Skip to main content

Script Writing for Animation - 3 Tips for better scripts

Having spent the last two years creating short animations for GoAnimate using my own original stories here are three of my best tips that I swear by when writing my scripts.

1. Use as few words as possible. 

I taught myself this on GoAnimate because I realized early that using speech bubbles instead of actual voices would slow the action down. You want people to be able to read your dialogue as quickly as possible so they don't become aware they're reading. This way they will still feel like they're watching a video and not reading an animated comic.

I later read in a book on how to script write for animation that professional animation script writers also aim for telling their stories in as few words as possible but for different reasons.

In animation it is still quite hard to lip sync a character to the dialogue. The longer you watch a single camera shot of a character talking the more aware you become that you're not watching a real human talk. You start to notice inconsistencies.

To get around this professional script writers change the camera view often, never allowing a character to say too much in a single shot.

Even better, if they can get a character to say dialogue off camera they will because, not only does this mean no lip syncing, it also allows for minor changes in dialogue after the drawn component of the animation is complete.

Hence you should review every line of dialogue and ask yourself,"Can the character say the same thing with less words?"

If you find you can't cut any words out then break the talking up over different camera shots to keep your scene visually interesting whilst delivering short bursts of dialogue in each shot.

2. Show don't tell.

Animation is a visual medium. It allows you to do so much more than film (excluding realistic 3D animation from the 'film' category and bringing it back to 'animation'). If your animation is just a bunch of talking heads you may have well as done it with film.

That said, if you follow tip 1, then you'll quickly realise the way to use less dialogue is to show more of what your character would have described in the dialogue before you trimmed it down.

Showing the action will also be more interesting to watch than long scenes of characters talking.

3. Off camera action is your friend.

Also as mentioned in tip 1, off camera dialogue is favoured quite a lot by professional animators and script writers to avoid lip syncing issues. However, off camera is also great for 'suggesting action'.

How important is it for the viewer to see an actual action performed? If it's not too important you can save a lot of animating time by using the off camera technique.

For small actions you can use the 'distraction' method where, for example, you focus the camera on one character talking whilst another character performs a simple action off camera. I give a more detailed explanation of this in my behind the scenes post for my Domokun animation, Tashanna and the City.

A simple example might be a scene in a bedroom. One character is standing and the other is in bed. You want the character in bed to get out of bed and stand but you don't want to animate it.

You could have the character in bed say "I'm getting up now" in shot. The next shot is of the standing character saying "Good because we don't want to be late.". In the next shot the character in bed is now sitting on the edge of the bed.

This technique works because when we view things in real life we know things can happen out of our range of vision. Be careful though, not to do too much off camera.

If, in the previous example, in the final shot, the character in bed was now fully dressed, standing and ready to go, it wouldn't work because we know he didn't have time to do all that in the time it took for the first character to say "Good because we don't want to be late".

For much more complex off screen action you can use a variation of the distraction technique - focusing the camera on other characters viewing the action - then use audio to suggest the sounds of what's going on off camera.

For example you have a fight scene but you don't want to animate the entire fight on camera. To break it up you could show people watching reacting to the sounds of the fight in progress (by doing this you can actually suggest the fight is much worse than anything you could show on camera).


Hopefully these three tips will help you when it comes to writing your own scripts. I've found the last one particularly helpful when I need to improvise something that would be too difficult to animate on GoAnimate.

If you have any other suggestions/tips for writing better scripts please feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Comments

  1. Hey David, I was just on you blog to re-read some stuff. I'll be sharing this with some GA members next time I respond to a How do I______? Post.

    Sadly I think the animators who could most benefit from your blog won't surf around it. They will read a little and then go on to other things they want to do.

    I for one have always found your blog helpful.

    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for share this informative post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I sincerely relished reading the item, you are an excellent article author. I will bookmark your blog and can generally revisit sometimes quickly. I must really encourage that you simply proceed your current wonderful writing.
    script writing services

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here's a competition you might want to look into.

    Thinkerbeat Reels Contest

    Deadline: July 31th
    Fee: Free
    Format: short script, fiction, 10 to 30 pages
    Prizes: First place, US$50; Second Place, US$30; Third Place, US$20 (payable to your PayPal account)

    Special thanks for our anonymous sponsors for increasing the prize $$$ this time!

    Daniel

    The Thinkerbeat World
    www.thinkerbeat.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Animation writers are famous and known from theirs research method and innovations. Without getting information there is not possible anyone can make his identification and famous animation essay writing service.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

This blog is monitored by a real human. Generic or unrelated spam comments with links to sites of dubious relativity may be DELETED.

