Using charts and guides to help you plan your animation

When planning your animation, it's good to make use of guides to help you save time and work. Here are some to help you establish where your animation should happen on screen, how long the actions should take, and plan what work is required to create the animation.

Staying in TV limits with Safe Title-Action zones and Lower Thirds

The Safe Title zone and Safe Action zones originated in the black-and-white days of television. They were created to make sure that what was put on the screen got seen. The early TV was very imprecise. It was decided that only the inner 80 percent of the image was likely enough to be seen and that it could be trusted to display titles and sponsor logos. Only the inner 90 percent was likely enough to be seen so that any critical action could be shown. The outer 10 percent was not to be trusted at all. Sometimes in local TV ads, you can see text and images chopped off where unskilled artists fail to observe...