How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon?

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RyanSurrey
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How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon?

Post by RyanSurrey »

I made one in 1 week. I can say, it was OKAY. Not really impressive or bad.
But how much time would you take to start from starch. I mean from making characters to post effects in Premiere Pro.
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slowtiger
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by slowtiger »

5 min of animation for a client can be done in a month, if I reduce everything to the bare minimum. 5 min of animation for my own projects would be done in about 4 months time. But of course, your standards may vary.
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Greenlaw
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by Greenlaw »

It depends on the style of animation, the number of characters, props and locations to create, how well you plan out the project, and of course how well you know the tools you intend to use.

In my experience, it's always best to have a detailed plan before I begin to animate anything. Pre-production is the time to figure things out, like story, design, and workflow so that I can focus on drawing and animation later on. The more I understand about my project upfront, the less time I'll waste making mistakes and 'exploring creative options' during actual production.

The most informative part of pre-production will be the storyboard and animatic (the storyboard edited in video form.) I use the storyboard to count all the assets/artwork I'll need to generate, and the animatic to count the number of frames for each scene.

After I have my storyboard finished, I can break the project into separate stages and tasks. I'll enter all that info into a spreadsheet*, and then make time estimates for each stage. For me, whatever estimate I initially come up with, the actual time is almost always going to be double that, so that's what I enter.

(*For spreadsheets, I like to use either GoogleDocs or LibreOffice. Both programs are free and work similarly. GoogleDocs is cloud-based so that I can access my files from any computer with a GoogleDocs compatible browser. The downside is that the files are not accessible when I'm not online and haven't prepared the Chrome browser and Google Drive for offline use. Because of this, I tend to prefer using LibreOffice (an offshoot of OpenOffice.org) and saving my files to DropBox. The downside to this setup is that I need to install LibreOffice on every device I use, and it's not available for the iPad.)

Next, I break down the animatic into individual scenes and enter the timing info in another spreadsheet. This document is called the X-Sheet (short for Exposure Sheet and also known as a Dope Sheet,) and it contains descriptions of the action in a given scene, notes about the frame where each event occurs, and how long the entire scene will run in frames before the next scene. With CGI projects, I typically give myself about ten extra frames of 'handle' for editing, but with 2D animation, the frame range is usually pretty close to what's in the animatic. (FYI, when I worked for Rhythm & Hues, the frame range was sometimes called the 'Frange', a term I still use on my X-Sheets.)

At this stage, I can group similar scenes and sequences together, and animate the groups in an assembly line fashion to speed up the process.

After completing a few scenes and working out any bugs in my workflow or pipeline, I'll have a clearer idea of how long it will take to complete the remainder of the project, and can make adjustments to my workflow or designs as necessary to meet the schedule.

Follow the above, and I know my project will get done on time.

And when I don't, well, I have a couple of projects where unconstrained development and 'featuritis' keeps them endlessly in-production. These projects keep looking better and better but they never seem to get done either. I don't recommend this approach--'done' is much better.

Hope this info helps. Good luck with your production. :)
Last edited by Greenlaw on Mon Jun 26, 2017 3:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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neeters_guy
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by neeters_guy »

Some great advice posted from working pros. As a hobbyist, I find it takes me about one hour for each second of animation. Much of that time is building assets. The animating part is actually pretty fast. A 5-minute animation in one week is an quite a feat by any measure.
chucky
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by chucky »

Greenlaw's advice is spot on.
The complexity of a scene can really start to effect time management.
As how you design the final look.
The style of story telling and pacing is the most crucial though.
If you have a story of someone sitting on a rock watching clouds roll by while a narrative track speaks their thoughts for five minutes, that will be a lot quicker and easier to animate than 50 people on horseback and a pack of hounds chasing a fox through the forest.
Pick you battles (I am guilty of breaking this rule knowing full well how stupid I'm being btw :oops: ).

