How Many Frames Do You Do in One Week?

On average how many frames do you do in one week, and what is required weekly for feature film, TV production, TV commercial and anything else you know? I have heard TV requires 500 frames a week.

This is a tough question, as every studio handles expectations and quotas differently. Generally speaking, the bigger the budget, the higher the expected quality, which means you get more time to create the animation. At a studio like ILM, there are expectations to perform at a very high level, of course, but we generally don't have any specific quotas. However, as professionals we all know what speed is generally expected, and it's obvious when someone isn't keeping up, so we all work hard to put out as much quality work as possible.

The better studios also boast production departments that work hard to shield the artists as much as possible from the stresses of the overall production. These studios set things up so that 99% of the time, the artist is concerned far more with the quality of the work than they are with the quantity (number of frames) being finished. Of course, this changes a bit as any production at any studio moves into the "home stretch" and the final project deadline starts to approach. At that point, no matter where you work, you definitely start to become more conscious of the deadlines, at least to some degree...

Shots also can vary wildly in how long they take to do. One hundred frames of a character not doing a whole lot might get finished in three days, but those same 100 frames might take a month to animate if it's six giant creatures running around and fighting. Because of this, it's really hard to estimate a weekly frame count.

As for the rest of your question, each studio handles that stuff differently. I've even heard of 800-1000 frames per week at one TV animation studio, which to me is just insane, but I guess they're fine with that level of quality. There is always a tradeoff between speed vs. quality of the animation, so it's up to each studio and production to determine the level of quality they are willing to pay for.

-Shawn :)