How to Write a Script for an Animated Series

What is the difference between writing an animated screenplay and a live-activeness screenplay — and what should screenwriters know near pursuing a career in blitheness writing?

Writing feature screenplays and pursuing a career as a feature screenwriter is a pretty straightforward journey when you lot suspension it down.

Just pursuing a career in animation adds additional elements to the journey. The scripts need to exist slightly different, and the career arroyo has boosted nuances that you need to be aware of.

Here nosotros offer a uncomplicated guide to becoming informed and agreement those nuances.

How to Get Your Start in Blitheness

Consider Becoming an Animator

There'southward an inescapable truth that trying to sell blitheness screenplays on spec (writing them under spec ulation that y'all'll sell them to someone) can be much more difficult than trying to sell a spec script intended to exist a live-activity characteristic.

Blitheness houses commonly develop blithe projects from within. And those projects are commonly developed by animators. Animation is an animator'south medium. In that location'southward no escaping that.

So, earlier you brainstorm to pursue a career in writing for blitheness, consider trying to go an animator yourself. That's the easiest and most direct way into animation writing.

You tin pursue a degree in animation or estimator graphics.
Disney offers college students internship programs and offers entry-level growth opportunities for contempo grads and those new to the animation industry.
And there are many other opportunities online likewise.

Simply don't worry, non-animators take succeeded in blitheness writing too.

Pixar Animator

Aphton Corbin, Story Artist at Pixar

Jumping From Live-Action to Animation

Yes, beingness an animator helps you ten-fold when it comes to writing blithe screenplays that get produced. All of the Pixar titans (Unkrich, Lasseter, Docter, Stanton) began in animation earlier writing Pixar'southward biggest hits. Only that doesn't mean that existence an animator is the just road in.

Subsequently graduating from higher, Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt showtime started out as a script reader for production companies. He and so became the full-time assistant to Hollywood role player Matthew Broderick. In 1999, he decided that he wanted to pursue screenwriting total-time.

Arndt wrote and revised the script for Little Miss Sunshine over the course of a yr. He got the script to a producer and ended up selling it for $250,000. The script was so in development for a few years until it was finally produced, leading to critical acclamation, box office success, and an Oscar for Arndt.

Pixar and so hired Arndt to write the screenplay for Toy Story 3 , based on Andrew Stanton's handling. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

If writing for animation is your dream, just you lot don't want to become an animator to do then, in that location are options. Y'all can print an animation firm with live-activity success or with stiff animation and live-action scripts as samples.

Toy Story 3

'Toy Story 3'

Why Should Your Script Be Animated?

Too many screenwriters take sent screenplays out to animation studios without the initial intention of creating a story bred for animation. Animation isn't a fallback or secondary pick for the marketing of your screenplay.

Y'all demand to explore what animation tin bring to your screenplays and stories. Yous need to ask yourself why your script should exist animated — and why you should approach blitheness houses and producers. I of the first things they volition ask y'all is: "Why should this be an blithe film?"

The all-time genre options for animation include:

Fantasy
Science Fiction
Children Book Adaptations
Comic Adaptations

Blitheness tin can bring these types of stories to life in a manner that alive-action tin can't, fifty-fifty in this twenty-four hour period and age of CGI. The medium allows creative and stylistic visuals and imagery to come to life — visuals and imagery that wouldn't translate equally well to alive-activity. And some that just wouldn't exist possible in live-activeness.

In that location has to be a reason, though. There needs to be a catching pitch for why your story is perfect for animation. Animation can't only exist a marketing pick for your screenplay.

Screenplay Formatting: Live-Activeness vs. Animation

The initial animation screenplay format is no different from what yous would see with a live-action feature script.

Yous utilize the same core elements of screenplay format:

Scene Heading
Scene Clarification
Graphic symbol Names for Dialogue
Dialogue

And you tin can expect the same with writing blithe TV series episodes as well.

Notwithstanding, there are bones nuances that you should consider adding to your blithe screenplays.

Visually-Enhanced Character Description

This harkens back to showing u.s. why your script should exist an animated feature. When you lot introduce your characters within the screenplay, seek out opportunities to add a little visual flair.

Perchance your character has:

Big eyes
Exaggerated big ears
An extremely small frame
Vibrantly colorful clothes

It'southward good to have just a line or two of clarification that screams animation. You don't want to overstep your bounds, though. It's an animator'due south medium. The animators are going to take your script to the animation-level with their own character designs, but y'all can offering a couple of broad strokes to work from.

Scene Description Free of Bounds

The slap-up thing about writing for animation is that anything is possible. Y'all no longer accept to worry about the constraints of alive-activity features, where you tin (and should) worry almost having too many exotic locations, unrealistic action sequences, etc.

