Often called rough (or ruff) animation, this is the process of bringing the storyboard to life!

The animators concentrate on the 'acting' of the characters. They listen to the voice track, or watch the animatic (the filmed storyboard),to get a sense of how the characters are behaving. The animators work in pencil, using drawing boards with animation paper in a traditional 2D (two-dimensional) style, constantly flicking between drawings to get a sense of movement.

The animation is broken into different layers or levels - sometimes as many as twenty! For example, sometimes a character's head will stay still for two seconds, but their mouth will move. Therefore the animtor will need to draw only a separate mouth level, rather than drawing the whole of the head over and over again.


The scenes are then line-tested. The line-tester scans in the drawings and puts them together. The director checks the scenes looking for smooth movement and good acting. He will then ask for any revisions he thinks are necessary. Revisions can be made to adjust the flow or speed of the scene, or to improve the synchronisation of the sound to the images. There are usually a lot of these retakes in animation.

Animation is still a growing industry in New Zealand, which means that we have to draw on the experience and manpower of overseas animation studios to help us out.

bro’Town has always had a great working relationship with India. And in particular with DQ Studios, in Hyderabad, who have been sharing the workload since Series 1.

Now, we’re lucky enough to have a few of these experienced animators in our own team. Our Animation Production Manager, Ravi Shanker Gunda, invited some of his old colleagues and friends to journey from India to join us here in New Zealand, and they said yes!

We thought we would take this opportunity to introduce you to Ravi, and two of the newest additions to the Firehorse Films family!