12 KEYS to World Class

ANIMATION on a BUDGET

JEFF CAPPLEMAN
Success Strategies from a former Disney Artist
 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

Key 1 Automation - There are 129,600 frames in a feature film...Are you sure
you’ll do it by hand?

Key 2 Holistic vs. Linear Production – Seeing the BIG picture!

Key 3 Specialized Tools - When you need something more

Key 4 Organization, Communication and Asset Management - Where is it?

Key 5 Rendering Speed - How to finish ahead of time

Key 6 Solid Preproduction Designs and Models - The “trickle down” theory

Key 7 Concept and Script designed for Leverage - Your “fast track” to success

Key 8 Education - Grow or Die?

Key 9 Layering and Compositing - Divide and Conquer!

Key 10 Cooperation and Outsourcing - If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

Key 11 Smooth Pipeline - Managing the animation factory

Key 12 Simplify and Stylize - Don’t just say “Add more Radiosity!”

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 2

 It doesn’t take a planet-sized
budget to achieve world class
results.

With the help of these twelve keys,

any animated production can be
done faster, be more profitable,
smoother, more efficient and more
appealing to the audience.

12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 3

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
Automation – A feature film has over 129,600 frames...Are you sure you’ll do it by hand?
Automation can take any production to
a whole new level. Any task that can be auto-
mated frees up time for artists to create more,
refine more and achieve more in a shorter time
period.
In my very first job at my very first
studio, their meager resources were barely
enough to finish a single project, let alone the
frantic times when we worked on two or three
projects at a time. So we automated to make
the very best use of these limited resources. I
wrote a simple script that would check to see if
a new frame was rendered. If so, it was auto-
matically output to video, then archived on a
backup tape and removed from the hard disk.
Suddenly our puny hard drive had more than
enough capacity! Just by taking a bit of time
to automate a simple procedure.
A more advanced level would be longer
duration projects I have worked on. Every art-
ist’s repetitive tasks were analyzed and wher-
ever possible reduced to a single mouse click.
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
For instance, when a scene was ready to be lit
– a single click would check all the appropriate
render parameters and settings, make sure the
cameras were set properly with the correct as-
pect ratio, the antialiasing was okay, the scene
was optimized and so on. In fact some stu-
dios have taken it further – instead of a single
mouse click, the file is automatically checked
as part of the render farm submission process.
“The first rule of any technology used in a
business is that automation applied to an efficient
operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is
that automation applied to an inefficient operation
will magnify the inefficiency.”
- Bill Gates
One side benefit to automation is
increased consistency and reduction of hu-
man error. Who likes doing repetitive tasks
anyway? Those are the tasks where we make
the most mistakes and those are also the tasks
that are the easiest to automate!
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
Holistic vs. Linear Production – Seeing the BIG picture!
It’s very tempting for inexperienced
productions to start a new project and move in
a very linear fashion from start to end.
This isn’t the best way to achieve the
most in the shortest amount of time.
A holistic approach gives you much
better value for your production dollar.
By holistic approach, what I would
suggest is going through the entire production
quickly and roughing it out – rough audio,
rough visuals, and quick sketches. Once you
see the entire project as a whole, then adjust it,
make changes and improvements as needed.
Polish it up to more polished sketches, tighter
edits and smoother audio.
Brain Tracy relates a story: “When an
airplane leaves Chicago for Los Angeles, it is
off course 99 percent of the time. This is nor-
mal and natural and to be expected. The pilot
makes continual course corrections, a little to
the north, a little to the south. The pilot con-
tinually adjusts altitude and throttle. And sure
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
enough, several hours later, the plane touches
down at exactly the time predicted when it
first became airborne upon leaving Chicago.
The entire journey has been a process or ap-
proximations and course adjustments.”1
Apply that idea to animation produc-
tion. Rough it out, course correct, polish it
more, course correct and so on. Typically you
might go through the following stages:
1. Rough story sketches
2. 3D layout stills
3. Still characters with simple motion and
camera moves
4. Rough Animation
5. Final animation
6. Lighting tests
7. Final composite
Every studio has their own process.
And it doesn’t necessarily mean that one stage
1 Brian Tracy , Take Action, Nightingale-Conant,
2007. http://www.nightingale.com/AE_Article~i~304~a
rticle~TakeAction.aspx
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
of production must be limited to the progress
of the other scenes in the project. If the proj-
ect demands it, one section could be advanced
far along in the process. In fact, to test and
refine your process, it’s important to take a
small segment all the way through the produc-
tion cycle.
Holistic production isn’t meant to
restrict, it’s meant to expand your possibilities.
When you make changes at a very early
stage in production – it’s very easy and flexible
to make large, significant changes. Later in
the production, as you refine more and more,
it becomes difficult to make big changes. So
by looking at the whole picture and making
realizations like: “Oh, this scene doesn’t work.
What if we shuffled the scenes around and
told the story in this order instead?” - you’ll
have saved so much time and have been so effi-
cient with your resources that you’ll have more
time, energy and finances for more experimen-
tation and improvements. You’ll end up with
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
a higher-end production for a lower expendi-
ture.
Normally this type of holistic produc-
tion works best for long format projects. How-
ever, even short television commercial projects
can benefit.
There was a commercial studio that
had never tried this approach before. Their
national television campaign had an extremely
tight deadline and had to be done quickly and
more importantly, to the satisfaction of the
client. The head of the studio was concerned.
He had no idea how this could possibly be
done in time and started calling people in
to work weekends. “How do you do it on
television production? Jeff, you have a great
background in television. How do they get so
much animation done so quickly with so few
revisions? How do they get it right the first
time?” So, I explained this concept of holistic
production. And he said, “Let’s try it! Let’s
make it work for a television commercial!”
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