If you want to use comped renders and go to after effects to add a 'je ne sais quoi' then you might need a dedicated person for that task.
Even on elaborate scenes I try to avoid that if I am working solo.... ( even though post effects can make a big difference).
Crowds, 3d elements painted backgrounds.... all these might start eating time in mouthfulls unless you get someone on it.

Also the perfectionist factor can adversely blow out a 'nearly' finished piece.
You might have storyboarded and edited an animatic, but after watching your fully animated piece back, it might be glaringly obvious that something is lacking or doesn't make perfect sense.
Allow a good amount for retakes and pickups, a few small changes ( which some people would never notice on the face of it can lift the end result dramatically). Unfortunately these small changes need careful consideration and can start a snowball of perfectionism, so watch out for that.

OK
This is just for you guys so sshh.

7 minutes
tut
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by tut »

Thank you for sharing, chucky, this is absolutely awesome. Very inspiring, and also daunting to think about the time this must have taken. Really enjoyed the look of the entire project. In particular, the ship really caught my eye. Was that painted in Moho? Any info you can provide about your workflow and additional programs used in the production would be fantastic. You should be very proud of this work, just really great. Thanks for the peak at this, much appreciated.

-Thom
chucky
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by chucky »

Thanks Thom.
SO quick breakdown.
Almost All of this was Moho.
Storyboard and animatic in storyboard pro.
Backgrounds designed in Clip Studio Paint but apart from 2 were built in Moho.
The ship was painted in clip studio and masked in Moho for sharp edges.

All Moho renders were single pass renders,( I would have preferred to do multi pass with post lighting but this cut down post).
Rendered to png image sequence and edited in Vegas pro with Acid Pro( ancient as it is)/ East West for the score.
The animation was made much easier with with Mike Kelley's walk assist script.
The original production was done in a mad 6 weeks but it was a little sloppy so....
I sat on it for several months and went back to work, (then after taking a deep breath), I picked it back up and polished it.
This meant adding pick ups, and improving the soundtrack, plus re-rendering all the little bugbears (for a few months on and off). This meant that the last 10% took 70% of the time. No surprise there.

So the whole key was planning.
I made sure that Besides the close up of the boat ( which were pick ups), there were only two sets... Front Island and Inside the island...
By using Vectors for these ( with brushes) I could be as close I like or as far away without drawing new Backgrounds.
I did the wide shots first but made sure they can support a close ups before committing to any animation.
The characters were simple... no fingers or even dialogue, There's basically three characters A tern, a frigate and a crew member. OH four, including the chopper. Each character was finished in a neutral model , then slightly tuned to make variations.
Well that's basically it.
Hope that helps. :D
Last edited by chucky on Mon Jun 26, 2017 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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jahnocli
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by jahnocli »

Great bit of animation chucky!
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
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Greenlaw
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by Greenlaw »

Chucky, that was absolutely amazing!

The story, designs, colors...everything about it was lovely, funny and very entertaining. Oh, and inspiring too!

Thank you for sharing your film and the 'behind-the-scenes' info.
chucky
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by chucky »

Aww Shucks Dennis,
thanks, that means a great deal.
Also John, thanks very much.
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rafael
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by rafael »

I tell clients about a month for what is usually 1.5-2 min videos. I can crank them out faster than that, but I don't want to, and it's usually bad for the end result.
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djwaterman
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by djwaterman »

Hey Chuck, I finally get to see the masterpiece I never got to work on, and I am kicking myself that I didn't have time to help out at the time. It truly is amazing the quality you got, and even the story telling and feeling you created in that film. Such a delight, like a classic children's book brought to life where you want to study every page, Smith Micro need to add this to their promotional material, it's epic. Those characters are so endearing and expressive.
chucky
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Re: How much time would you spend to make a 5 minute cartoon

Post by chucky »

Hey Des, wow thanks so much. I was actually suffering from a bit of post natal depression on that piece, but I'm feeling so much better now. I see much stuff that is so amazing and makes me feel unworthy to even try, so it's glad to hear that the work is appreciated. Next time I'm in Sydney, we should have a hot drink! :D
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