How Long Does It Take To Animate An Episode Of The Simpsons

In 1996, The Simpsons passed The Flintstones equally the longest running prime-time animated show. In the xxx-year interim, the tenor of adult cartoons had shifted dramatically: The Simpsons was more caustic and puerile than The Flintstones, a shameless Stone Age remake of hit 1950s sitcom The Honeymooners. What had inappreciably changed was the creative process.

Similar The Flintstones, The Simpsons relied on a large Los Angeles-based writer's room, a coterie of directors, a squad of storyboard and blueprint artists, and dozens of animators. The biggest change in production over 3 decades was only geography; by 1996, The Simpsons had begun outsourcing the final stage of animation to a studio in South korea.

A year subsequently The Simpsons passed The Flintstones, Southward Park premiered on Comedy Central. If The Simpsons was a middle finger to the establishment, the animation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone was a called-for bag of shit. Information technology was cheap and fast to animate with paper cutouts and computer animation, which immune the show to comment on recent events. Cartoons at the time, requiring months of costly animation, needed to be comparably timeless in their story and sense of humour, simply S Park targeted the present.

Thanks to computer animation and the internet, South Park, the shows of Adult Swim, and countless online-only animated shorts, like Homestar Runner, have made animation faster, rougher, and looser. But The Simpsons, to this day, embraces the formula of the past. While an episode of S Park can now be created in a single week by a lean team, The Simpsons has actually added roles and failsafes to its lengthy process. In the world of animated Television receiver, The Simpsons may be the last of its kind, an expensive, loftier-affect, slow-paced production built on formulas dating dorsum to Walt Disney and Hanna-Barbera.

The Simpsons is now in its 27th season. This is how an episode of the programme is made, a detailed, meticulous look at a process that has its bedrock but builds upon information technology with the tools and lessons of the time to come.

Information technology begins with a pitch….

A few weeks before the warm Christmas of Southern California, the writers of The Simpsons — the longest-running sitcom in the U.s., starring everybody's favorite family: Homer, Marge, Lisa, Baby Maggie, and their son Bart — accept a retreat. The remainder of the season, the team breaks scripts in the sterile writers' rooms of the Play a trick on studio lot, merely the creative procedure ever began in a home or the big briefing infinite of a nearby hotel.

Each writer brings a fleshed-out minute or so episode pitch, which they evangelize with gusto to a room full of funny people. They laugh, accept notes, then co-creator Matt Groening, executive producer James L. Brooks, and showrunner Al Jean — a portion of the braintrust from the primeval days — provide feedback.

In an essay on Splitsider about the writing procedure of seasons iii through eight, quondam Simpsons writer and producer Bill Oakley described the pleasance of the retreats:

"Information technology was always a huge treat to see. You had no idea what George Meyer (for instance) was going to say, and all of a sudden it was like this fantastic Simpsons episode pouring out of his rima oris that you lot never dreamed of. And it was like, wow, this is where this stuff comes from.

A lot of times people worked collaboratively, as well. We would work with Conan, back and forth, and we'd exchange ideas and help polish them up. And so everybody would usually come up with two, sometimes three ideas. You'd take fifteen minutes and you'd say your thought in front of everybody — all the writers, Jim Brooks, Matt Groening, Sam Simon when he was even so there, and also the writers assistants who would be at that place taking notes on all this stuff."

Writing a typhoon

After receiving notes and some creative management, an episode's author takes two weeks to pen a outset draft. "Almost all of the writing is done here at the Fox [lot] in one of two rewrite rooms," says Al Jean, who at the time of the interview is deep into product of the show'southward upcoming 27th season. "The ii rooms was a alter that came about effectually flavor ix. We split because we had enough writers, and we could get more than done."

Getting more done with more than tools and more than hands is the throughline of the mod Simpsons production process. At that place are more people doing more jobs with more than failsafes at a higher price on The Simpsons than the majority of — if non all — blithe television set shows.

A writer has four to 6 weeks to complete rewrites. "Nosotros'll go on to rework [the script] six or seven times before the table read," says Al Jean. "Jim and I will give notes. We rewrite it."

In those late night television commercials that promise to make everyone a screenwriter, the script is oft called the blueprint of our favorite television shows and films, a term that implies an exacting, blest, top level didactics which the rest of the dozens if not hundreds if non thousands of artists involved obey. That notion — as anyone who has seen a summer blockbuster or network sitcom tin tell — is imitation. The script is vulnerable, malleable, and subject to abiding scrutiny. There's a blueprint for animated shows, simply it comes later. The completed draft is like a guide through the woods, gear up to exist supplemented, revised, or outright redrawn if demand be.

