The Production Pipeline
The process to create visual media is long and complicated. Spanning several years, it will involve at least a dozen people putting together one small shot for a tiny independent short film to huge grandiose projects that require teams of people spanning every continent on the globe. But no matter how big or small the project, almost all of them require the same basic steps:
Conceptual Design: The process of refining the initial idea and turning it into a sell-able project.
Pre-Production: The process of taking that script and planning the other visual content for the project.
Production: The process of creating the content for the project.
Post-Production: The process of taking the initial content for the project and finalizing it for release.
The overall process of how this happens is termed the “Production Pipeline” in the industry and each pipeline is unique to its project but all of them have one no matter if the project is a blockbuster movie, high art drama, sitcom TV series, or a preschool show.
To help illustrate this pipeline, I have drawn out charts for each stage of the process, but I would like to emphasize here that these charts are NOT a step-by-step tutorial on how to create your own project. Rather, they are very basic overall view to illustrate the basic pieces of the process and though the steps in these charts are drawn in a linear way, most projects do not happen in such a strict faction. Rather, several different steps may be happening at one time and the works crews will be constantly juggling with each other to try to create all the pieces as well as adjusting parts depending on any changes or revisions that could be happening.
Also note: all charts related to Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production are designed to reflect the basic pipelines for live-action and NOT animation.
