The Tower of the Dragon Script, is written by Tracy McSheery, based on an E-book by Tracy McSheery. The script is written using Final Draft software.

The goal is to write in a style that is conducive to computer animation, which in many ways is similar to early TV writing, where the number of sets and characters was limited by budgets, or to stage plays and musicals, where the story is told by as few characters as possible in as few sets as possible.

By limiting the number of characters and sets, the costs are dramatically reduced to create the animated movie. Each character and each scene where the camera changes takes about two to four artist weeks to create using sophisticated tools from Autodesk such as Maya and Motion Builder. 

With approximately 50 computer graphic sets and 30 main characters, this requires about 200 artist weeks normally. Significant time was saved by using characters and tools from Daz3d for the background characters, as well as some buildings and assets. While we want a unique look for the main characters and the world, there is no need to spend millions of dollars to make each background character original.

These tools and limitations force us to tell the story within these 50 scenes and develop the characters with movements, voices and music. Ironically this is the basis of all the best animations, rather than relying on special effects only, or computer tricks. If we switch back and forth between the camera positions or make only small changes we don’t have the setup time and we can save weeks of work. Of course this takes more interaction between the cinematographer and artists, but time is money.

PhaseSpace has contributed motion capture data, allowing us to create characters that move realistically as well as reduce costs. Instead of taking months to animate characters it is done in minutes, shaving millions of dollars in costs verses older style CG animation.