(An excerpt from Judd Apatow's The Simpsons script, The Daily Animate being)

The table read

Each Thursday of production, the cast, producers, and writers come across for a tabular array read of the latest script. Some of the cast attends the tabular array read, others telephone into the room. Occasionally, voice histrion Chris Edgerly, who has handled "boosted voices" for the show since 2011, volition fill in for one of the leads. "It'south very unusual that they're all at the table at the aforementioned time at present," says Jean. "People's schedules got busier, people really moved out of Los Angeles. It's the normal sort of entropy of life, you know."

Despite being to hundreds of tabular array reads, Al Jean yet tin can't get comfortable. He describes a critical setting in which the script is judged on its creative value, but also under the duress of external forces. A cell phone might go off or an player might be fighting a cold, and the read's vibe shifts. "Last week," says Jean, "in that location was a truck backing up, that came in the middle, and that was distracting people. The table read is my number 1 unpleasant feel."

Voice recording

On the Monday following a tabular array read, the cast performs the vocalism recording, typically at the studio in LA. The actors and actresses record on separate tracks, rather than together — a common method for capturing voice-over. "It'south funny," says Jean. "I read a review in The AV Club where they said about a certain show in that location was dandy interaction between two people, and they never met. They didn't record in the same place. I'k glad it worked, but in that location was no physical connection."

Management

As work transitions from script to animation, the episode is offered to a director, who, if they accept, is given buying of production and blitheness responsibilities. "[The office is] sort of alike to a TV managing director who takes the script of a testify and turns it into an episode," says Jean. "Except our director has to create everything. [... The manager] takes the audio runway, supervises the design, the motions, and what we call the acting of the animation, and [supervises] the whole visual aspect of [the episode]."

Both Jean, who serves every bit story liaison throughout production of the series as a whole, and each episode'due south director piece of work in tandem to shepherd the script through the animation process.

(The Simpsons storyboard)

Storyboard

Co-ordinate to veteran Simpsons storyboard artist Luis Escobar, the animation phase of a new season volition brainstorm between February and April, depending on the status of scripts and other product variables. Some animators have a hiatus betwixt seasons; others periodically transition directly from one season to the next.

An episode's animation begins with storyboarding, a process that contains multiple steps, and ultimately produces the materials a South Korean blitheness studio named Akom will use to complete the episode.

"Our job," says Escobar, "is to do all the thinking, planning, and [design] of the evidence. This is what it'southward going to eventually look like. That's what a storyboard is: merely a blueprint of the episode."

An episode is assigned to a pocket-size group of initial storyboard artists at The Simpsons' piece of work space in Southern California. According to an extensive series of posts on Escobar's blog about the animation of the show, the board is reviewed, revised, and then sent to Fox for another round of notes. Alongside the storyboard, an additional squad of designers is assigned props, characters, and backgrounds unique to the episode, all of which undergo a similar series of internal and external drafts and reviews.

In early seasons, storyboarding was done entirely on paper. In mid-season, the show switched to animatics — a series of images paired with the voice rail — that would exist edited on tapes. Relatively recently, storyboards transitioned to digital, in which all of the art and audio is uploaded to an online hub attainable anywhere from computers and smart devices.

Jean says he tin now edit audio from his phone instead of visiting an editing bay, and video effects can be made with a few digital tweaks, instead of requiring portions of the board to be entirely redrawn.

(The Simpsons storyboard)

Story reel

Update: The story reel role was recently removed from The Simpsons production process. Today, story reel and storyboard processes are combined, leading directly to storyboard revisions. What follows is a pace that formerly existed within the creative process.

The storyboard — revised from Fox's notes and accompanied past the vocalism rails — is screened to story reel artists, who are each assigned a portion of the episode. The piece of work of the story reel artists, a mix of character and background animators, tin range from polish to triage, depending on the storyboard's quality upon arrival. Every bit Escobar explains, the reel artists add additional characters' poses, clean backgrounds, and incorporate notes from the director, who at this phase is refining the limerick of the shots.

As work is completed, the artists once more upload to a server, and the editor inserts the fleshed-out segments in place of their respective portions of the storyboard until the entire storyboard is replaced with a completed story reel.

The two phases audio quite similar, but they serve dissimilar functions. Where the storyboard is somewhere between a picture book and the flip book, the story reel visualization ideally plays like a barebones, blackness-and-white version of the bodily episode.

In one case the reel is gear up, shareholders — Al Jean and the producers, writers, and episode director — encounter at Play a trick on for a screening. "Information technology's an interesting state of affairs," writes Escobar, "considering anybody in the room potentially knows all the jokes and how they should play out."

Shareholders take notes, hash out what works and doesn't, and so pitch additions or changes they'd similar fabricated. After a short break, the team reconvenes and watches the episode again, this time stopping and starting the reel to discuss how those changes will be incorporated, sketch crude stills of what the changes should expect like, and nail down any other tweaks to exist made past the storyboard revisionist.

