Animation Studios Editing and Proofreading Services

A shot comes back for the third time. The note on the first pass said "feels floaty". The note on the second said "still not landing". The animator has now spent two days guessing at a problem that could have been described in one sentence about the timing of a contact frame, and the schedule has absorbed the cost of a supervisor writing quickly.

We edit what animation studios produce — retake and review notes, shot briefs and sequence documentation, style guides and character specifications, production bibles and pipeline documentation, client-facing review summaries and delivery notes, pitch bibles and treatment documents, recruitment and training material, and the technical documentation that keeps a pipeline usable. Our editors work on the writing that moves work forward instead of round.

The retake note is the studio's most frequently written document and its least considered, and its failure is a description of a feeling rather than of a frame. An animator can fix anything they can locate. We work through these so the note names the frames it concerns, since a comment about a whole shot sends somebody looking through four hundred frames for a problem that lives in nine; so the observation is separated from the prescribed fix, because a supervisor who states both leaves the animator free to solve it differently and a supervisor who states only the fix gets it applied without being understood; so the vocabulary is mechanical rather than emotional — contact, ease, overlap, spacing, arc, silhouette — as "floaty" describes the reviewer's experience and "the ease out of the contact is three frames too long" describes the file; so the priority is stated where a note contains several things, given that an animator with two hours will otherwise fix the easiest one; so notes that are approvals are written as approvals rather than left silent, since silence reads as dissatisfaction; so anything that is a change of intention rather than a correction is labelled as such, because that is a schedule conversation and not a note; and so the note says what it is protecting, when the fix will affect a neighbouring shot. Notes written this way get a shot finished in one pass.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including production material, client feedback and unreleased work. We are editors rather than animators or supervisors, and we offer no view on performance, craft or creative decisions. What we can do is make the note locate the problem.