Exposure Sheets-Animation's Past time.....

Before the era of Non-Linear Editing Software suites, before the era of animation software timelines, before the era of CGI Graph Editors, there was a paper timeline used by the old timers in animation where the way to animate a character on the beat was to follow directions on pieces of paper next to the drawing.

That paper is called the EXPOSURE SHEET. 

To many a modern animator, especially if you only animate on Maya, Blender, or Unreal, this looks all confusing. This is because these exposure sheets were made during a time when Hand-Drawn, Frame-by-Frame 2D Animation was still dominant.

While 2D Animation is still around, nowadays, it's all puppet-rigs and WACOM CINTIQS but even if it's still hand-drawn, there's no need for paper EX Sheets since you can just scrub on the timeline and see how things are going for in TOONBOOM. The same goes for the ONION SKIN that animation software suites like TOONBOOM have.

Sure, TOONBOOM still has the option to replicate the original EX SHEET system but if you animate strictly by soundtrack, intuition, onion skins, timelines, and keyframes, what's the point of the EX Sheet in today's animation?

So how does an EX SHEET work?

Well it depends on the formatting but regardless, it's broken up by these things:

01. SCENE

"No... Not like up here..... SCENE is a little different on EX Sheets. The way it works is it's to indicate what scene the animator is working on."

Uh... Thank you Charlie and Vaggie... Now let's continue.

02. ACTION

Uh.... sort of what this GIF is insinuating. But really, in order to pull this off, you actually have to write down to the animator what the character is doing. In this GIF's case, Bugs Bunny has just outwitted a BASEBALL LUMMOX and is doing his victory skip.

Some write down just the tempos and timing on how to pull this off, 

Others draw a rough representation of said action.

Next we have :

03. Dialogue

"Can't find my LOAD OF BULL gif at the moment so here's my attempt at subtitles.

The THAT'S A LOAD OF BULL line is from the ADV Dub."

Putting dialogue in the mouths of animated characters isn't a load of bull Misato but getting the vowels right for the animators sure is but hey, we signed up for this job so make the most of it.

You may notice on the EX sheets of many a show or movie that there's letters scrawled on the boxes. Those are to help the artists time the dialogue to the character. 

Sort of like how lyrics are constructed and worded out on a sheet music.

Except, these lyrics are in Latin...

In animation, the dialogue is pre-recorded because if the dialogue is recorded first, it makes synchronization much easier for the animators.

In the olden days, the dialogue was mostly recorded on acetate film but I guess a separate track just for the animators was distributed on Phonograph Vinyl records

Which then transitioned to magnetic tape Compact Cassettes around the 70s to the early 2000s.

And finally to today's system where we use .WAV files in our computer..... 

or in the case of an animation studio, their Network Servers.

Because of the nature of timelines in editing as well as all of this, the dialogue can seem cryptic for the unsuspected but the words are there. It's just that the building blocks of the dialogue are broken up so that they can be timed, just like the lyrics on a music sheet.

04. Layers

Notice the numbers on the top headers? That's to indicate the number of cel layers used for the animation.

Yes, regardless of how cheap or how expensive the production is, cel layers are frugal for the production of animation.

It can range from things such as background elements moving in parallax for the multiplane camera Both literal or in software.

Other times, it's for separate body layers for a character so one body part moves but the other is stationary.

"Tenchi help. Some jackass at photo department stole my cel layer for my body and now I'm just a floating head with incomplete acrylic paint for hair. "

Alright Ryoko. You'll be fine. I'll help you find your missing body cel layer after I finish this blogpost.

Anyway, what do the numbers and arrows mean on that part of the EX Sheet?

It's to tell the Camera Department how to move the layers of artwork on the overhead camera frame-by-frame.

Or in the case of people working on ToonBoom or any animation software suite: KEYFRAMES.

Speaking about the camera department...

05. Camera Instructions

Back in the olden days, the camera doesn't move. It's actually the layers of artwork that move.