I adapted this technique in order to

maximize the small amount of available time.

We built up the commercials in stages, course

correcting along the way. Not only was the

client thrilled with the end result, the head of

the studio also said that the campaign was “a

pleasure to work on”.

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 7

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

Specialized Tools – When you need something more

“Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the re- ten over the years to solve a huge variety of
sult of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools production problems. Whenever he hits a new
and yesterday’s concepts.” problem, he writes a new script and adds it to
- Marshall McLuhan his ever-growing toolbox.

Often in computer animated produc-

tion, we run into a challenge that can’t be over-

come by the 3D software on it’s own. Wheth-

er it’s creating smooth flowing hair, realistic

water animation, automating the motion of

thousands of warriors on a battlefield, it may

be appropriate to have a tool custom created.

Perhaps someone who has already created a

tool may provide you with their solution. Or

an off-the-shelf product may contain the an-

swers you need.

Solving a problem is good. Creating a tool

to solve that problem for you is pure genius.

Case Study: One veteran animator

carries a huge library of scripts that he’s writ-

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 8

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

Organization, Communication and Asset Management - Where is it?

The longer format your animation is,
the more crucial this very important key to
success is. It can benefit productions of any
length. When you’re working on a feature
film with over 1,500 shots, it becomes impera-
tive that there is an organized asset library, an
Whether it’s a custom created intranet
database, pieces of paper that artists fill out
by hand, an animatic or simply a whiteboard
with everything spelled out on it, choose the
method that best suits your production.

easy-to-use communication system, and that

everyone on the production knows where to

find everything they need to do their job.

“You can’t have everything. Where would you put

it?”

- Steven Wright

If your system saves someone one

minute of searching around for resources,

that turns into a savings of DAYS during the

course of a feature film production. And mul-

tiply those time savings by the total number of

people on your crew....do you now see how you

could finish your production ahead of sched-

ule?

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 9

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

Rendering Speed – How to finish ahead of time

Render time is the most vital key to en-
abling a production to finish ahead of sched-
ule.
The key areas to look at when optimiz-
ing your render times are the lighting, the
models and the textures. Other optimizations
in the render engine and render settings can
be done to further boost your render speed.
Breaking up complex scenes into layers can
also speed up rendering, especially in situa-
complex area light setup that took a long time
to render. The client fell in love with the look,
and I had to find a faster way to achieve this
same result.
By separating the characters from their
environment, I achieved the look that this cli-
ent loved while keeping the render time short.
The production finished under budget and
ahead of schedule.

tions where the computer’s memory is used to

full capacity.

Sometimes when estimating render

times, it’s common to forget to include a gen-

erous allowance for re-rendering due to glitch-

es, errors and client requests. If a production

is going to have a high re-render rate, which

some productions do, it’s even more crucial to

optimize.

