Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1081203
45 Q1 2019 / CINEMONTAGE Television Animation and got an interview on Pickle & Peanut (2015-2018). "That was a really fun show and my introduction to animation editing," Williamson acknowledges. "I've always been a fan of animated film and television, and the opportunity to work with so many gifted artists within the unique animation pipeline made staying in animation editing a no-brainer for me." For her part, Odjakjian was inspired to go into film editing at age 11 when she saw an Olympics highlights montage reel. She says her entire career has been in animation, starting in 1981 with Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972-1985), followed by He-Man and Masters of the Universe (1983-1985) and She-Ra Princess of Power (1985-1987) at the legendary animation studio Filmation. She recounts how, in the early days of her career, she was the only woman in the room. "The only reason I got into animation was because it was the only way I could get into editing," she admits, recalling that, at Filmation "Editorial consisted of 20 guys and me. I got in that way and never left. I finally got in the union that way and have worked at eight animation houses in all." ANIMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE Much like the transition from Moviolas and flatbeds to nonlinear editing systems, the process of animation editing has transformed significantly over the years. Duffy recalls that when she started, she photocopied hand-drawn storyboards. "Animation editing has changed drastically in the last 20 years," she stresses. An entry-level job back then was a digitizer who started out photocopying hand-drawn storyboards to distribute them. "To get them into animatic form, we scanned them," says Duffy. "I remember using a camera to photograph them and then put them into Adobe Photoshop, where they were cropped precisely, exported and then imported into Adobe Premiere. It was a painstaking job that would be given to someone just starting out in the industry — and that was me." In the completely pre-digital era, animation directors would slug the board, indicating how many frames they wanted each panel on the hand-drawn storyboard to last on screen, according to Duffy. "For series animation, every scene was cut on an even number, so that the animation would come back on twos," she adds. "Directors used to time it out in their heads." As nonlinear editing became commonplace and accepted, so did animatics, although the earliest animatics were "very rudimentary." Animation editing today is a two-part process: First the storyboards and recorded dialogue are married and transformed into animatics. The actual animation takes place overseas, and when the finished animation returns, editors do final color, which includes hundreds of retakes per episode. But, say DuckTales' editors, there is no single animation editing workflow, which differs by studio and by show. "Although some stages of our pipeline remain consistent, each production has to run some things differently, for multiple reasons," says Bocz. Williamson notes that, whereas editing is already a mystery to most moviegoers as an invisible art form, "Animation editing is even more of a mystery — even within the editorial profession." The animation process for DuckTales starts with the raw dialogue tracks from the voiceover cast, broken into lines. "Building Mike Williamson.