Storyboard revisions

Storyboard revisionists become roughly two weeks to revise or outright create new scenes, following notes from the previous screening. Because hundreds of hours of animation and design take already gone into the storyboard, revisionists try to salvage parts from scenes that have been cut by repurposing them inside the revisions.

The revisionist must also make sure the changes flow with the rest of the story reel.On his blog, Escobar provides an example:

"Oh no! Homer needs to be on the other side of the room past the end of the sequence, but he no longer has that line that made him walk over there to brainstorm with! How in blazes is he suppose to become to the other side to evangelize his joke? CUT to a quick reaction shot of Bart or Marge. Cutting back to Homer who is magically in the other side of the room. He must of walked over there while he was off screen. Problem solved."

(Flim-flam)

Layout

Co-ordinate to Escobar, few American animated shows still practise the layout process, allow alone do and then in house.

Layout, he says, is the closest phase to what the layperson imagines animation to be — that archetype image of a Disney cartoonist fanning paper back and forth, sketching characters into move. At The Simpsons, layout is a digitized version of that method. Each animator — divided into graphic symbol and groundwork artists — uses Pencil Cheque Pro to breathing roughly xv scenes for an episode, making as accurate a delineation of the final product as possible. While storyboards are crude, layout is refined.

Characters are drawn to match a model sheet (above) — a guide of established poses and expressions for the show's characters. Whenever Homer shouts with joy, the style sail explains, his oral fissure opens in just this mode.

Arguably the nearly important function of the layout artist is imbuing the static storyboard images with performance. When Homer cracks a beer, Lisa plays the saxophone, or Sideshow Bob steps on a rake, the layout artist decides precisely how that will look. In some capacity, they double as actors, using the storyboard and voiceover as direction, so emoting through the residents of Springfield as they experience fit.

The acting, the poses, the backgrounds, props, emotions — everything the story layout artists draw will exist directly incorporated in the final "clean line" version of the episode animated by the studio in South korea.

Along with functioning, layout is when shots are framed, as they would exist with a camera in the real earth, exactly equally they volition appear in the finished episode.

Story layout is the longest and most detailed stride, and tin can take anywhere from a month to a month and a half, depending on the complexity of the episode and whether or not other episodes are in production. "[It'due south where the director has] the most control over what happens," says Escobar. "[As a storyboard creative person,] I hear the words 'I'll take intendance of it in layout' a lot from directors."

(The Simpsons exposure canvas)

The timer

As soon every bit a grapheme layout artist finishes a scene, they evangelize to the timer. A timer'due south office is to write exposure sheets, the notes for Akom on how to interpret and use the work of the story layout artist. If the layout artist'southward work is the wood for your new bookshelf, the exposure sheet is the didactics booklet. And like any furniture instructions, it's indecipherable to anybody but the experts.

The part is called "timer," because in the by, the timer bankrupt downwards all dialogue and animation, assigning tiny pieces to specific frames — or times — of the episode. Each line on the exposure sheet represents a frame or group of frames of film. To the right of each frame number, the timer writes what needs to be animated and how.

The Simpsons is animated at 24 frames per second — every 2d, 24 images appear on the screen — which is to say thousands of drawings tin can compose a single scene. To break down all of those drawings, the timer writes dialogue phonetically, and the established mouth shapes that friction match each sound, onto the exposure sheet.For example, Homer saying his own name would look something similar Hhh-ooh-ohm-me-er-Si-im-ps-suh-hnn, each audio running downwardly the page alongside their assigned frame numbers.

The timer would also include references to Homer's grapheme model sheet, and any specific accents or flourishes that needed to exist made to his face up or body. And the timers, of which there are 2 on The Simpsons' team, do this for every graphic symbol in every scene.

(For those fascinated by the most unusual and overlooked position, former Simpsons director Chuck Sheetz created a tutorial on how to write classic exposure sheet, which should assist you lot picture the timing in action.)

Escobar says that with the move to digital, grapheme layout artists often "crude time" their scenes by creating a digital animatic, using the frames they've fatigued to produce a very rough animation of a scene. The timer takes that animatic and documents the visuals onto the exposure canvass, calculation whatever touches the animatic doesn't include. Heart blinks, finger twiddles, fidgeting — there's no detail too small for the timer to add to the exposure canvass, ensuring the team in LA maximum control over what the South Korean animation studio delivers.

Scene planning

If a scene is particularly complicated, it'south sent to Scene Planning, an internal team formed after The Simpsons Movie, that digitally animates elaborate scenes. The really flashy, fast-moving, big-calibration scenes that feature a bevy of characters: they ordinarily get through hither.

