How to make an animated short film
Choosing a technique, planning with storyboards and animatics, scheduling the work and finishing an animated short, with examples from Greenhorn's archive.
Animation lets a first-time filmmaker make anything they can imagine, without actors, locations or permits. The price is time: every second has to be made by hand. Planning is everything.
Choose a technique you can sustain
- 2D hand-drawn or digital. Very flexible and expressive, and labour-intensive.
- Cut-out or collage. Faster, and has a distinctive look.
- Stop-motion: puppets, objects, clay or pixilation. It has a tactile charm, but it needs space, lighting control and patience.
- 3D: powerful free tools exist, but there is a steep learning curve.
- Mixed techniques. Christine Hooper’s On Loop, shown at Greenhorn in 2014, combined live action and stop-motion in a collage of nine separate frames.
Pick the technique that suits the idea and that you can sustain for months.
Keep the idea simple and the film short
Animated shorts that do well at festivals often have a single, strong premise. In Tusk, a mammoth wakes up in a future it doesn’t belong in. Two Films About Loneliness splits the screen in two. All three of these Greenhorn films ran around five or six minutes. For a first animation, aim for two to five minutes.
Plan before you animate
- Script or outline.
- Storyboard every shot.
- Record a temporary soundtrack, with dialogue if you have any. Animation is often timed to sound.
- Make an animatic: the storyboard edited to the soundtrack. This is your film in rough, and you can fix most problems here cheaply.
- Design the characters and backgrounds, and test the look.
Schedule honestly
Work out how many seconds you can finish in a week, then multiply. If the film won’t be done in time, cut shots now rather than rushing later. Many animators make the film in passes: blocking, then refining, then final.
Sound makes animation live
Sound effects, voice and music do a huge amount of work. Many animated shorts invest in a strong voice cast. On Loop used the comedian Susan Calman, and Two Films About Loneliness used Tim Key. Find a composer and a sound designer early.
Festivals for animation
Animation has dedicated festivals, including Annecy in France, one of the largest in the world. General festivals often have animation strands too. See our festival directory and how to choose festivals.
Questions people ask
How long does it take to make an animated short?
For a solo animator, a few minutes of finished animation can take many months. Plan the length around the time you have, and keep the first film short.
What software do I need for animation?
It depends on the technique. Free tools like Blender, Krita and OpenToonz cover 3D and 2D animation. Stop-motion needs capture software such as Dragonframe or a free alternative, plus a camera and steady lighting.