Time it takes to complete an animation

[El_Mustachio93]

I was wondering how long it would take to animate approximately a minute of footage, i'd like to know because i think i'm grossly underestimating how long it should take to complete a clip, which in turn is probably causing me to rush my work.

[Cel]

Depends on the level of graphics and what's going on in your clip. It could take anywhere from an hour if you're just scribbling, to many hours of work per second of animation.

[boundless]

Yeah it really depends. Time yourself when you animate and you'll get a better idea of how long you spend on each step.

[Anghenfil]

It depends entirely on the kind of animation you're doing and the complexity.

I've spent over 12 hours on an eight-frame 2D pencil cycle.

I've animated 3 minutes in seven days, averaging 50 frames per hour using cut-out style animation in Flash.

You can get an idea of how long animation takes by timing yourself on the particular project you're doing.  Estimating before you begin work boils down to experience - everyone has their own pace, different characters and actions have different requirements, and you learn how and when to acceptably cut corners.  You also animate faster and better over the years, which alters your productivity.

Generally, pencil-and-paper is the slowest, because you have to spend a lot of time scanning, cleaning up frames, etc.  If you animate in Flash or Toonboom, a lot of that is taken care of for you.  Digital cut-out animation (like South Park) can be extremely fast indeed, and an animator could turn out several minutes per week.

When you're pressed for time, down the complexity:
- Simple actions.  Waist-up shots, avoid walking/running/complex body actions that don't have a lot of story payoff.  Use cycles whenever possible if you must do walking or running.
- Mix cut-outs and tweening with full-frame animation.
-Down the number of frames per second.  8-10 different frames per second is the absolute bare minimum in my opinion, and really you're better off with 12, but any deduction effectively decreases the amount of work you'll need to do.  Animate on every other frame so that if you do want more detail and finesse on a certain shot you have the option of doing so.
-Don't forget good storytelling and sound design.  It's amazing the kind of shit you can get away with animation-wise if you communicate well through strong poses, sound effects, and music.

[El_Mustachio93]

Ok, cool. Thanks very much for the feedback, it's great to know some realistic examples of this kind of thing because i've been quite uncertain as to how long i would it expect it would take me to produce a clip of decent quality

[whistlingboy]

alot of animation companies have set amounts that each animator has to get out a week.  can range from 35secs to 2mins of animation per animator per week. cartoon network animators do aprox 45secs a week.

but yes it really depends on the quality that you want to put out there.

[Esn]

Well, it took me about 2 months of active working time to finish my first animation, which was about a minute and a half:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/474831

Just over a year in total, because I only worked on it sometimes. That included about 4 weeks of painting all of the backgrounds and characters, with the rest of the time spent learning Flash from scratch, animating, and several very frustrating days of fiddling with actionscript for the snow effects.

It used the digital cutout technique, which is apparently supposed to be really fast-paced.

However, the digital cutout technique can also be one of the most complex forms of animation there is. For example...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrUfp2tK3ag

[TheEYE]

I must have been up North working when you released that Esn. The painting is incredibly eye catching man, excellent, excellent work, I really enjoyed watching it!