Animation Glossary

The language of animation, from hand-drawn to stop-motion and CGI. Many terms are explained in more depth on our technique pages.

Painting a cel by hand: Janke | Talk, CC BY-SA 3.0

Term	Meaning
Animatic	A storyboard edited to time with sound, used to plan a film before animation.
Armature	The metal skeleton inside a stop-motion puppet.
Background	The painted scenery behind the characters.
Cel	A clear celluloid sheet on which characters were inked and painted.
Clean-up	Turning rough sketches into neat final line drawings.
Cycle	A set of drawings that loops, like a walk or a flag waving.
Exposure sheet (X-sheet)	A frame-by-frame chart of drawings, dialogue and camera moves.
Frame	A single image in a film; most films run at 24 per second.
In-between	A drawing between two key poses.
Keyframe	A main pose that defines a movement.
Layout	Planning each shot's staging, camera and background.
Limited animation	Using fewer drawings, holds and reused parts to save time and money.
Lip sync	Matching mouth shapes to recorded dialogue.
Model sheet	A reference page showing how a character is drawn from every angle.
Multiplane	Artwork on glass layers at different depths for a 3D effect.
On twos	Holding each drawing for two frames, 12 drawings per second.
Pencil test	Filming rough drawings to check movement before final art.
Rendering	The computer process that turns 3D scenes into finished images.
Replacement animation	Swapping parts, such as mouths or faces, between frames in stop-motion.
Rigging	Building the controls that let animators pose a 3D character.
Rotoscoping	Tracing live-action footage frame by frame.
Scratch track	A temporary voice recording used before final casting.
Squash and stretch	Changing shape to show weight and flexibility.
Stop-motion	Moving real objects a little between photographed frames.
Storyboard	A comic-strip style plan of every shot.
Timing	How many frames an action takes, which controls its speed and feeling.

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