Storytelling Through Animation

By Mike Wellins

Charles River Media, 2005

7¼" x 9¼", 436 pages

This is another book that tries to cover every aspect of making animation from a very short clip to a feature long animated film. There are several other books in this category such as Shamus Culhane "From Script to Screen" and Tony White "From Pencil to Pixels". Those are books written by authors with a long, vast and varied experience in animation, who have been thinking about their craft for a long while and who want to share their experience, views and advices with us, the readers. Like the other mentioned books, this book doesn't lack in comments about the industry, how things are done and how decisions are made to do things the way they are done. Like the other books in this category, there is a lot of text and not much illustrations and it is 435 pages long.

The main difference from the other books in this category, though, is that this one doesn't try to give practical tricks on how to use this or that tool. It is more like a long reflection about what needs to be done and why it needs to be done that way. While reading the book, it felt like a set of brainstorming sessions. Most books in this category goes along the line of "you need to do that", "you need to fill that form", "You need to prepare that", "You need to take care of this", etc., for every step of an animation project. But this book is different. The author discusses the same steps, in the same chronological order as for a real animation project, but instead of enumerating what needs to be done, he does a sort of brainstorming about each step and what are the different options and approches, what pitfalls may be expected, how to guard against them, what needs to be considered before starting, how to prepare, what are the prefered practices in different situations, etc. And it looks like the author have seen all the possible situations.

There is one main aspect that the author always focus on, it is the storytelling aspect. Every aspect and step of an animation production is discussed from the angle of serving the story telling. Although this is not a book of tips and techniques, there are a lot of practical information that is dispersed along the book in a casual discussion format.

Right when beginning the book, the author spends 40 pages just on the topic of "story". Then follows another part of the book about "visual storytelling". About 100 pages that cover "directing", "art direction" and "cinematography". But also an introductory chapters on "developing the True Critical eye". This is a topic I always felt was missing in the other books. This chapter, along with the "Story" chapter represent the hearth of the book. The whole enterprise resolves to the question why make a film? The author acknowledge that the story is king. No story, no film. Plain as that. He does not try to give recipes on how to develop a good story although he covers elements of a good story. But then the whole discussion continues assuming that the story is good and the animation anterprise is dedicated to tell that story in the most compelling and efficient manner.

The next section is about "production" that starts with "preplaning and preproduction" and then covers "storyboarding", "animatics", "sound", "character design" and "lighting". Usually, author spend a few pages on storyboarding and animatics together. Here, the author dedicates a separate chapter to each totalling 45 pages. Of that, about 3 pages covers technical aspects. The rest is about why the storyboards and the animatics? How is it used? What exploration and communication purposes does it serve?

Making an animated film is a huge project. A lot of animated films just stay at the stage of an idea. Some animations are started but never finished. Making an animation is a huge undertaking and it is already overwhelming just figuring where to start. For someone who walk in life with the idea of, one day, make an animated film, this book will not teach the techniques for making it but will help structure the thought process that can lead to effectively produce the film. I'm pretty sure that someone could use this book to accompany an animation project and help structure the decisions that need to be taken at each stages of the project.

Not an essential book. But already working on TWO, I found it thought provoking and inspiring on the whole process.