some appear to be actual scripts retyped in plain text. Nice find. Thanks.

Billingsgate said:

Then you're not talking about original animation scripts, but translations. Same as translating and dubbing live action. The translation isn't a new original script, it's the original dialogue (or approximating that) put into another language. The original Japanese or Korean cartoons are working off scripts too. They don't just animate a bunch of actions and then say afterwards, "Hey, let's throw in some dialogue now." It doesn't and can't work that way (though the majority of anime is crappy enough that it might look that way). Dialogue isn't all about mouths. It includes accompanying postures, hand gestures, other character reactions, and so on. Of course you need a finished script before you animate!

When I talk about animatics, I'm talking about good old pencil and paper storyboard drawings scanned and synced to sound. Animatics (a.k.a. Leica reels) are as old as the early Disney cartoons, not a computer-age invention. I work in traditional hand-drawn 2D character animation, as well as so-called "tradigital" animation (hand-drawn on computer). And for the length of my 25-year association with animation, it has always been: dialogue written and recorded first, then do the animation.

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Repurposed anime on American TV is almost never directly translated (The only real exception is the cartoon network when it shows directly translated anime). It is almost always completely re-written and re-purposed for American audiences. I know several people who do this as a job (they always try to hire me but I kind of refuse to lobotomize anime as a matter of principle). They are tasked to come up with lines, often unrelated to the original lines, to put into the already moving animated mouths. Here is an example of a show that some of my friends work on. As you can see from the entry, it bears almost no resemblance to the original Japanese version. And they write completely new dialogue and situations to be put in previously animated mouths.

Sorry, I had never heard animatics used referring to anything other than 3-D. When I worked in video games, I'd create visual 3-D animatics. When you watch behind the scenes features on Hollywood films, they often contain the animatics for the action scenes - which are always moving. My fiance used to be a storyboard artist but he's never called them animatics. He just calls them storyboards. But obviously things can be termed differently in different areas. I'm not claiming to be the most experienced person in animation, I was just going off the fact that I had never personally heard the term to describe that.

But it's a silly thing for you to say 'it isn't done this way' when ice already said that's how they do it where she works. I was merely giving another example of when it's done similarly. Whether or not it's a good idea to do it this way is another question all together. And none of this has to do with the OP's question, which Raghu came to the rescue and answered extremely well.

Guys,

I have the original script of Ratatouille and if any of you folks need it, just PM me your email ID and I'll send it over.

Raghu.

zeprosnepsid said:

And none of this has to do with the OP's question, which Raghu came to the rescue and answered extremely well.

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So we never allow a discussion to veer into another related topic, even if it's meant to respond to another (off-topic) comment. Okay, got it. Sorry to have troubled everyone.

And just to clarify: a storyboard is a storyboard. What we call an 'animatic', at least in traditional animation, is created when the storyboard is scanned and set up as a slide show (with whatever rough animation may have been done), which is timed to the audio track.

Oops, I forgot: the OP didn't mention storyboards, so I'll shut up now. Bye.

Billingsgate said:

So we never allow a discussion to veer into another related topic, even if it's meant to respond to another (off-topic) comment. Okay, got it. Sorry to have troubled everyone.

And just to clarify: a storyboard is a storyboard. What we call an 'animatic', at least in traditional animation, is created when the storyboard is scanned and set up as a slide show (with whatever rough animation may have been done), which is timed to the audio track.

Oops, I forgot: the OP didn't mention storyboards, so I'll shut up now. Bye.

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Quit fighting guys !

Make love not war !

Raghu.

Billingsgate said:

So we never allow a discussion to veer into another related topic, even if it's meant to respond to another (off-topic) comment. Okay, got it. Sorry to have troubled everyone.

And just to clarify: a storyboard is a storyboard. What we call an 'animatic', at least in traditional animation, is created when the storyboard is scanned and set up as a slide show (with whatever rough animation may have been done), which is timed to the audio track.

Oops, I forgot: the OP didn't mention storyboards, so I'll shut up now. Bye.

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That's not what he's saying, chill out. He also asked how our experiences were so it's all valid, but the main point was a search for actual scripts.

Raghu provided actual scripts, we provided the other, it's all good. No need for the combativeness.

icerose said:

Some animation companies don't even use scripts from what I've heard, they have dialog that they put on after the animation is all done.

