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The Simpsons The Movie?
rosewood writes "Everyone loves the Simpsons so why not a Simpsons movie? I know I'm not the only one that would look forward for it. " I'm more than a little skeptical, but hell, South Park scaled pretty well to the big screen. Maybe if they could get some of the writers in from the earlier seasons (You listening Conan?) on board, they could do something awesome.
You know you're a geek when you refer to something going from TV to the big screen as "scaling".
That's priceless.
Referring to a woman who you knew years ago as a pigtailed little girl: Wow, she sure scaled well.
Amusing.
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Dan Castalaneta (sp) the voice of Homer Simpson stated on the Tom Lykis show (while in Aspen) that a feature film was unlikely during the time the show is in television.
Apparently the current yearly episode load (something like 22) is about the maximum the show can handle. Apparently it takes 7 months to write, draw, animate and then do the voices for an episode.
Dialog and the musical score are recorded. This process does not occur until later in the production of a movie, but for an animated movie, the dialog and music must first be recorded so that the artists can synchronize their drawings to it.
A layout artist works in conjunction with the director to determine what will be in each scene, how each character will look, and how the story can best be broken into scenes. Once this process is complete, the layout artists prepare drawings to guide the background artists and animators.
The background artists are responsible for drawing all of the backgrounds found in the animated movie. A background is considered anything in the scene except for the characters and anything else that those characters might interact with (for example, if a character picks up a book from a table, that book is not part of the background).
The animators are responsible for drawing each character's movements on seperate drawings. It takes 24 of these drawings to make one second of film. Usually, different animators are assigned to different characters. The animators work from a timing chart. The timing chart indicates the number of frames, or seperate pictures, needed for the particular character to express each word of previously recorded dialog. For example, the timing chart may show that the character has to say the word "hello" in 8 frames. The animators then make 8 seperate drawings in which the character's mouth moves to form the word "hello."
Because the animators are responsible for drawing up to a million different drawings, the idea of key-framing has been introduced. In the key-framing, the lead animator draws the character in its key-frame position. A key-frame position may occur two or three times every 24 frames (or one second). A key frame means that frame contains the essential action of the scene. A junior animator must then draw all of the drawings necessary in-between the key frames.
Once the animators have completed their drawings, another group of artists traces them onto sheets of transparent celluloid, called cels, with ink. These cels are then sent to the painting department. At the painting department, a painter paints the proper colors onto the reverse side of the cels.
The completed cels are then sorted into their proper sequence. The cels and backgrounds are sent to the camera department. At the camera department, the camera operator has an exposure sheet which tells him/her which cels belong with which backgrounds. The appropriate cels are properly layered over the appropriate backgrounds, as they are filmed one frame at a time.
The sound track is added to the film and the picture is ready for release.