Scoring animation and cartoons

Animation asks the score to be a character. In a live-action film the music can hide behind a face; in animation the face may have no dialogue to carry the beat, so the score has to move the way the drawing moves.

Timing is the craft

Animation is timed to the frame, and music for it is written to frame boundaries rather than to a feeling. A gag lands on a specific frame, a take holds for exactly so long, a walk cycle repeats on a fixed count. We write to that grid, then bend it slightly so it does not sound like a metronome. The result feels spontaneous even though every accent is placed.

Character themes

Every recurring character gets an idea of their own, short enough to be recognised in two bars. A hero's theme in a major key; a villain's in a tremolo figure; a sidekick's in an odd meter that skips. When two characters share a scene, their themes can overlap, trade phrases or interrupt each other, and the audience reads the relationship without a word.

Mickey-mousing, used with restraint

Mimicking every action with a musical gesture is a choice, not a rule. Applied constantly it becomes exhausting; applied once at the right moment it is unforgettable. We keep a light touch, using synchronised accents for comedy beats and letting the score breathe during quieter stretches so the loud gags stay loud.

Surviving a hundred re-cuts

Animation is edited, redrawn and edited again. A cue written as one continuous five-minute piece becomes useless the moment a scene is trimmed. So we build cues from short modular cells with clean entry and exit points, which can be re-assembled when the timing shifts. A theme stays recognisable across the re-cuts because it does not depend on a single performance.

For younger audiences

Scores for children's animation carry an extra responsibility: they should be interesting to the adults in the room too. We aim for music with a clear hook and a real ensemble underneath it, so the same cue rewards a five-year-old and a grandparent.

Series, specials and shorts

We score animation across formats: standalone shorts, television series, holiday specials and feature-length animated films. A returning series keeps a title theme and a palette of character and place cues that the studio archives, so a new episode can be scored faster and still sound like the same show.

For live-action features see film scoring; for a returning television show see episodic music. To talk about an animated project, send a brief.

Voice, sound and the space between

An animated score is only one layer of the soundtrack. Voice performance, designed effects and the score share the same space, and part of our job is to leave room for the other two. A comic beat may need the music to stop for a moment so a line can land; a chase may need the score to take over while the effects thin out. We plan those handovers with the sound team rather than discovering them at the mix.

Where a production has a song, a score and a full effects track to balance, we plan the whole soundtrack shape early: where music leads, where it supports, and where it steps aside entirely.

Recording for animated picture

When an animated project records live players, the sessions run against the animatic rather than a finished cut, so the performers play to timing marks and a rough picture. That suits our players, who are used to reading a screen as they play. We record with the frame grid in view so a phrase lands where the drawing lands, then shape the performance in the edit without losing the human timing that a struck note carries.

For productions that work entirely in the composing room, the same discipline applies in the arrangement itself: phrases are shaped to the frame grid and kept modular, so a re-timed scene is a small adjustment rather than a rewrite. The aim is music that sounds effortless on screen and is quietly precise underneath.