How I Made Drag Rats: an Animated Short Film

Over the Spring 2025 semester, I created a 3D animated short film (mostly) by myself. While this ride was full of twists and turns, I believe this project is one of the ones I am most proud so far in my academic career. Because of this wild and scary adventure that was making this film, here is my step-by-step guide to going through creating your first Animated film.

1. Access to animation software (I have free access to Autodesk Maya through my university, but Blender is a good free option as well)
2. Rendering Engine: Maya provides its own way to render. I utilized this alongside Unreal Engine 5.0
3. Video Editing Software: For this, I was able to use Adobe Premiere Pro 2025. Free options include Davinci Resolve and Capcut

While this may seem the least complicated, this initial step is where your big ideas are made and finalized. One way in which I like to brainstorm ideas is by looking for images and videos for inspiration on Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram. As you look for images that match the overall style and vibe you're going for, jot notes down either on paper or in an online document as you will need them later.

1. This is also the step where you may start typing dialogue and elements of your story. This does not have to be polished.

While you may be excited to start drawing and animating your film, you should have a written story as reference for the animation process. Unlike a script you may find for theatre, it can be helpful to add things like camera movements and cuts as this script may be shared among several people working on the same project.

Tips:

1. For your first film: Shorter is better! While you may have ideas for a very long and grandiose film, your first film should be about discovering how long and complicated the filmmaking process actually is. For my treatment of Drag Rats, I ended up cutting five or six pages down to two. It is better to make a short but impactful film versus one that is long and unpolished.
2. While you may have heard this phrase before: Show, not tell. With Animation being an inherently visual medium, whatever emotions or decisions your character makes needs to be clear visually. If a character is angry about something, what ways do they display this outwardly? A character raging and kicking things over is a much clearer indication than them merely speaking it.

Once your script is (mostly) finalized, you may begin creating storyboards for your film

1. Think of storyboards like a comic book with each board/panel representing a camera movement, an action, or a change in tone. How would you convey your story without words and have it still make sense?

While storyboards may be all you need, some places may want you to make an Animatic. An animatic is like a blueprint for the animation you will be doing in the next steps in the pipeline. As you make your animatic, consider the length of each of your shots and what general movements and camera angles are going to be in the final film. While these decisions may be changed later, your animatic should have close movement and pacing to the final film.

Congrats! You have conquered the steep hill of Pre-Production. Now that you will be animating, you have entered the Production phase of the filmmaking process.

1. For 3D animation- especially for characters- you will need a Rig to animate with. Many can be found on places like Gumroad, Sketchfab, and others.
2. This Instructable was created for those who already have some experience with Animation. While I would love to explain how to animate in great detail, I don't think I would have enough room to contain all of that here. I recommend looking at others Instructables on how to animate with the program chosen at hand. Youtube and Linkedin Learning also have great resources on 3D animating in Maya.

Hooray! You have completed the longest step of the process. Now that your animations and scenes have been animated to your liking, it is now time to render these into a video format. Many 3D Animation platforms have their own Rendering Engines within them. But, you can also utilize game engines like Unity, Godot, or Unreal for free or for other non-film uses.

1. While you may have experience with rendering previously, I always find it helpful to watch a video on the engine I'm using as a quick refresher.
2. Make sure you name your files in a way that makes sense to you. Naming them at random will create confusion if you're sharing files across devices or programs.

When your renders are finally complete, it is time to put them together in the video editing platform of choice. Drag Rats was fully edited in Premiere, but alternatives can be found in the supply list above. You can now place your shots in order and add elements such as text, captions, graphics, transitions, sound, and more that couldn't be added previously.

1. Make sure you provide proper credit, especially if you are using others Assets (Music, Rigs, etc.) If you are unsure of the copyright rules on your asset(s), I recommend not using them until you know you are using them legally and in a way that is fair to the artist whose work is being used.

I always recommend keeping track of your process. Over the course of the semester, I was treccomended to create a blog to update my professor and classmates on how the production pipeline was going for me. This example can be found here https://sites.google.com/g.rit.edu/gquinnanimationproduction/home

This also goes for backing up and have multiple versions of your files!!! I had the unfortunate experience of nearly losing my film because my hard drive failed. This was a very scary and very costly mistake. By making this a daily or weekly ritual, this will prevent calamities like this from happening.

You have made your first animated film! Congrats!!! You know have three options as to what you can do from this point foreword:

1. Keep it to yourself, your film stays unknown and unpublished
2. Publish your film to a platform like Youtube, Vimeo, TikTok, Facebook, etc.
3. (Along with 2) Submit to film festivals. Be prepared for rejection as it is your first film. While you can publish online, pay attention to rules on festivals you have submitted to as they may not let you self-publish until after it is shown.

Thank you for reading and sharing my Instructable! If you have comments or feedback, feel free to contact me on Instructables or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/possumpetal/