Roles In An Animated Feature Production
By Neil Blevins
Created On: Mar 22nd 2026
Updated On: Mar 22nd 2026
Software: None

A common question I get asked is about the sorts of roles (jobs) that need to be filed when working on an animated feature. Sadly, while there are advantages to everyone following the same formula (especially if you're going to move from company to company), there's almost as many ways to split up the process of making an animated feature into roles as there are companies making animated features. Consider that a feature and not a bug, no one company produces the same films, and hence no one company produces those films in exactly the same way.

So remember, not every place calls these jobs the same things, or even has the work split the same way. But here's at least a very rough birds eye views of some of the ways these big productions are split into different roles

Role
Department
Notes
Pre-production


Director
Leadership
Responsible for the creative vision of the film
Producer
Leadership Responsible for getting the film made, from schedule to money to organizing the team
Coordinator / Production Assistant
Production
Helps organize individual teams
Animation Supervisor
Leadership In charge of all the performances of the characters
VFX Supervisor
Leadership In charge of the overall look of the film, and in charge of solving many of the technical and artistic challenges
Writer
Story
Writes the story
Storyboard Artist
Story
Illustrates the story from the writer in rough sequential drawings
Production Designer
Leadership In charge of the concept design of the project (character and set design, color scripts, concept art)
Director Of Photography (DP)
Leadership In charge of everything related to the camera and lighting
Character Concept Artist
Art Dept
Creates concept art and designs for the characters. Also props that the characters interact with.
Environment Concept Artist
Art Dept Creates concept art and designs for the environments, and any props that aren't character props
Editor
Editorial
Cuts the storyboards into an animatic, add sound and music, decides on shot timing, then gradually replaces everything with the final shots.
Asset Creation


Environment Artist (Model / Shade / Dress)
Assets
Creates the final environments for the film, doing tasks such as modeling, shading (texturing), set dressing
Character Artist (Model / Shade)
Assets Creates the final characters for the film, doing tasks such as modeling and shading (texturing)
Character Rigger
Assets Creates the rig (skeleton and muscles) for the characters, This is frequently a specialized job, but sometimes is handled by the Character artist.
Shots


FX Artist (Smoke, Fire, Water)
FX
Simulates smoke, fire, water etc into the final shots
Character FX / Sim TD (Cloth, Hair)
FX
Simulates character fx such as their hair or cloth.
Animator
Animation
Animates the rigged characters frame by frame to create movement.
Mocap
Animation Uses motion capture to animate the characters. Captures the performance of the actors on stage, then hands the data off to the animators to finish off the performance. Not all animated features use mocap.
Crowds
Animation Animates large crowds of characters. Can combine hand animating, mocap, and crowd simulation software.
Layout Artist
Camera
Animates the movement and settings of the camera in the 3d scene
Lighting
Lighting
Adds lights to the 3d scene. Sometimes broken up into master lighting and shot light, where the master lighter creates general lighting for a particular environment / sequence, and shot lighters tweak the lighting per shot.
Matte Painting
Finaling
Sometimes called "Digimatte Artist", creates far off environment backgrounds (including skies) using a combination of 2d and 3d painting techniques.
Rendering TD
Finaling
Renders the final shots into individual frames
Compositing Lighting Takes all the layer renders and adjusts them in 2d compositing software to give them their final look. Sometimes handled by the individual lighters, sometimes a separate group.
Post


Color Timing
Post
Does the final color tweaks in 2d to each shot for consistency.
Sound
Audio
Creates all the sound fx for the film.
Music
Audio
Creates all the music for the film.
Support


Technical Director (TD)
Tools
Artists who write simpler software / tools to help the art teams.
Tools Writer
Tools
Programmers who create complex software to help the art teams.


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