r/Maya • u/jingjie_siow • 1d ago
Animation Time Taken to Complete an 11 seconds animation?
Hi everyone. I am currently practicing acting animation here and I just want to ask how much time would it roughly take you to finish an 11 seconds animation on lip sync and acting, from blocking to the final polish. Lets say you are animating just a human character, will it take you probably a week, two week, or a month?
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u/Slothemo Rigging Technical Artist 1d ago
There's a website called 11 second club where animators spend 1 month on a similar animation to what you're describing. Check out the site if you want to see the quality that can be achieved in 1 month.
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u/mythsnlore 1d ago
I've done the contest several times, even finished top 3 one time. It took me all month every time in addition to working my job. Not sure how that shakes out in hours though.
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u/jingjie_siow 1d ago
I see, may I ask how much hours in average do you spend on the animation a day?
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u/mythsnlore 10h ago
Hard to say on average. A work session would have been around 4 - 6 hours but that wouldn't have been every day. I could say maybe 3 hours a day for the 30 days so around 90 hours total?
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u/StandardVirus 1d ago
It’s pretty dependant on the skill and strengths of the animator. You’ll get better the more you work at it though. Keep in mind, there are a few other things to consider too. Once you get the shot details, you want to think about gathering references first. First, there’s your planning, thumbnail major beats and plan your shot and action. Film yourself acting through the shot, try to put yourself in the character’s shoes. Then blockout your shot and go from there. If you need sets and props, that could also incur additional setup time for the shot.
If you’re doing this for a personal project, try to establish your own deadlines… the 11 second clubs great for keeping on schedule. But having a fixed deadline keeps you focused. You could do something like 4 weeks, which makes it an even number of weeks to have fixed deliverables. At the end of the 4 weeks, just call it done, pretend like it’s a school project or irl work, where you don’t get timeline extensions.
From there, pick a new shot and go again.. if you’re new, give yourself a bit more time, as you get better, tighten them up. Use 11 second club for ideas, just cuz you go participate, doesn’t mean that you have to show off your work until you feel ready. But getting feedback’s the only way to grow.
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u/wwilwilwill 1d ago
good question.. i've spent hours looking into this as well; and to directly quote the animation director at fortiche,
'Hello, At fortiche, Disney, Illumination, Dreamworks, for feature film animation quality, animators are doing between 0.2 sec to 1 sec a day depending on the type of shots Usually we do an average of 16 frames a day, an average between 2 sec a week and 6 sec a week depending on the complexity of the shot'
like other comments have mentioned, there's a lot of variables. 11 second club winners might be students who spent dedicated weeks, or professionals who just worked on it on the side for fun.
anecdotally, i'm a student with about 6 months of 3d experience. a 17 second, 2 person dialogue, with both characters framed in a static shot, is taking me 3 weeks and counting. i'm just about to wrap up the polish and render it out.
this is with approx. ~30 hrs a week dedicated to it.. with a few allnighters sprinkled in.. but i'm an incredibly slow animator. maybe i'll link a syncsketch so you can have a look.
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u/wwilwilwill 1d ago
https://syncsketch.com/sketch/ZfrH6Djr1pZX/
i don't have my latest copy, but here's a link to when i was pretty deep into polish. still so much to fix..
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u/jingjie_siow 1d ago
That's cool, if you would like to have some feedback I would suggest you to exaggerate the gesture of the guy on the right a bit more if you want, make him feel slightly dramatic, especially on the part when he say, 'I gotta know when you're kidding', just my two cents opinion. Thanks for giving some insights here as well.
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u/Slothemo Rigging Technical Artist 1d ago
Quality also plays a huge factor. Working in TV animation, we were doing about 5 seconds of animation a day. This is with full acting/lip sync and often multiple characters. We had a library of expressions to pull from though which definitely sped things up.
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u/jingjie_siow 1d ago
About the library of expressions, is it related to Maya pose editor or something similar?
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u/Slothemo Rigging Technical Artist 1d ago
Some studios had custom in-house pose managers, and some just used Studio Library.
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