South Park crew actually uses high-end software and hardware to
make the show look cheap and amateurish.
"We have the technology, and our animators have the skills to do 3-D," says supervising producer Anne Garefino. "We
don’t want it to look computery," agrees director of animation Eric Stough, who’s been on board since the pilot. "We want
it to look as crappy as possible."
To keep it "crappy," the animators took Parker’s original construction paper cutouts, scanned them into the computer, and
built exact replicas in AliasiWavefront. "Trey drew all the original characters in Corel Draw, says Stough. "We actually take
those illustrator curves directly into Alias PowerAnimator 8.5 and build what we call smart puppets."
With the characters constructed, Stough and company then tap into the Expressions function of Alias to manipulate specific
body movements. "We animate all the visibility—the front heads, the side heads, the mouths—they’re all on these little
sliders you push back and forth which make different mouths visible." To keep up with the fast turnaround needed, the
production department relies on a variety of SGJ boxes.
Stough remembers: "When we started, people asked us why we were using Alias for such a 2-D show—it’s like swatting a
house fly with a nuclear bomb. But it was the package that made the show look as much like construction paper as
possible. And if you watch the pilot, there’s a lot of shadows that stick out. Alias has the best shadow and ray casting, so it
looks like construction paper sitting on a camera stand."
Here’s how the work takes shape: After each script is complete, the storyboard process begins, which typically takes from
a week to a week and a half. Simultaneously, Parker will draw the new characters and backgrounds introduced in the
episode (Stough will often realize the construction paper versions). From there, Parker and Stone record the voices while
animators cut an animatic, scanning the boards into the Avid and cutting storyboard frames to the voices. That provides the
template for the show.
"Then I get the boards cut to the animatic," says Stough. "I go through the boards to make sure all the staging is going to
work right and all the backgrounds match. Then I write notes for the technical directors, telling them what backgrounds they
can recycle from previous episodes."
The animators inherit layout, backgrounds, and props from the technical directors (the TDs typically take about three weeks
to set up all the shots for a single episode).
At this point, the mouths have also been animated by the lip synchers, who work with the exposure sheets (dialogue cut
down frame-by-frame) to decide which mouths are to be used and how to time those out correctly. The animators then
refine the timing and breathe life into facial expressions, walking, and head bobs, for instance, about a three-week process.
The frames are then rendered out, sent through an Accom WSD Extreme 1 and loaded into an Avid Media Composer for
assembly. Everything but color correction is done in-house, and not once is the animation filmed or videotaped.
"The helpful thing about doing it in the computer rather than under a camera stand is that Trey will fix things— he might want
a character to turn his head halfway through a shot—and we can reuse all the other animation—all we have to do is change
that one head," says Stough.
Besides Alias, the animators also rely on Adobe Photoshop, most noticeably for the kids’ classroom. The writing on the
chalkboard is created in Photoshop, as are the real photos—although all people and things in South Park appear spawned
by a third grade art class, all photographs are actual filmed images. Says Stough: "Every once in a while, I get out of the
office and take pictures."
Photoshop also figures in Kenny’s oft-seen blood, although that wasn’t always the way. "Originally, we would take a
Sharpie underneath the camera stand, draw a dot, make a bigger dot two frames later, and make the Sharpie kind of bleed.
I do that in Photoshop now and transfer that onto an animated texture map in Alias."
Freak
Forero del todo a cien
Clásico
Frikazo
Justo las partes que más me interesan al respecto.
Esto me acojona. Precisamente busco algo que "automatice" en determinada manera los movimientos de la boca-abrir/cerrar de ojos y por lo tanto huir de equiparar sílabas o movimientos reales de la boca. 
