How to Create an Animated Web Series

Sociedad Fantasma shows us the process behind the creation of R.T., an alien that tries to sympathize with humanity

Sociedad Fantasma (@sociedadfantasma) is a storytelling studio founded by Carlos Rupit, Gabriel Pichardo, and Lizeth Rodríguez, devoted to telling great stories through illustration and animation. This path has led them to work with brands like Netflix, Gatorade, Google, and Nike, but also to develop their projects, such as their web series UFUCK_U, where a curious alien tries to fit into daily human life. This project demonstrates this Mexican studio's experience in crafting stories, characters, illustration, color management, and animation–the foundations of their work.

These are the main steps Sociedad Fantasma takes to make an episode of its series.

The Sociedad Fantasma team began working with animation and illustration influenced by cartoons from Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Locomotion, and by the work of artists such as Golden Wolf, Giant Ant, and Julien Vallé.

During the creative process for its animated series, the studio focuses on seven essential steps to complete each episode:

1. Idea

They begin to work on the concept from the main character's point of view, trying to answer the question: Who is this? In this case, the protagonist is an alien that wants to fit into society. He doesn't know the reason for particular human behaviors and rituals. Still, due to his intelligence and superior curiosity, he always finds a solution that, most of the time, is very strange.

With the starting point defined, they imagine and illustrate the character in everyday situations common to humans.

2. Comic

With the idea established, they use a four-frame format to tell a story in pictures, dividing them into different stages:

Frame 1 / Context: present an action and the characters involved.

Frame 2 / Interaction: capture how humanity acts in the face of the situation.

Frame 3 / Reaction: the character solves the problem or situation in a strange way.

Frame 4 / Result: the outcome of the problem or result of the action.

3. Storyboard

In this step, the studio creates scenes between the four frames to help them tell the story in more detail. These are the intermediate steps between the four main acts. They also describe with text what happens in each of the scenes. An important thing to consider when making the storyboard is that the sum of all the scenes must equal 20 seconds of animation.

4. Animatic

Then, they assign time to each of the scenes and review the pace at which the story is told, making an animatic, which is the storyboards or sketches of an audiovisual product brought to life. Then they add the audio based on the mood and rhythm they want to convey and, if there is any speech, they record the voice test and add it.

5. Styleframes

The next step is to create the main styleframes or frames in color, a composition that shows the style, mood, and overall design of a time-based multimedia piece. These will later give way to the animation process.

6. Animation

Sociedad Fantasma usually breaks this step into four stages:

- Using the animatic and the final styleframes, each raw scene is animated with Adobe Animate or Photoshop.
- They clean the first animation, correct the lines, and use the final brushes in Photoshop.
- They fill with color following the styleframe guidelines.
- Then the details are added, such as shadows in the characters.

7. Composition and output

The final step is also divided into several stages:

- All the elements and scenes are mixed in After Effects.
- The final audio is edited.
- The final voice over is recorded and edited.
- These elements are added to the final composition.
- They export the final animation in .mp4, and it is ready to be published.

You can check out this episode and extra material on the series’ official Instagram account (@ufuck_u).

Sociedad Fantasma teaches the course Animated Micro-Stories with After Effects where you will learn basic storytelling techniques, as well as character design, and 2D animation with After Effects. It also teaches the course Design of Animated Stickers for Social Networks, where you'll learn how to create your own set of animated stickers with Adobe Animate.

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