Nowadays, it's a matter of choosing the old style of camera movement or moving the virtual camera on your software. Regardless, the camera principles are still the same.

The instructions are given to someone assigned to operate the layers of artwork on the camera.

On a standard downfacing camera, it's just one person moving the artwork and pressing a remote button for the camera shutter.

But for the multiplane camera, it can require 5 people to operate the camera. 

We have 4 People working on the layers of animation...

while the 5th person operates the overhead camera. Doing things like checking how the scene is working out on the viewfinder

as well as operating that same remote shutter button.

The instructions can range on how many inches the artwork should move on the pegs, what's the best DX percentage for certain things such as shadows.

"Kind of like the shadow of my body here if I had it...."

Yes, Ryoko. Kind of like your body shadow. That's set by the camera's Double Exposure setting to set the opacity of the shadow. In your case Ryoko, your shadow's Double Exposure is set somewhere around 40% opacity.

What's double exposure?

It's the part where you shoot twice under the camera. The scene would be set with the shutter set at a certain exposure setting while that same scene would be shot again but with normal settings.

In your case Ryoko, the first exposure would give us a big ass blob for that shadow of yours but when the second pass comes in without your shadow, the operator opens up that shutter to shoot that percentage of the pass that contained the shadow and voila, nice opacity for a shadow.

The same thing can be done on Toom Boom, just that the tech is different and uses Node Graphs instead of physical camera exposure tech.

Other elements include what the scene is all about, how long the footage is for that day of shooting, the production number, who the animators and assistants are, the scene numbers, the sheet numbers, etc.

Oh and it doesn't end here. Sometimes even when all that is finished, the scene could for final evaluation and something totally gets screwed up. 

Things don't always go to plan and can result in a retake order.

There are multiple things that can result in a retake order but the one thing I find interesting is the original camera work done on DISNEY'S SNOW WHITE. I know this because it was on the DIAMOND EDITION Blu-Ray I was borrowing from my local library.

Anyway, what happened with this particular scene in SNOW WHITE?

Well according to Don Hahn in that particular featurette, a scene which he described is the one where Prince Charming is singing to Snow White, after all that hard work shooting the various passes underneath that camera, the goddamn thing had to be reshot on film because the first batches of film to come back from the developers for that scene suffered....

a NEGATIVE DEFECT.

Nobody wants to see DEFECTS in their NEGATIVES 

so that scene had to be shot again. But the real kick in the balls was that it had to be done at breakneck speed because the retake order was dated 12/15/1937. 

That would be Wednesday December 15th 1937. 

And the film's deadline was....

Tuesday December 21st 1937! 

HOLY CRAP!!!!!

Normally a film would have to be delayed to allow these things to be fixed in the long run but not for Snow White. Walt had to prove to his early naysayers at the time he could turn in a triumph so a delay was out of the question. The scene was reshot, reedited on a MOVIOLA, threaded in the projector of the CARTHAY CIRCLE THEATER, and everybody in HOLLYWOOD declared the film a triumph in animation. And it still resonates with us nearly 87 years later.

And don't think that digital film is immune to retake orders because that still happens. Whether the camera CMOS has bad pixels, the animation vector art gets corrupted, you didn't save your project, or worse your files weren't backed up in the event of an accidental deletion or hard drive failure, retake orders can still happen in digital form.

I was bored. Didn't have any rants, ramblings, or MAYA related tips to talk about and I had work at the airport the day I posted this so I needed something educational in this blog so EXPOSURE SHEETS and what they're used for was something I needed to discuss. Also back in March 2024, I've done a minor change to my bedroom art studio where I moved my old desk back but as a desk for use as my physical drawing table as well as my food table. 

But the drawing aspect is what really matters because I'm considering drawing my caricatures as well as artwork that won't be done on my WACOM TABLET. 

As for the Dialogue bit, I was referring to the Western Style of Animation.

With the exception of AKIRA and GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES, Anime just does the animation first, then records the voices, even in the original Japanese.