While designing the special effects

lighting for one of the very first direct-to-

video feature films ever done, I came up with a

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 10

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
Solid Preproduction Designs and Models – The “trickle down” theory
Andrew is a genius modeler. He’s given
an impossible task – he’s got to built what is
by far the most detailed, most complicated
model in the history of this television series.
He has a couple of rough design sketches. And
he has not nearly enough time to finish the
job.
Somehow Andrew does it! It looks
amazing. And in fact, it’s one of the most
memorable models from the show. The toy
company recreates it, in all it’s complex glory,
and it’s a hot-selling toy.
Meanwhile, the pressure is still on.
Stephanie is faced with delivering the show on
time. She’s animating all the scenes with this
particular model. And it’s her worst night-
mare! The model doesn’t render correctly, it’s
a mishmash of components cobbled together
without rhyme or reason. It’s taking her five
times as long as her other scenes that don’t
contain this “amazing” model.
Deadlines are crucial in television series
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
production. Airdates can’t be changed. And
when it comes down to “crunch time” - the
animation, rendering and compositing teams
bear the pressure of delivering the final results
on time.
To achieve a successful production –
one that finishes on time and on budget, it’s
crucial to optimize the pre-production and
design stage as much as possible.
In fact the design and pre-production
are more important. It’s more important to
make sure everything is optimized, efficient,
organized and done according to protocol.
Whatever is done in the early stages of
production trickles down to the later stages.
To ensure the success of the entire pro-
duction, allow more time for the early stages.
They must get it right the first time – it pays
to be more demanding at this stage. Make
sure that the script, designs and models are
conducive to efficient production.
So what happened with Andrew and his
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

amazing model? Despite the appealing quali-

ties of this cool model – it was immediately

and forever written out of all future scripts of

this television series.

Although the creators of the series

loved the look of this model, they appreciated

and valued a smooth, efficient production

much, much more.

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 12

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
Concept and Script Designed for Leverage – Your “fast track” to success
The concept and script stage is a power-
ful leverage point that can launch your entire
production to success.
This principle has been used since the
dawn of animation in the 19th century and is
still relevant to this day.
Let’s take the familiar story of a father
who is trying to find his lost son. It could be
a realistically rendered human father search-
ing through a crowded Times Square at lunch
hour. Or it could be a stylized fish who’s
searching through shipwrecks and coral reefs.
Both environments contain the potential for
a dramatic, effective and compelling story.
One choice will make for a smoother, easier
and more efficient production – and the time,
energy and energy saved can be poured into
making the end result even more luscious,
richly-detailed and visually delightful.
“I prefer that animation reach into places where live
action doesn’t go, and it seems like all of animation
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
nowadays is trying to go where live action is.”
- Don Bluth
Television productions have used this
key effectively as well.
Most of the television productions I
have worked on will flag certain episodes as
“fast track” episodes. These episodes have a
story that’s conceptually conducive to faster,
easier production. Note that the storyline of
these episodes is not weaker or sacrificed in
any way. More often than not, the story needs
to be more compelling than a regular episode.
For example, in one “fast track”
episode, all of the characters were driving in
vehicles almost the entire time. So the anima-
tors only had to animate from the waist up –
sometimes just the face and head. The steer-
ing wheel and car animation is fairly easy and
can be completed quickly. Without sacrificing
the entertainment value, this episode was com-
pleted weeks ahead of regular episodes.
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

A perfect example of this key applied in and minimize their weaknesses by designing a
a real production is the world’s first computer concept and story with this key in mind.
animated television series, “ReBoot!”. At the

time this series was produced, CG render-

ing looked very unnatural and “computer-y”.

Rather than struggle to overcome this limita-

tion, the creators of the series simply designed

the stories to take place inside a computer –

ultimately leading to a very successful produc-

tion.

Keep in mind, that we never want to

sacrifice the entertainment value and the

story. Rather, we are designing the produc-

tion from the outset to tell a compelling story

in such a way that is conducive to simple, easy

and effective production.

A more advanced application of this

principle can allow a production to leverage

only certain departments. A production could

be designed for more straightforward charac-

ter rigging, or easy compositing, or fast render-

ing. You can optimize your team’s strengths

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 14

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

Education – Grow or Die?

Just like an apple tree, if you’re not
growing, you’re dying. Because technology
changes so quickly in this industry it’s crucial
to stay educated and learn new tools as they
come out in order to stay on top of the latest
a large library of resource materials. Every-
thing from Gnomon educational DVD’s to
Hollywood films can help people learn new
techniques, tricks, tips and ideas.

developments.

In the animation industry, it tends to

be feast or famine. Studios seems to have lots

and lots of projects in all at once, and other

times don’t have anything in production.

Studios have a number of options dur-

ing the “famine” times. Some studios focus on

independent projects or inhouse promotional

pieces. Some studios lay everyone off.

Whatever happens during the famine

times – everyone can use those periods to get

caught up on the latest developments. Grasp

those opportunities when they present them-

selves and it will strengthen the entire team.

