Thumbnails are important!!

Today I want to talk about the importance of thumbnails. As a comic artist thumbnails always came natural. you draw the lay out of how you want the page to look and once you get it right you can blow it up or redraw it at a larger size and start adding your details to the drawing. Then you tighten it up and whala finished pencils ready for the next step in the process. But in animation Thumbnails can serve both the same and a different purpose. You see in comics I never thought of doing thumbnails as that important cause they can change. Heck if you want and some people do, you can just work rough on your paper and skip the thumbnails all together.

I mean really there isn't a lot of details you can get in on a tiny page layout other than where you are going to put your boxes. But in animation it can be extremely important cause you are planning your actions and your timing all at once. You have to plan your acting out so that it fits the dialog and you have to know how the character will move so you don't waist to much time trying to fix things when you actually start the animation process. Heck I even read that it is important in 3d to other wise the process can take longer. Especially when working pose to pose.

Anyway I saw a wonderful video the other day where Andreas Deja is showing off some of Frank Thomas work. And the thumbnails he did for the scenes he worked on. all of the lined up neatly in a row with the dialog underneath the poses. Andreas goes on to talk about how Thomas often did multiple pages of thumbnails before settling on how he wanted to act out the scene.

If you check out a little website called Animation Meat

you can find a great little resource in the notes section that talks about some of this. Anyway I did some thumb nailing and planning of my own yesterday but I didn't get to post it last night cause I forgot it and left it at work. I planned out the action for my next flour sack animation which I talked about yesterday and I also planned a few story board ideas. anyway I hope you enjoy. I should have some finished animation to post tomorrow.









Just for fun here are some scenes from sward and the stone.