Naming Conventions

When working on a production, it is critical to keep work well organized with a naming convention chart before starting the project. It is crucial that everyone follows the criteria laid out in the naming convention chart. When dealing with thousands of characters, pieces and puppets, it is easy to get lost.

It is highly recommended that you incorporate a naming convention for the layers. This will be very convenient in later steps. We suggest that you add one or two letters for the character/prop name before the part name and an "R" or "L" for right and left to identify the corresponding character/prop:

Character Abby's right arm = ab_r_arm.

If you plan to work with different angles for your characters (front, side, three-quarter, back), you can add one or two letters to identify the angle:

Character Abby's right arm, front view = ab_r_arm_f.

We recommend that you use a naming convention for your drawings. If you combine all the angles of a character in the same breakdown scene, it is a good idea to identify each angle used.

Before breaking down the characters for your production, we recommend that you create a drawing name convention that represents the angle used. For example, use "f" for front, "s" for side, "q" for three-quarter so that the drawing name looks like this: f1, f2, f3, s1, s2, etc. This will be quite useful during animation and drawing substitution. Since drawings are displayed in alphabetical and numerical order, all the drawings for the front view will be together, then all the drawings for the three quarter view, and so on.