Glossary

Animator: An artist who draws characters in motion - to 'animate' is to bring life to an object. 


Background: The opaque painting that serves as the scenery behind the animation


Cleanup: The process of refining the lines of rough animation and adding minor details


Color script: Gives an idea of how the color keys and tones for the entire film will be and how the colors in the film relate to the story arc and mood of the different scenes.

Director: Supervisor of the timing, animation, sound, music and general production processes of a
picture.


Frame: The individual picture on the film; there are sixteen frames to each foot of film, twenty-five frames to each second of running time on the screen.


In-betweener: The artist who finishes the needed number of drawings in between those created by the assistant animator and the breakdown man.


Inbetweening or tweening: The process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion. Inbetweening is a key process in all types of animation.


Layout: The black and white rendering done by a layout man that determines the basic compostion of the scene.


Mickey Mousing: A film technique that syncs the accompanying music with the actions on screen. It reinforces an action by mimicking its rhythm exactly.


Key frames: A drawing that defines the starting and ending point of any smooth transition. They are called frames because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film. A sequence of keyframes defines which movement the viewer will see, whereas the position of the keyframes on the film, video or animation defines the timing of the movement. To create an illusion of movement the remaining frames between the key frames are filled with inbetweens.


Scene: A segment of action which completes an idea.


Storyboard: A large board on which are pinned sketches telling a story in comic-strip fashion.


Timing: Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film.


Walk cycle: A series of frames or illustrations drawn in sequence that loop to create an animation of a walking character.