Even if just one artist learns a new concept, the

entire team is strengthened.

Each studio I’ve worked at has stocked

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 15

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
Layering and Compositing – Divide and Conquer!
Some productions attempt to create
everything in camera. Other studios have real-
ized the power of compositing.
You can receive much more processing
power by breaking a large environment or a
complex model into layers. Suppose you have
a complex model which can’t be rendered all
at once. There isn’t enough memory to ren-
der it efficiently. The model is broken into 5
manageable chunks and rendered separately,
then composited together. By doing this, it’s
almost as if you have a computer with 5 times
the capacity.
Not only does layering allow you to
break through limitations imposed by hard-
ware, it allows you more flexibility to accom-
modate client changes.
When an image is divided into a num-
ber of layers, suddenly you have a lot more
control. If you need to change only a specific
portion of the scene – and it’s on it’s own layer
– then you have tremendous power in compos-
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
iting. You can change the color, focus, bright-
ness and appearance of just that particular ele-
ment without affecting any other parts of the
image. Or if a re-render is necessary, instead of
re-rendering everything, you will save time by
only rendering the required element.
Some productions even go as far as us-
ing compositing to facilitate lighting. Lights
are rendered each as a separate pass, then com-
bined in the compositing system. You can
vary the color and intensity of each light at
the compositing stage. Why would you want
to do this? Because you can tweak and refine
to a much higher level in a shorter time. The
composing system will give you feedback in
seconds, whereas receiving the same feedback
as a 3D render will take minutes. This exciting
leverage point can dramatically increase your
production’s visual quality.
During a job interview, the head of pro-
duction explained to me that at his insistence
there was going to be very little compositing
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

work done on his feature film project. “Just A

over B – and nothing more,” he said.

I accepted the job, and several months

later it was my first day on the project. To

my surprise, that head of production was no

longer with the studio. And there was now an

entire department of people devoted to com-

positing. Each shot was now being divided

into hundreds of layers. Clearly this studio

realized the importance of this critical key.

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 17

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
Cooperation and Outsourcing – If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!
“Great discoveries and improvements invari-
ably involve the cooperation of many minds.”
- Alexander Graham Bell
Cooperating allows you to balance out
the talents within your team. For instance,
let’s say you have two characters to be built,
and you have two artists. Although both art-
ists know how to build characters, one artist
is a phenomenal modeler, and the other is a
brilliant texture painter. Rather than delegat-
ing one character to each artist, it might make
more sense to have the modeling expert model
both characters, and the texturing expert paint
the textures for both characters.
Prolific author and strategist John
Dudeck wrote: “In our society, we are trained
to be ultra-aware of deficiencies, our areas
of weakness or incompetence. Consequently
we spend an entire lifetime working on your
weaknesses. As a result, all we get is a lot of
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
really strong weaknesses. This is not what the
stuff of greatness is about.”1
This principle can apply to your entire
team. And even to your entire studio.
Rather than struggling to improve lack-
luster results, focus in on what your studio excels
at and develop a true mastery in those areas. Take
those resources that would have been wasted
on struggling to improve a weakness and use
them to outsource to another master. Then
your end result is a production with mastery
across the board!
Larger studios take better advantage of
this principle by making each artist’s respon-
sibilities as specialized as possible. It works
well for them and it can be adapted for smaller
productions.
Another twist on this key to success is
using multiple production teams to complete
a single production.
Sometimes a project can be logically
1 John Dudeck, Building the Ultimate Business Ad-
vantage, The Dudeck Group, LLC, 2002, page 14.
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

divided up. For instance, one section of the

story is told in a completely different visual

style than another section. Or a story can be

split up by environment, with each team spe-

cializing in sequences taking place in a partic-

ular locale. Or perhaps a dream sequence can

be outsourced.

