How To Write A Screenplay For A Cartoon

By Melisa Marzett 

Even though technically animation film is accomplished at high level a boring screenplay might jack up the total work. This is why it is highly important to create an image screen played interestingly.

From outside, it may seem that work upon a screenplay is a profoundly creative process. However, even film writers of international fame keep specific working procedure.

Today you are going to find out about a technique, which will help to increase productivity and quality of your creative work upon a screenplay.

Idea searching for a cartoon

Idea is the base of a screenplay or a plot of an animated movie. Despite the idea or a story may be told in two-three sentences, the general result will depend on how entertaining it is.

No idea? No Cartoon?

On one hand, development of the idea requires some creativity from you. On the other hand, even professionals apply for help of outside informational sources. You may watch famous comics, read anecdotes or people’s jokes.

It does not follow that you create your idea as a copy of something what already exists, as a minimum it is enough to integrate different jokes in order to come up with a version of your own.

Create a scheme of a cartoon

Now you may go for development of a scheme of your cartoon, which is a set of draft pictures. Put on a wall, a scheme out of separate drafts will look like comics in accordance with which one may understand sense of what is going on.

From the sidelines, it might seem that schematic sketches is already a stage of animation and not a screenplay. Nevertheless, having such a scheme will help a lot in your further work over description of separate scenes and creation of the entire screenplay.

Furthermore, having a scheme in front of your eyes, it will be easier to add new and edit those thoughts you already have on creation your entertaining story.

Stage of a screenplay writing

Now you may start writing a screenplay itself, work upon which in fact is detailed description of each scene. One scene includes unchanged number of characters on a changeless ground. In other words, appearance of a new character or change of entourage brings a new scene to life.

Before start working, you are to do one more preparatory move – take the time to ensure and pay attention to order of scenes in fixed sequence. Thought over sequence will provide with clearance and harmony while watching a cartoon.

Description of a scene

Every scene should have a detailed description about surrounding ground where an action is going on. Your task is to specify all the important details, which assign an atmosphere of things. Specify where all the characters are located relatively to each other and all their further moves.

Dialogues

It is needless to say that you will write the dialogues between your characters on your own. However, you need to tell about all the accompanied details of goings-on. If someone pauses, smiles or moves – describe the way a character does it. Your task is to as much detail as possible show moves of your heroes in every scene.

Description of camera angle

When it comes to animation, a camera angel relatively to characters is of paramount important just like in cinematography. For example, a shot fixed on a character`s eyes fulfills a totally different task than a shot fixed on a face of the character.

A camera angle in animated movie is a thereby hangs a tale and deserves another article. Your task is to precisely sometimes even up to an angle to specify an angle for each camera angle.

Look after the duration of a cartoon

In a greater or lesser degree, a duration of a cartoon will be determined by a creative idea upon which you work from the very beginning. Nevertheless, a screenplay influences a lot onto the duration. Why is it important? There is a huge difference between creating of a one-minute animated video and 1 hour animated movie and this difference is about number of artist-animators. If in the former case, one animator is going to be enough, in the later case you are going to need a team of 10 animators the least. This is why, working upon a screenplay do not forget about technical resources, look after the duration of your cartoon.

Revision of your screenplay

A revision of a screenplay is as full-fledged stage of your screenplay just like its development. At first, you need to re-read one more time everything and to remove what is unnecessary or repeating. Any text, which does not bring any value to a movie or a cartoon, is to be deleted. Professional movie writers on the stage of revision may make a volume of a text twice smaller keeping the quality and even improving it.

Further, you share the pre-prepared screenplay with your friends and relatives preferably if these people belong to different circle of contacts. You are going to be closer to objective evaluation of your work from people with different worldviews. Ask your friends and relatives to give you an honest opinion about your work and write down all the notes.

Receiving a feedback from reviewers, you may edit your screenplay roundly.

And only now, you are ready to bring out.

About the author: Working for smartessayrewriter.com Melisa Marzett is able to write on any topic really. She is up for depicting any discussion making it witty and fun because this is the way she is by nature. She is curious and smart beyond her years and it is vividly seen through her writings.