Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Long Does An Anime Episode Take To Make?
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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And Death March this season is another example of said reminder. 
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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I demand a refund for any recap episode!
I suspect some shows put in annoying recap prologues just to pad the episodes out. As far as rushed animation, I guess that's another, albeit unintentional, incentive for the blurays. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5527 |
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What are test animations? I've heard of them before, but I've never heard an explanation. Are they rough animatics or something done even before key-framing starts.
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ehh123
Posts: 31 |
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Those animators are lucky. I heard an average episode of Dragon Ball Super was animated in THREE WEEKS! |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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For the sake of brevity, I usually throw out a couple of different numbers. If you're talking about literally just the animation, ideally you have 12 weeks. Realistically, the range is more like 8-12 weeks(and can be much worse for some projects, or course. Outsourcing also complicates things), the storyboards are usually allotted about 3 weeks to a month in addition to that, and scriptwriting and most of the rest of it varies too much to even give an estimate. To make an episode from beginning to end, production-wise, you'll ideally have about 4 months.
And like Justin noted, it's not the same people working on every episode in a singular straight chronological line. It's more like this: Ep 1: Scripts>Storyboards>Animation>Dubbing>Edit>On Air ...........Ep 2: Scripts>Storyboards>Animation>Dubbing>Edit>On Air ......................Ep 3: Scripts>Storyboards>Animation>Dubbing>Edit>On Air .................................Ep 4: Scripts>Storyboards>Animation>Dubbing>Edit>On Air ............................................Ep 5: Scripts>Storyboards>Animation>Dubbing>Edit>On Air .......................................................Ep 6: Scripts>Storyboards>Animation>Dubbing>Edit> Ideally you can rotate staff every 4 episodes or so, but it depends on the project.
It can be a variety of things, which is why it's sort of hard to pin down or explain. It ranges from the animation that you see in trailers and PVs, like this stuff for Violet Evergarden, to work that is almost more like a pilot, like Under the Dog, to encourage investment, to stuff that isn't ever released to the public, like animatics, storyboards, and layouts that give a rough idea of what the introduction will be like. |
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Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 713 |
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This is exactly the case. Recap episodes are, the vast majority of the time, a sign of trouble behind the scenes of the production. The animators usually throw a recap episode together in order to give themselves some breathing room and catch up. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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This is the breakdown used in Shirobako:
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Engineering Nerd
 Posts: 904 Location: Southern California |
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That is the ideal scenario right? Assuming everything is finished as planned and no unexpected delays and other extraneous factors. Although I do have to wonder, if it takes, lets say 85 staffs (a random number) in 6 weeks to complete an episode, would 170 staffs in 3 weeks produce the same product? From what I have seen, the more primary and secondary key animators are during late-season, the more likely you will see off-model and rushed presentations. |
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2623 Location: Germany |
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South Park´s highlight episode AWESOM-O was completed in just 3 days back in 2004 as the show-runners needed to attend a wedding in Hawaii. Can´t beat that.
The only way they did it and finished all but 1 episode during the last decade+ in just 6 days is due the literally documented production schedule of hell. It pays off for all involved though, as the staff is payed all year round (nearly everyone ended up being irreplaceable) and only 10 eps. a year get made these days. I wonder why no-one ever tried to replicate the model. It works, the show looks beautiful even by US standards and that only 2 people play half the speaking roles is only noticeable if you known it. The base staff is made out of 70 people too. Fairly manageable and the show constantly experiments with animation styles. The Heavy Metal Homage even featured rotoscoping and heaps of licensed music. The Simpsons on the other had need at least 6 months for one 1 ep. And that is with the help of all the studios they source out the animation to. I wonder how a current Simpsons ep. would look like if they only had 3 months to 6 weeks... Say what you want about the current seasons but the animation puts the average anime movie to shame. |
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5527 |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13626 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Whoever submitted this question, I thank you! The time to make an anime episode is a question I have often wondered.
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Pidgeot18
 Posts: 101 |
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If it takes one woman 9 months to give birth to one baby, can 9 women do it in 1 month? 
The real question is what ability there is to do work in parallel, how much can stuff be pipelined, and what the critical path is. The other dimension is that parallelization means you're doing more work in communication overhead: if I bring somebody else on, I have to spend more time bringing him/her up to speed and coordinating with work. I don't know the answers for anime production, but I would take a stab and guess that doubling the staff would cut the production time by only 1-2 weeks at best. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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It's more about time, efficient scheduling, and talent, than it is about staff numbers. Which is why you see KyoAni putting out incredible looking episodes with 5-6 key animators on a regular basis, and why only the best of the best of shows can afford to have solo animated episodes(episodes key animated entirely by one person[Devilman Crybaby #04 and #09, Your Lie In April #05, almost Princess Principal #05, etc. If you've seen those episodes, you'll probably remember them being some of the best of their series]). More staff is most often used to make up for a failure in the production schedule forcing them to rely on as much help as they can get their hands on. More people doesn't always mean that, and it depends on the role. For example, an episode with 30 key animators, but only a couple of Animation Directors, and a few second key animators is likely doing just fine, but an episode with 30 key animators, a dozen Animation Directors, and 20 second key animators is almost definitely a sign of a production disaster. The key here being that Animation Directors and second key animators are there to clean up key animation and get stuff on model. When you need more and more people doing the clean up, it's a sign that the key animators are rushing through their work as fast as possible to meet a deadline. Darling in the Franxx is kind of a good example of all of this, because it could have been a production disaster, and had far too short of a production schedule, but the connections of the staff, and the animation producer, meant they could call on a huge number of people to come help them out, and they ended up being able to put out a pretty high quality project(so far). So sometimes more staff is great, but it's almost never the ideal situation, is almost always a reaction to a failure in some other area(in the case of Darling, their season debut was pushed up by a full season resulting in much less production time), and in an industry with such a shortage of staff as is, it's never something you can afford to rely on. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Not sure if srs when comparing South park style cut out puppet vector animation and rotoscoping, and two-man exaggerated comic acting to anime. And while The Simpsons looks good and moves well for what it is, the work and the sheer complexity combined with yes, the large amount of frames especially prominent in important scenes of your average modern anime TV show, nevermind typically larger budget anime movie, is orders of magnitude more objective, technical work than the animation in several episodes of Simpsons, or likely even an entire season of the Simpsons combined I mean you surely can't be serious comparing with unshaded yellow skinned 4-fingered, cylinder for arms and heads characters with zero detail and simple line movement. Nonetheless I'll bite. Just look at Boruto the Movie for your typical shounen anime movie, or this scene and this scene from the Kizumonogatari and everything in the *-monogatari series for the quality movies of smaller otaku-focused tittles. But like I said, TV anime has increased its quality so much that one can find the similar technical animation quality (frame complexity and count) in regular TV shows. If you want something more down to earth and comparable in genre, just look at Nichijou for comedy: Nichijou -- Misato Tachibana's "Weapon Discharges" (Eng Sub) That's One Hard Pumpkin Nichijou Funny Moments Part 1 And that's with a tiny fraction of a bugdet KyoAni (or any anime studio) had to work with than what is paid to Matt Groening's staff and combined outsourced work. Hell, KyoAni puts in tons of animation work even for simple slice of life and drama TV shows like Tamako Market and Hyouka. |
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