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Nystrom, and may NOT be published or distributed in any form. You may only
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How an animated cartoon is made

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Back in 1972, when I was working on "The Kidnapping", the project that was to
become my first successful, "official" film, I made a little brochure about the
production process. The brochure's pages are reproduced here. I hope you find
something useful in them. Many of the subjects are also covered on my other pages,
so do browse my site!

The story is developed as a "storyboard", a giant-sized comic strip.

As the story develops, new drawings are added to the storyboard.
Since the drawings are pinned onto a cork board, it is easy to make

alterations to the story.

The backgrounds are painted on cardboard

or celluloid with tempera, acrylic or
sometimes even oil paints. The
backgrounds are the "landscape" in which
the characters are moving, and they are
often made into large-size panoramas, "pan
backgrounds", considerably larger than the
picture format. The camera follows the
characters as they move across the
background. This background is painted in
a format suitable for a vertical camera
move.

Before the tedious drawing work can begin, the dialogue is

recorded on tape and then transferred onto magnetic film. This
filmstrip is analyzed in a sound reader, and every syllable is
registered on an "exposure sheet" - necessary to obtain perfect
synchronization between sound and picture. The sheet is divided
into many rows, each corresponding to one frame of film. Music
and sound effects aren't usually recorded until after the film is
finally cut, and an optical sound track is then prepared and printed
onto the film, see below.

Now the real work begins. Every

second of finished film consists
of 24 frames, requiring 12 to 24
drawings, depending upon the
speed of movement - faster
movements need more drawings
per second, slower moves can be
animated with less, with three or
even more frames shot of every
drawing. The difference between
two successive frames can be
almost negligible, an arm moves
a fraction of a millimeter, for instance. The animated drawings are
filmed on black & white film to check the smoothness of the
movements (this is called a pencil test).

I
n order to superimpose the animated characters on the
backgrounds, the drawings are copied onto transparent sheets of
celluloid or plastic, usually called "cels". The lines are traced in
ink, and the colors are filled in on the reverse side of the cels, in
order to get completely even colors when viewed from the front.

The filming is carried out on an

"animation stand". Sometimes the picture
is divided into several levels (4 on this
"multiplane" stand), separated by about
30 cm, or 12". The fore- middle- and
backgrounds of the landscape are on
different levels, so a certain 3dimensional effect is achieved, especially
when the camera or background is
moving.
To make an 8-minute animated cartoon you need:
7000 sheets of paper
7000 sheets of celluloid
150 sheets of cardboard
50 felt-tip pens
10 crow-quill pens
50 pencils
5 erasers
20 brushes
10 liters (2 1/2 gal.) of paint
2.5 dl (1/2 pint) of india ink
1200 meters (3600 ft) b&w film 240 meters (720 ft) color film
and of course a LOT OF INSPIRATION

Here are some of the backgrounds I painted for this film:

For more info on some of my films, see my Filmography.