Impress

"In that location's a specific position held by a production guy chosen Peter Gave," says Escobar. "His chore is to take all of the digital graphic symbol layout scenes, along with the timing and everything [else], and he prints them out on paper and those are shipped to [Due south] Korea."Escobar laughs. "When nosotros do character layouts, [fifty-fifty though its art is digital] we are restricted to the field sizes of actual paper."

"They're making sure there aren't any mistakes."

Checkers

Ii checkers review everything — all of the graphic symbol layout artwork, the exposure sheet, and the printed materials — and they make sure that every slice of art and line of direction matches on the exposure sheet.

"They're basically the spell checkers," says Escobar. "They're checking the grammar [of the blitheness]. They're making sure that there aren't any mistakes." If they observe an inconsistency or a missing portion for artwork, they render to the manager and get the error fixed.

Once every portion of the episode is checked and approved, information technology's shipped to South Korea.

(Fox)

Akom

The role of Akom, a South Korean animation studio located west of Seoul, is to breathing all of the frames between the drawings in the final reel delivered by the layout artists. Say the layout artists animated 20 frames for a three-second scene. At 24 frames per 2d, the sequence is 72 frames long. The animation studio would demand to exercise a clean line version of the original 20 frames and the 52 frames of animation between them. The process is called overseas consign marketplace piece of work; Akom is one of many OEM studios in its nation.

According to a 2005 report by China Daily, Akom has handled the more or less final and unquestionably significant phase of animation on The Simpsons for nearly 25 years. At the time of China Daily's written report, roughly 120 animators and technicians translated the storyboard and layouts into the completed rough edit of an episode, a process that takes about three months, depending on the episode'south complexity and position within the season. The study cites OEM animators making a third of Usa counterparts, though it's unclear how pay has inverse over the past decade.

Despite Akom's position in the animation wing of the bear witness, Escobar couldn't really speak to any other details about the work done at the animation studio. Escobar compared the aforementioned layout process in Los Angeles to the male person animators of Disney'south golden era, only a paragraph in the Communist china Daily report echoes Disney's former band of women inkers and painters that put the finishing touches on the studio's classics: "On ane flooring, a staff of mostly immature women sit down at computers as they browse animation cells, add colours and put the final technical touches to the show." Akom is the magic; the all-but-invisible twist that brings everything together.

Final review, retakes, and final edit

Akom ships a completed, full colour version of the episode from South Korea back to the studio in Los Angeles, where it's edited, so shown to the shareholders, who over again give notes for revisions. With the bear witness budgeted air appointment, this is where a few topical jokes are sometimes added.

If there's time, the notes are handled by Akom. If there isn't time, the revisions are handled by the retakes sectionalisation, a skeleton crew of 2 or three artists who can perform all functions of the blitheness process: storyboards, character layout, clean upward, animation, and final timing.

"It gets actually hectic," says Escobar, "because [retakes division has] to bargain with the actual air dates. At that place have been situations or circumstances where the retakes finish the mean solar day or the night earlier [an episode] arrogance, that sort of matter where they're similar at work, actually cleaning the stuff up and coloring information technology."

Finally, an editor works with Al Jean to contain the retakes into the episode, does a final pass on the show'due south colors, music is added — a process so substantive and singled-out, information technology warrants an explainer unto its own — sound is mixed, the episode is wrapped, and information technology's sent to Fox where the new episodes air on Sunday nights.

The process doesn't so much start again, as it continues. Every bit the production ramps, multiple episodes are in development at once, with every stride of the process constantly overlapping. Y'all empathize why the writers — and everyone else involved — would need a retreat.

(Flim-flam)

Looking back

When does Al Jean know an episode will go far safely through the process?

"Usually at the mix," he says, "when everything'southward all set. That'southward pretty pleasant. The thing is, in that location's always the potential that things are not coming together the style you expected. They can fall apart at the first audio assembly. They can autumn apart at the animatic. They tin can fall apart in the color screening. Yous're never really off the hook."

"The outset episode ever done," Jean says, "was by someone who didn't quite become the show. It needed a lot of rework. It was held back 'til maybe the terminal episode of the start flavour. It's pretty well known it was very disappointing to everybody. Fortunately the second episode, 'Bart the Genius,' directed by David Silverman, was very good. The bear witness was originally going to debut in the autumn of '89, but because the kickoff [episode] didn't work, we decided to wait 'til Christmas so the episode directed by Silverman could be the get-go [airing in January, a lilliputian nether a month after The Simpsons' Christmas special, 'Simpsons Roasting on an Open up Fire'].

Nosotros never, other than that, take taken a color and non aired it. We've done heavy rewrites sometimes at colors. We've never even thrown a script out after a [table] read. Mayhap a couple of times we should've, but we never have."

Update October 28th, 1:00AM ET: Originally the acronym OEM was described every bit "original equipment manufacturing" based on reporting from Cathay Daily. Information technology has since been corrected to "overseas export market place."

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/25/9457247/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview

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