Green Animation Guides and Frameworks
This June marked an important stepping stone for the international animation industry’s transition towards environmentally sustainable practices.
At the Annecy International Animation Film Festival last month, the Green Animation Guide was unveiled to the world in the English version. You can head to our CEE Animation webinar, where Adrien Roche (International project manager) and Alissa Aubenque (Head of operations and International) from Ecoprod explained the Guide’s structure and plans for the future.
The guide addresses all stages of the animation pipeline across 2D and 3D. It builds on the success of the French guide launched in 2023 by Ecoprod and La Cartouch’Verte in partnership with Anim’France, now expanded and adapted to serve the international animation community.
Its international version was developed with the help of experts and animation professionals from Europe and around the world, including CEE Animation. The guide is a collaborative effort led by Ecoprod, Green Film and Cine Regio with the support of several regional film funds. It is built on a three-step strategy: Measure, Reduce, and Certify. It breaks down the entire production pipeline into actionable areas.
The guide covers detailed guidance on key areas such as green coordination, energy management, IT infrastructure, production workflows, equipment, mobility, waste management and more. It opens with recognising the role of AI in the animation industry and specifies some of the main impacts that usage of AI has on the environment.
The foundation of green animation starts with your physical and digital infrastructure. Small changes in your digital habits can lead to massive energy and resource savings. The digital world isn’t weightless. Adrien Roche shared some startling figures:
- Digital technologies currently account for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure projected to double to 8% by 2040.
- A single animated feature film can generate several hundred tons of CO2, with most emissions coming from rendering and data storage.
- Rendering one high-resolution frame can consume as much energy as charging a smartphone 300 times.
However, it is important to remember that sustainability extends beyond technology to people, daily choices, and culture, including transportation and travel, catering, and the content and storytelling which make up our animations.
In the Green Animation Guide’s 6 sections you can find concrete information divided into fact sheets and steps related to how studios, producers and creators in 2D and 3D Animation can decrease their environmental footprint.
Concerned about the impact of the stop motion animation industry, in 2023 the Polish studio MOMAKIN published a Stop Motion Green Guide by StopMoLab at the Animarkt Stop Motion Forum in Lodz, co-authored by German experts in the field of sustainable film-making Birgit Heidsiek and Anika Kruse from Green Film Shooting. This guide outlines best practices as well as direct experiences gained by participants of the StopMoLab, focusing on the unique challenges relevant to stop motion. In collaboration with the StopMoLab participants, the green filming experts developed stop motion minimum ecological standards and best practices for studios, production companies, freelancers, and students, which are outlined in the Stop Motion Green Guide, also available for free online.