Get basics. Explore and create vibrant worlds. Put your characters through hoops and hurdles that live-activeness wouldn't allow. Create worlds that scream for animation and excite animators. Give them a reason not just to desire to take the challenge of bringing such a unique and original earth to life — make them feel the need to practise it by creating something so unique and special.

Fantastical Props and Vehicles

Don't be afraid to be weird and strange. Make full your world with things nosotros haven't seen before — or dissimilar and exaggerated variations of what nosotros have seen. The animators tin create whatever you envision.

A normal live-activeness script would merely say auto . Yous tin can have that to the side by side level with an additional line or two of description to capture an enhanced visual.

The LEGO Movie 2

What to Go along in Heed as You lot Arts and crafts Your Story

Read A LOT of Blitheness Scripts

If you want to know how to write a bang-up animated script, one of the best ways to learn is to read corking animated scripts.

What are your favorite blithe films? Find those scripts and read them! Do a lot of them come from the same production company? Detect out what that item company'south philosophy is on storytelling, whether information technology'south Pixar, Laika Studios, or Studio Ghibli. (Quick Annotation: Pixar isveryoutspoken nearly its approach to telling stories and Hayao Miyazaki is too incredibly generous with his insight into Studio Ghibli'south storytelling method.)

Conversely, though, don't simply read smashing scripts -- read the less than not bad ones, too. Diagnose what these scripts lack. Is the dialogue unnatural? Are the characters apartment and one-dimensional? Is the exposition as well heavy-handed? Are the plot points unorganized and difficult to follow? Agreement how other screenplays miss the mark can really help yous avoid missing it yourself.

If you want to read some great animated screenplays, check out the TSL Script Library where you can download and read them for FREE! Here are a few to get you started.

Determine Who Your Audience Is

You're not going to pitch an animated serial or feature in the line of Family Guy or Sausage Party to Pixar or Disney. And you too need to understand how difficult an adult-oriented blitheness project will be to get off the ground.

The major animation houses like Pixar, Disney, and Dreamworks have a brand. They're not going to all of a sudden whorl with developed-oriented animation.

And so, whether you want to create four-quadrant family movies, animated children series, anime-level action/horror, or adult-oriented animated serial, go in knowing what your demographics are and do your all-time to study them and cater to those audiences.

Explore the Common Themes

A few years back, Vox created a grid to showcase the themes found in near Pixar movies.

Themes are important in any storytelling. They can be adult early in the writing procedure and used as a compass to guide the story and characters. They can be inserted during the writing process to better bear upon and engage an audience.

These above principle themes found in Pixar films prove that because they are so widely used throughout their itemize of films, and because Pixar has been then successful as a result, screenwriters should take note and consider exploring such themes within their own animated screenplays.

Disney and Dreamworks have embraced similar themes as well. The best matter that screenwriters can practise is know and sympathize the animation realm. In that location are common successful themes that exist. And those themes are successful for a reason. Don't be afraid to encompass them.

Characteristic a World We Haven't Seen Earlier

Nosotros've seen toys coming to life, firm pets wreaking havoc, and zoo animals exploring the city.

If you lot want to succeed in blitheness writing, you're going to need to give united states something new. If you desire to entice blitheness studios to take notice of your writing, you're going to demand to go to extremes to stand up apart from their own animators and the remainder of the screenwriters trying to pause through just like you.

The easiest manner to engage them is to offering something they haven't seen before. And you practice that by exploring worlds that blitheness hasn't yet.

Before Toy Story , we never experienced the concept of a world where our toys come up to life when we're not looking.

Before Shrek , nosotros never thought about a world where all of the fairy tale characters and creatures we grew upwardly with lived in the same realm together.

Before Within Out , we never imagined a world where our emotions are living and animate characters.

What'due south and so special about the world in your blithe screenplay? Are you giving us more of the aforementioned, or are nosotros going to be transported to a earth nosotros never thought to imagine? That is the secret sauce to whatever successful animated picture show or series.

Ken Miyamoto has worked in the film industry for nearly two decades, most notably as a studio liaison for Sony Studios and so as a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures.

He has many studio meetings nether his belt as a produced screenwriter, meeting with the likes of Sony, Dreamworks, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, as well as many production and management companies. He has had a previous development bargain with Lionsgate, equally well as multiple writing assignments, including the produced miniseriesBlackout, starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Flower, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner, and the feature thrillerHunter's Creed starring Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman, Wesley Truman Daniel, Mickey O'Sullivan, John Victor Allen, and James Errico. Follow Ken on Twitter@KenMovies

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