Widescreen Animation

Kramer Klaymation make a good point this month about widescreen for animaton and I've blogged about how to configure Moviemaker for 16:9 and HDTV before.

One thing I'd like to add to this thought is that to get the best results you can't just add this on at the last minute. If you do that you risk having dead space or simply black bars on your work which is really just wasteful. You need to plan to have widescreen from the beginning. The change of screen format means that you have more width to work with. You need to handle the implications this will have on your set design, the lighting and the movement of the actors. You may need to make your sets at a different aspect ratio, a row of houses or castle wall might need to be longer. Will more powerful (or just more) lights be needed? Perhaps a character will have to take more steps to cross the set? This applies to all forms of animation.