| Why Book Keeping is so Important When you animate, that is, actually sit down and do the drawings of your character moving around on the animation paper, you are using the artistic part of your brain. Filling out an exposure sheet is anything but artistic and the function moves to a different part of your brain. This requires a definite brain shift. Animators, in general, prefer to use their artistic side and don’t like shifting. The exposure sheet is vital to the animation process in that it passes on the audio sound track information to the animator, the animator’s sequencing of drawings to the assistant animator and the camera person (or equivalent computer operator). It also passes the information concerning the camera positioning from the layout artist to the animator and then on to the camera operator. If this information is not recorded properly, the next person in line won’t know what to do. If someone handed you a pile of animation drawings and asked you to shoot it as a pencil test without providing an exposure sheet, you wouldn’t know what to do. There may be moments when you would have to guess as to what you are supposed to do. Even if the animator was to have to shoot their own pencil test a week later, it’s possible that the sequencing they originally had in mind might be lost. This can cause a great deal of aggravation, especially when more than one person is involved as is usually the case in any type of larger production. Sadly, many schools don’t emphasize the importance of training students to use these. They largely look at them as a waste of paper. Once in a studio though, exposure sheets are mandatory and the learning curve becomes very steep. It’s better to learn this stuff early rather than later... It’ll save you some embarrassment in the future - trust me. |