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character arc The learning curve of a character as seen over the course of the story. The

changes that take place in the inner character.

click track The recording of the beat of the music. Animators need this information on

their X-sheets in order to animate to music.

climax The part of the story where the action reaches its most intense moments. This is

where the protagonist wins. Everything else in the story leads up to this.

close-up (CU) We are close to the subject. A head shot or a partial shot of the face. Most

often the shot includes the tops of the character’s shoulders as well. Precisely what the shot

covers varies somewhat; there is no exact standard.

color models Colored drawings of the characters and the effects used in a production,

detailing all the color codes used. These models may be painted on a cel, or they may be

found in the computer files of the production.

compositing Putting the visual parts of each frame together (drawings, special effects, etc.).

This may involve field and color correction for the best possible picture.

concept The idea for a series or film, as yet undeveloped.

CONT (cont. or cont’d) Continued. Dialogue or action continues from one script or sto-

ryboard page, scene, or panel to the next. Dialogue blocks should not be broken from page

to page in a script but kept to one page or the other.

content What a film, television series, video, game, and so on is about. The story. This

includes character relationships, theme, genre, and plot.

context The makeup of a project. This includes length, demographic group of intended

audience, type of animation used, and so forth.

critical choice The difficult choice that the protagonist must make near the end of the story.

The dilemma. The ultimate decision, whether to go after the treasure chest as it’s about to

wash over the falls, or whether to abandon the quest and save the best friend who will oth-

erwise drown. This critical choice ideally happens at the major crisis.

crosscutting Parallel action is shown by cutting alternately between shots of two or more

scenes.

cross dissolves (X or X-DISS) Overlaps of a fade out and a fade in to gain the effect of

one scene gradually being replaced by the other. The X stands for a V (fade out) followed

by a (fade in). They’re used, primarily, to indicate a change of time. Sometimes they’re

called lap dissolves or overlapping dissolves. Too many cross dissolves are distracting (and

expensive in traditional animation).

V

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