I welcome, read, and respond to genuine comments relating to each post. If your comment isn't that save me some time by not posting it.

Popular posts from this blog

Eight 2D Animation Apps For Your Phone or Tablet Mobile Device

M obile productivity apps have become so capable that they can be great alternatives to their PC/MAC equivalents or serve as great tools in their own right when you're away from your desk. While some apps simply mimic their desktop counterparts, others offer well thought out, touch-friendly interfaces that are easier and more fun to use. Every so often I check out what's available for 2D animation for Android devices, since that's what I use, that can complement my workflow with Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5. Some may be available for Apple devices as well. Below I've listed six free (F) apps (with optional paid (P) upgrades) on the Google Play Store that you might want to explore. Some are just fun apps on their own while others may be useful as part of your workflow on bigger animation projects. Not all are exclusively animation apps and could be used on any production. JotterPad (F/P) The name JotterPad makes this sound like a notepad application but it's ...

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 1)

Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D  which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D...

Moho 14 Released - Still the Best 2D Animation Software for Indy Animators on a Budget

Moho 14 Released. Regular readers know I am a Reallusion, Cartoon Animator advocate through and through. Hands down I would recommend Cartoon Animator 5 first over Lost Marble's Moho 14 to anyone who is just starting in 2D animation, is a team of one, or just needs to animate as quickly as possible. However, feature for feature, Moho is, arguably, the best 2D animation software for the rest of us who can't justify a Toon Boom Harmony , or Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (and even with their applications Moho is very competitive on features). You can get started with Moho Debut for just USD$59.99 which is a cut down version of Moho Pro but it still has the most essential features needed for 2D animation. While Moho Pro is a whopping USD$399.99 (Cartoon Animator, which only has one version, is just USD$149.00) upgrades to new version numbers come down to a quarter of the price at USD$99.00. Even though Reallusion just released features like Motion Pilot Puppet Animation and...

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List - Animation and Video Life

Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/se...

XP-Pen Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Drawing Tablet Review - Portable and Robust Quality Ideal for Sketching on the Go!

XP-Pen's Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Tablet. I've been looking for a more portable drawing solution for a while to work with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A, 8 inch, Android tablet, which is why, when XP-Pen invited me to collaborate on an animation project, I asked about trying their Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Drawing Tablet . Does It Really Work With Android Devices? Having heard many of XP-Pen's mobile drawing displays could be connected to Android devices I, incorrectly, assumed wide compatibility. Unfortunately this isn't the case. There is a list of specific Android devices that work with XP-Pen's Pen Display tablets and none of them are any of the three Samsung devices I own. XP-Pen could definitely improve the compatibility of their displays with more Android devices if they're going to promote that as a feature (or make it more clear to check their device compatibility list before you buy). Also note the additional USB-C to USB-C video cable, needed to...

Krita AI Diffusion - Generative Image AI For Krita is Seriously Useful, Powerful and Free (If You Can Install it Locally)

Generative AI sequence of a woman in a business suit. From sketch to refined image using Krita AI Diffusion - by TET G enerative image AI, where you describe an image with a text prompt to an Artificial Intelligence model and it produces a new image based on your prompt, is gaining a strong hold as a tool for many artists. Krita AI Diffusion brings generative AI image tools right into your favourite free and opensource, graphics editor, Krita. Not only that, if you have a computer with decent specs (and at least 10GB of hard drive space), Krita AI Diffusion is completely free. What If I Don't Have a Powerful Computer? If you're in my situation, with a computer that was around before anyone in the mainstream had even heard of generative AI, you can still access Krita AI Diffusion for free, using a cloud based AI server, Interstice  and 300 tokens, to get you started. Once your initial tokens run out, purchase 5000 more for 10€ (approx US$11.00). Tokens never expire. I would...

"Art Just Needs to be Yours" - Aaron Blaise and Why Generative AI Will Never Replace Art Created and Inspired By Lived, Human Experience

Aaron Blaise. A aron Blaise, acclaimed animator and director of Brother Bear, released a video  on his Art of Aaron Blaise YouTube channel sharing his thoughts on AI generative art and animation and why AI can't actually compete with lived, human experience. Specifically why it can't compete with YOUR lived human experience. I think he makes some really great points that echo my own thinking and reflect why I didn't even blink at the implications of AI generative art when it first started becoming a thing. Watch his video below. Speaking to the video, Aaron talks about the process of being immersed in the creation of art, why that experience is important, and why that can never be replaced by a machine. He goes so far as to say he will always hand draw his animation because that personal act of doing, of creating, is what connects him to the work. To me I think it's all relative and individual preference. I find hand drawing animation tedious. If I could get a machine ...