Action Heroes of Animation: Development!

Though your project adventure may look daunting, these Action Heroes of Animation are ready to serve as you courageously trek along the animation path and become one of the Masters of the Pipeline!

Previously on Action Heroes of Animation…

• Meet the Action Heroes of Animation: Masters of the Pipeline!
• There are 4 distinct phases to animation: Development, Pre-production, Production, and Post-Production.
• Development Guru (Progressum Instruo) is a wise sage who’s here to guide you thru the tangled land of developing your idea, determining a budget, and mapping out a schedule.
• His special powers and years of battle-tested development techniques will help you on your journey thru the Development Jungle.

Pipeline Survival Guide Part 1: DEVELOPMENT
This first phase has to do with your concept itself. Occasionally, we have clients come to us with a complete concept developed (Quacky’s Questions for example) but more often than not, clients come to us with a partly developed concept or just a basic idea.

For example, we might hear,  “We need a cartoon to market our product.” or, “We need 5 cartoons that teach boring regulations in a fun way.”

Those aren’t ideas, great starting points, but not developed concepts. They’re statements of need.

Our job in development is come up with a solution. What is the best concept to use to solve your problem? Is it a super hero concept? A group of talking animals? A Kids performing arts troupe? (We’ve worked on all of those, BTW.)

This is where experience and a development process is absolutely necessary.

OUR SUPER POWER
This is our specialty. It’s what we do…our sweet spot.

We’ll research the demographics of the target audience, find out what creative approaches have been taken before for similar problems, determine what the concept possibilities are (style, setting, type of characters, etc.), who the stake holders are, and why certain approaches may be better or worse than others.

We’ll present this to you in a clear and concise way along with our recommendation as to why we think you should take a certain approach.

This is where the nebulous idea begins to take shape and our clients get really excited about our collaboration with them.

Once we get a basic understanding of the concept, we move into visual development where we design the look and feel of the concept.

What do the characters look like? What do the backgrounds look like? What are the art direction rules of the concept.

Once visual development is underway, we usually develop a treatment. A treatment is a short (5-25 page, depending on the scope) description of the concept, characters, world, special features, rules, etc. and has artwork to help convey these aspects.

Once the treatment is approved we write a script. (We have a process for writing scripts, but we’ll save that for another blog post.)

ALERT!
We’ve found that everything leading up to the script is absolutely necessary and helps make for a great script.

If you try to write a script before doing these critical first steps, it’ll be weak and predictable.

Fully developed characters (likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, quirks, backgrounds) and what the interpersonal dynamics of the characters are will GREATLY influence and strengthen the script.

Bypassing this critical aspect of development can weaken or even ruin your project before it gets off the ground.

Our goal is to treat every project this way. From comic strip, one-off short to a series the more time you spend in development the more interesting and stronger your project will be.

YOUR VISION BUILDERS
Other things like casting, scheduling, and delivery details are also usually handled in the development phase.

This is the foundation of the house. You can’t go back (without additional time and money) once you move into pre-production. Think of the development phase as the blue prints for a house.

You don’t want to start cutting 2×4’s and pouring concrete until the blue prints are finalized. Imagine building a skyscraper without hiring an architect to plan it.

In development, we are the architects of your project or vision.

This process can take a few weeks (for small projects), a few months (for medium sized projects), or a year or more (for very large projects). Feature films and TV shows, for example, are often in development for 1-3 years. 

Once the planning, concept, final script, and key visual development are all completed, it’s time to move down the pipeline to Pre-Production.

Stay tuned for our next episode of Action Heroes of Animation…Pre-Production!