The cover says "X-SHEET ABBREVIATIONS," but it grew to contain much more information. It is a literal bible that helped teach me how to time animation.
When I was first hired on The Simpsons in 1990, I’d sometimes hear someone mentioning the “timing” of animation. Because I came from a live-action film background, I assumed that meant color timing–something you do in post to balance color and exposure across scenes before you made release prints to give them the final polish. I was SO wrong. Animation timing is the notation system that provides the overseas animators with frame by frame instructions about how the characters and camera should be drawn and exposed. They are composed on 11″ x 17″ lined sheets called “X-sheets.” The “X” is an abbreviation for exposure sheets (also called “dope” or “beat” sheets across animation history). 16 lines on the sheet equals 16 frames or 1 foot of final animation (an antiquated measurement when animation was exposed on 35mm film). 1 and half feet equals 24 frames or 1 second of animation. Animation is no longer exposed nor exposed on film, but we still use some of the terms and the principles are much the same. Upon these sheets, the sheet-timer (and/or animation director) makes his abbreviations and arcing lines connoting how many frames and subsequently how many drawings must be made to animate an action. A half hour of animation will result in hundreds of pages of x-sheets. I can barely touch on the importance of animation timing here; I recommend to those interested the book “Timing for Animation” by Harold Whitaker. Suffice to say this document codifies both the terms used on the x-sheet as well as standardizing character action that will often be repeated such as eye blinks and Maggie’s pacifier suck cycle. When dozens of sheet timers and animators draw on one show, inconsistency from episode to episode or even scene to scene is liable to occur. Having this timing guide codified how the Simpsons would animate. I can only imagine how much larger a document its become after all these years of episodes. By way of contrast, there were no codifying timing documents on Rugrats and I learned first hand what could happen without them; sequences I carefully storyboarded looked terrible when fully animated. The usual culprit was bad and careless sheet timing; often too slow with too many evenly spaced inbetweens that diluted the snappiness of the action and made my carefully drawn key poses disappear. Seeing good storyboards turned into mediocre animation made me determined to replicate the good example I saw on the Simpsons. I implemented standardized abbreviations and timing rules on all subsequent shows I worked on (that is when it was a new show with me in charge). Also hiring a veteran timer whose work you admire to be timing supervisor definitely helps. But mastering sheet timing is absolutely critical in TV animation if you truly want to direct.