The company I work for, they have the scripts between 30-40 pages, which then comes out to be about 20-22 minutes after all the cuts, they like the wiggle room. For the settings, they did all the research and assigned it to me, so I don't really describe the setting itself outside the very basics, they have their vision, I deal with the characters and the actions and such, they play with the script, send it back, ask for changes, I make changes, we bat it back and forth until they're happy, then it goes through the animation department for the animation, they also add non-written action to lighten up the scenes and such.

But I'm sure experiences will vary.

Click to expand...

Our run time is 21:00, which is usually about 33-34 script pages and anywhere from 25-35 scenes. We record all dialogue before we go to animatic and then animate to it. I've never worked on a show that set the VO after animation, unless it was a mandated rerecord (S&P or Legal), or done last minute in the mix. Normally we like to give the actors room to improvise which you can't do if its already animated.

Scripts usually get churned out in about 4-6 weeks, from germination to locked and line numbered. We do a full animatic, followed by an animation pass, edit pass (we add an overlay, plus music and SFX) then the final look, then the mix.

zeprosnepsid said:

This depends on the animation you are doing. You talk about animatics, so I assume you are doing computer, 3-D animation. But in 2-D hand drawn this is not that odd. In fact, there are many shows on TV that are just dubbed or repurposed anime shows, so in that case dialogue is certainly written afterwards.

Click to expand...

True, but I don't know of any original animation shows currently being produced for American television that don't have a fully recorded dialog track before going into animation. Some animatics are done with temp audio, and 2D animatics can vary from an audio track set to a slide show of storyboard pages, to rough animation.

Blondchen said:

Our run time is 21:00, which is usually about 33-34 script pages and anywhere from 25-35 scenes. We record all dialogue before we go to animatic and then animate to it. I've never worked on a show that set the VO after animation, unless it was a mandated rerecord (S&P or Legal), or done last minute in the mix. Normally we like to give the actors room to improvise which you can't do if its already animated.

Scripts usually get churned out in about 4-6 weeks, from germination to locked and line numbered. We do a full animatic, followed by an animation pass, edit pass (we add an overlay, plus music and SFX) then the final look, then the mix.

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That's good to know. As I said in my post, it was what I had heard and not from my experience.

Well, I'm glad that's settled. This discussion thread made me think I was hallucinating. So last night I popped an e-mail to the animation director of the series I'm working on. This guy has directed everything from theatrical release features made in Germany, Denmark and France, to more TV series than I can count, for every major North American, Australian and European studio. He said you can't build a house without a plan; you can't even dream of starting the storyboard without a locked script (subject to later revision). And you don't animate without a voice track, though in rare cases a temp voice track is done if an actor is unavailable, but that can cause hassles later. Then he basically described the same as Blondchen said above, which concurs with my own couple decades of experience.

And by the way, I actually like it when discussions veer off topic, as long as they're still within the genre. We were discussing animation scripts, and everything discussed here falls under that umbrella.

Billingsgate said:

Well, I'm glad that's settled. This discussion thread made me think I was hallucinating. So last night I popped an e-mail to the animation director of the series I'm working on. This guy has directed everything from theatrical release features made in Germany, Denmark and France, to more TV series than I can count, for every major North American, Australian and European studio. He said you can't build a house without a plan; you can't even dream of starting the storyboard without a locked script (subject to later revision). Then he basically described the same as Blondchen said above, which concurs with my own couple decades of experience.

And by the way, I actually like it when discussions veer off topic, as long as they're still within the genre. We were discussing animation scripts, and everything discussed here falls under that umbrella.

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Well that's very reassuring, makes sure us writers have a place in it all.

Of course the writers have a place!

Locked up in the writers' room, chained to their desks.

My only issue with writers in television in general is they are always writing $500,000 scripts...when the show budget per ep is $250,000.

Billingsgate said:

Well, I'm glad that's settled. This discussion thread made me think I was hallucinating. So last night I popped an e-mail to the animation director of the series I'm working on. This guy has directed everything from theatrical release features made in Germany, Denmark and France, to more TV series than I can count, for every major North American, Australian and European studio. He said you can't build a house without a plan; you can't even dream of starting the storyboard without a locked script (subject to later revision). And you don't animate without a voice track, though in rare cases a temp voice track is done if an actor is unavailable, but that can cause hassles later. Then he basically described the same as Blondchen said above, which concurs with my own couple decades of experience.

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I don't think anyone was ever disagreeing with you that this was the way things were usually done. Ice just said that the place that she works for does it differently and I said that's also how repurposed anime shows do it. I don't think any of us thought for a moment that like Pixar or anything came up with their dialogue later. There isn't actually a disagreement here.