Les métiers du cinéma d’animation
The evolution and diversification of these new digital tools and their generalization led to further consequences:
- Computerization of some segments of the traditional 2D chain, first of all the colour layout;
- The development of subdivisions in each step of 3D, introducing new specializations;
- The emergence of alternative creation / animation techniques (motion capture, procedural animation), generating their own definitions of skills;
- Application to traditional 2D animation of tools, methods, procedures – and thus skills – initially deployed in the field of 3D. This phenomenon is not only a kind of digital transplant. It affects the traditional work division and offers a digital continuity where before the division of tasks prevailed.
As a matter of fact, there is no longer only one dominant production line today, involving a dozen of skills, but several, involving dozens of skills or functions and sometimes new interactions between them. Technological development is obviously continuous and more and more complex, in a way that makes representation more precise, creates more specific tools, and refines specializations. This has obviously consequences in terms of education and employment.
For decades, the production pipeline has experienced only few changes. Implemented in the middle of the 30s, it has formalized the main stages of production, and consequently the associated functions and professions.
This succession of tasks is still relevant concerning “traditional” animation and still provides an understandable grid for other techniques.
The graphics steps (except script and sound design) are schematically composed as follows:
- Preproduction, including creation of models (characters, sets, props), storyboard, layout;
- Production, which is the animation itself (usually key poses and intervals) and execution of the sets;
- post-animation, including cleaning, colour layout, checking and shooting.
The production ends with the post-production phase (image and sound) and is often supported by a specialized service provider.
The tools’ training is at best inadequate, at worst a delusion:
- First, because tools are essentially doomed to rapid obsolescence in a sector highly impregnated by technological development;
- Then because tool is attached to a particular task and does not allow the understanding of the whole creative process of successive steps and the needed plurality of skills;
- Finally, because tools can not create the artistic added value that the potential employers expect.
If training is just teaching where are the commands in software, students will not be able to understand or implement technological changes. This weakens proportionally their employability. It also locks them in a kind of functional myopia that ignores the sense of working together and loses the horizon of creation.
The trivialization of digital tools has also had a pernicious effect: using computer too frequently induces progress by trial / error instead of a clear technical and artistic consciousness of the aims and means. Training must awake and enrich this consciousness. This must be an additional argument to strengthen the artistic culture and general knowledge during the studies.
Good training activities have in common to form to profession. This assumed choice is part of their interest and value. What job(s) are we talking about? There are many, throughout the pipeline, and can be distinguished by the used animation techniques. However, they all are artistic professions requiring high technicality. This double determination identifies the priorities for an efficient training.
This reality also underlies training: it has to promote a comprehensive understanding of the chain of creation and a particular knowledge of each step of production. Therefore, even if students are specialized at the end of their studies, they have to learn all the different stages of a production. This is the condition of the real control of their speciality. It also guarantees that their skills will not be devalued at every technological progress or economic upheaval.
In the studios’ actual practice, the demand for highly specialized or general profiles is directly linked to the production volumes that have to be processed: high volumes involve a highly work division.