Animation Output

[Richard]

On average, regarding hand-drawn animation, what is the average output for artists. Is it something akin to 50-100 drawings per day?

[Charles]

Richard, the measure for gauging an animator's productivity has traditionally been footage. There's 16 frames per foot of film at the 24 frames per second rate. If you're animating on 2's, or using one drawing for every 2 frames, that comes out to 8 drawings per foot.

I'm told in the old days at Disney, the studio would accept as little as 5 feet per week of quality animation if the artist was animating straight ahead instead of pose to pose. That equates to 40 drawings per week, or 8 drawings per day. In a typical 8 hour workday, that's one drawing per hour.

Keep in mind that 5 feet per week is considered very low productivity and was only acceptable because of a commitment to quality. Most studios would go for about 20 feet per week, or 160 drawings, which is a little more than 30 per day. That's still considered a low productivity rate in many instances. I've heard of 80 to 100 feet per week in some cases and even more. If you're animating 100 feet per week on 2's, that's 800 drawings, which breaks down to 160 drawings per day.

It all depends on what you're trying to achieve with your animation. How complex it is, the production schedule, style of the animation, so on. Animation output can vary widely depending on many factors.

[Glen Moyes]

Was that 5 feet per week quota assuming that the animator was doing all the inbetweens?

From what I understand of the process (which I'm sure isn't much, just what I've been able to glean from reading and listening to The Animation Podcast), the lead animators didn't do all of the work on each shot; they had inbetweeners and assistants that would finish their construction drawings.