Truth be told, 14 seconds per week of film-quality animation is unheard of today. How does that compare to the current day and age, though? Surely with the technology we have now we go faster, right? Animation Today

That comes out to about 14 seconds of animation a week.Īnd that’s nothing compared to Disney’s FASTEST animators, who could blaze trails at 23-24 seconds of feature quality animation per week. In the earlier days of Disney Feature Animation, it was not uncommon for the animators to produce 3.75 feet of animation per day. Thanks for the heads up, Geoff! Sorry I missed that. It would just be only 8 drawings if on 2s, vs. Since most animation for film runs at 24 frames per second, a foot of animation is over one second if on 2s, and under a second if done on 1s.Įditor’s Note: As Geoff points out in the comments, it is 16 frames regardless of if it’s on ones or twos. That’s because everything was done on actual film (no digital) and so instead of referring to individual frames regarding productivity, people just said “I managed 2 Feet of work this week.”Ī foot of film is equal to 16 frames. Taking a look into the past, animation was once measured in feet.

Is it simple, without much movement? Is the character performing an intense action with a huge amount of objects involved? On top of all that, there’s framerate to consider!Īs long as we go into the discussion understanding that there are so many variables it’s nearly impossible to truly have a “normal speed,” we can start to compare the apples and oranges that are “how much animation in a particular amount of time.” Ye Olden Days And finally the actual SHOT you are animating is going to determine a lot as well. That doesn’t make them better or worse, it is just how they work. Likewise some animators simply animate faster than others. If you’re attempting to do very limited Flash animation, you’re probably going to seem to produce work at cheetah-speeds compared to a frame by frame animator drawing by hand. How many seconds per day need to be complete? What’s “normal” in the industry? Are you going too slow? Let’s step back and take a look to see if we can set the record straight.įirst it’s important to understand that “animation” is a very broad term. Recently I’ve seen a lot of discussion between animators regarding how fast you should be animating.

Stick figure animator 60 fps