How to Make an Animated Movie

Learn how to craft an animated movie by building a strong story, storyboarding, designing 3D models, blocking scenes with a pre-visualization, and refining with lighting, rendering, and sound design.

Master proper script formatting by starting each scene with interior or exterior and a scene description, then action descriptions before dialogue, with capitalized names and centered dialogue.

Storyboard an animated movie using a 16 by 9 squares template with space for notes. Show motion with arrows, add color and layers, and prepare to turn storyboards into animatics.

Learn how to turn a storyboard into an animatic in After Effects by collecting sound effects, lining up boards, timing scenes, and adding frame numbers and timecode for reference.

Model and rig a squash and stretch ball and a flexible cube for an animated short, using simple geometry and expressive controls. Prepare for technical rigging read in part two.

Rig the cube by adding corner joints and lattice skin, then link controls to joints for deformation; introduce a second lattice with expressions to drive squash and stretch.

Organize your one-man 3D movie project with a clean pipeline that uses research, models, rigging, animation, lighting, and renders, references scenes, and moves from animatic to previews to final render.

Turn a storyboard and animatic into a 3D previz in Maya, replacing each shot with a 3D version and assembling playblasts in After Effects with basic sound design.

Explore how film-makers choose focal lengths and camera rigs to craft shots, from wide 18–25 to close-up 50–55, using dolly and crane to convey emotion while staying grounded.

Explore the animation process from frame-by-frame blocking to refining keyframes in a straight-ahead workflow at 12 fps, delivering a lively, imperfect shot.

learn lighting and render layers for a no-light shot, using color management, production quality, depth with luminance depth, shadows via ray tracing, and nuke-based compositing.

Learn how to take render passes from the earlier video, composite them in nuke to create a sunset scene with depth of field, shadow pass, and color corrections.

Assemble the final edit and master color correction in After Effects using the Looks plugin, perfect color matching with curves, and apply final polish for a cohesive animated film.

Discover how to design film sound with Audition, building ambience, effects, and a custom soundtrack. Learn practical steps from importing video, layering wind, birds, and footsteps, to mastering presets.

Bring together sound design, editing, color grading, and titles, craft end credits and a final render, then export YouTube and festival versions using appropriate H.264 video and AAC audio settings.