How many hours the work actually takes
how it fits into a routine and being realistic about it
Log
Project | SONHOS
Time in production | 53 weeks and 3 days
Status | Clean up, Coloring, Backgrounds
Welcome to this post! I will talk about time and how there is never enough of it for animation. I will go through every hour of my day, and every step of the process and its working time. But first, in case you missed the last post, the trailer for this animation project I have been writing about is out!! It’s very short but hopefully fun. There’s lot’s of numbers in this post, but stick with me! There is a summary at the end if you can’t bear math.
The actual numbers (in hours)
This project being my graduation film means I have been working on it during the semester, with other classes and things going on. I tried to be strategic and chose a small amount of classes in the second semester of working on it, to have as much time for animation as possible - sadly even that wasn’t enough to finish on time. I’ll break down my working hours for you:
The first semester was the pre-production phase. I had 16h of classes combined, aside from the “final project” class. The “final project” class officially has 10h but it’s usually less and you end up not going to many of them, because it’s just more useful to stay at home and work. So let’s say that was an average of 6h weekly hours. Driving to uni and back would take me on average 2h (without heavy traffic), 4 times a week.
16h + 6h + 2hx4 = 30h of general uni time per week.
The second semester, which was focused on production, I took 3 subjects aside from the “final project subject”, which totals 8h of classes weekly. I went only 2 times a week to uni.
8h + 6h + 2hx2 = 18h of general uni time per week.
Now, I am a person who refuses to pull all-nighters and deprive myself of sleep fo the sake of hard work. I have always worked more efficiently and creatively when well rested - with around 9h of sleep per night. That’s 63h of sleep in a week.
A 7 day week has 168h. 168h - 63h = 105h.
In semester 1 that makes 105h - 30h = 75h of “free time”. That’s around 11h per day
In semester 2, 105h - 18h = 87h of “free time”. That’s around 12h per day.
Then there is food + rest + taking walks + personal hygene + social gatherings (mostly D&D in my case). I will average this to 3h + 1h + 1h + 1h + 4h = 10h.
You see, of the 11h free hours of a day, if there was a social gathering that day, the math would be 11h - 10h = 1h. 1h of work in a day.
That’s of course not what happened, as D&D happened only like once every 2 weeks, and other social gatherings were shorter for the sake of having time to work. So it was more like 6h of “stuff” in a day, leaving 12h - 6h = 6h of work time per day, during the second semester.
6h was the averge of work time I had during the first year of working on this project, around 5 months of pre-production and 7 months of production, without being able to finish the project.
And now just to drive the point home, 6h of working in a day was my best day. Usually it was more around 3-4h, and sometimes more like 2h.
TLDR: I did half of my student film (around 2min of animation) working only 2h a day on my worst days, and 6h on the best.
Routine
On my best day I wake up around 9-10am, work before lunch, have lunch at around 13h, have dead time, work a bit more until like 17h, have more dead time in which I exercise/walk, have like 1h before dinner of free time in which I decide to work, have dinner and end the productive part of the day, going to bed at around midnight.
On my worst day I skip the productive morning because I sleep too much, have lunch, work a bit, have all the dead time nevertheless, force myself to work a bit during the dead time which is painful, don’t exercise, have dinner, work a tiny bit more and sleep probably too late.
On my best week I can have a D&D session and a free sunday, on my worst week I can’t.
How long each step takes
Coming up with the idea was a vague process of maturing the idea over a longer period of time.
Writing the script took around 2 days.
Researching was around 2 weeks, sparsed out throughout the other steps.
All the character concept art around 11 days.
All vehicle concept art around 3 days.
Thumbnails of storyboard took 5 days.
Cleaned up storyboard in 8 days, which was tight.
Editing animatic took 3 days. It had 10min.
2 days per character sheet (4 were done in total).
Color script 2-3 days.
Rough animation of 1 shot was doable in 1 day, more complex animation in 2.
Animation clean-up takes 1-4 days per shot, depending on complexity, without the character details like hair strands and top laces.
Coloring 1 shot takes usually 1 day.
Background lineart takes around 2h, coloring it in another 1-2h.
Compositing the trailer (37 seconds) took 2-3 days.
To be faster and more efficient, I group the tasks - instead of finishing 1 shot completely, I did all the roughs first, then a batch of clean-up, then a batch of coloring, a batch of BGs, etc. I would like to be able to finish “all clean-up before doing all coloring” but I can’t, I get super sick of one single task if I do it for like 3 weeks straight. So I do go back and forth, but in batches.
Summary
On my best day I worked for 6h, on my worst 2h (or none on some days, of course). My most productive time is in the morning, before lunch, but on some days this time chunk doesn’t happen and I struggle through the rest of the day. I make a point of sleeping enough. I play D&D occasionally. People helped me with certain parts of the project, like music and 3D. Clean-up takes the longest. I did not get done in 1 year, I finished around half.
I am at peace with not having finished it on time - it sucked and I wished I had done it, I wished my project was shorter or that I could grind for 12h a day or sleep less. But I am fine with the reality of my rhythm.
Up next
References! I think I want to dedicate a post to all visual and conceptual references of this project, going over how to deal with and organize reference in a long term project in general. Any other questions?
Thank you so much for reading,
have a magical day!
Animation is no joke when it comes to work hours.
I hope all your work reaches a satisfying conclusion.
The trailer looks nice -- a lot of effort has been put into cool background details, I can see :)