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 19

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget
Smooth Pipeline – Managing the animation factory
“I am an animator. I feel like I’m the man-
ager of an animation cinema factory. I am not an
executive. I’m rather like a foreman, like the boss
of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I
work.”
- Hayao Miyazaki
A small independent studio has taken
on a mammoth project. Each of the artists
on their own were doing a superb job. They
are all highly talented experts at their special-
ized niche. But the studio realized there was
something wrong. The productivity was sub-
par. In an effort to improve the situation, the
studio loaded the artists down with all sorts
of books, videos, training sessions and other
educational material. Even that didn’t seem to
work though – something else was missing.
By focusing on the pipeline and the
communication system between the individual
artists and each department - the productivity
level jumped to where it should be. Before, the
©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman,
entire pipeline was clogged, complicated and
in need of streamlining. There was no central
location of files – no model library – just a
mishmash of scene files saved locally on each
artist’s machine.
What a mess!
So the key here was to establish a smooth
pipeline.
We set up central locations for data –
storehouses for animation, for environments,
for characters and we made it really easy to
find everything. We set up a protocol for pass-
ing one scene from one department to another
– so people knew what to expect, when to
expect it and where to find it.
What happened?
It took weeks for the changes to take
effect, but once they did there was a boost in
the productivity of the entire crew. And as
the production evolved, more changes, en-
hancements and streamlining were made to
the pipeline. The next set of changes involved
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 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

streamlining the data files that each artist

received to work on. Automated scripts were

implemented to prepare each scene file for

the artist to work on. Unnecessary data was

dropped altogether. Data that wasn’t needed

until a later stage was removed from the scene

and automatically restored at that later stage.

With each process that was made

smoother, new productivity windfalls were re-

alized. Combined with the savings in storage

space and increase in render speed – a smooth

pipeline gave this small studio a huge payoff!

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 21

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

Simplify and Stylize – Don’t just say “Add more Radiosity!”

An executive producer sat beside me
during the screening of his latest animated
feature length film, and I could sense the
dark clouds of frustration, dishevelment and
disappointment billowing around him. He
felt completely powerless. The artists were
banging their heads against their screens try-
ing every trick, technique and tip in the book
again and again, yet the animation still wasn’t
convincing enough. It didn’t look real.
“Add more radiosity!” he exclaimed. Because the technology now can create
“Add more raytracing! Add more HDRI! Add
more caustics!” Hands waving madly through
the air, he left me with “Jeff, just do whatever
it takes to make our swords look as if they
were made from real metal. Even 2D anime
swords look better than our 3D CGI swords!”
When you’ve tried every technique, every
new development, every latest plug-in and you’re
still not pleased with the results – it may be time to
simplify or stylize.
Why not do just that? Simplify the
process, and stylize the look of the sword more
toward 2D anime rather than 3D.
That’s exactly what we did. We came
up with a couple of approaches. One was a 2D
glimmering flash that was added to the blades
to enhance the shiny look. And the other
was a combination of anisotropic reflections
(rather than raytracing) with an extra light as-
sociated to the sword only to give it that extra
sheen.
renders that look photo-realistic, many people
in our industry get caught up in the philoso-
phy that photo-realistic animation means “bet-
ter” animation.
Regardless of what style is being used
to tell the story – it’s ultimately the story and
characters that make an animation great.
“Because good writing in a TV cartoon is
so rare, I think the animation on ‘The Simpsons’ is
often overlooked.”
- Matt Groening

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 22

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

As long as the visual style you’ve cho-

sen is one that supports the story, you can do

anything style-wise.

Especially when an scene looks lack-

luster, the temptation is to start adding more

radiosity, more shaders, more techniques, and

more plug-ins. In many cases, a simplification

would give a much better result overall and

it’s also going to make the production faster,

easier and more efficient. And ultimately

more profitable.

Our friend, the executive producer, was

thrilled with the new look of the swords and

metal. “It looks much more like a real sword!”

Often stylization will add visual appeal

to the entire production.

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 23

 12 Keys to World Class Animation on a Budget

Biography of Jeff Cappleman

Jeff Cappleman is President of Mediarific! (www.mediarific.com), a firm that pro-

vides special format animation to theme parks, museums and exhibitions.

Mr. Cappleman is also the Director of Media

Production for Attraction Design Services of Orlando, Florida.

Since February 1993, Mr. Cappleman has

been involved in animation productions around the globe –

including the world’s first computer animated television series

(“ReBoot!”, 1994), supervising the first all CG direct-to-video

feature (“Casper’s Haunted Christmas”, 2000), supervising

the first computer animated feature film produced entirely

in China (“Through the Moebius Strip”, 2004) and the first

computer animated feature film produced in Canada (Walt

Disney’s “The Wild”, 2005).

In 1996, Mr. Cappleman became the world’s first ani-

mator to animate a character in the IMAX 3D format. This initial test paved the way for two IMAX

Ridefilms -”Journey into Chaos” and “ReBoot the Ride” (winner of IAAPA’s Best New Ride Concept

in 1997).

Mr. Cappleman holds a degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and a di-

ploma of Classical Animation from Sheridan College.

©2007, 2008 jeff cappleman, www.mediarific.com 24