Should I be worried about speed when animating?

AGoodFella

Something that has been in the back of my mind.

When animating, I could easily spend 2-3 days planning, shooting reference, drawing over poses and breaking it down. Then I easily spend a few days getting all of my main poses in. Granted, these shots can range from 5-15 secs.

And then I hear people say that animations can get done in a few days in a studio or even a day. Don't know if that's with mocap or without.

Should I be worried about speed, should I try to find shortcuts to get through animations quicker?

I'm still trying to break into the industry so I'm not a veteran or anything, I'm still a beginner/junior.

lotet

A friend of mine works for an animation studio that does TV shows/cartoons. they are on a pretty tight schedule, and push out about 5 seconds per day (per person). On features films they can spend waaayyyy more time then that.

are you focusing on games or films?

I dont think you should worry that much, especially not in the beginning. Get good first, then you can think about speed.

AGoodFella

Well, Ideally, I would like to end up in games but I'm open to other areas, especially to get experience and to grow.

MiAlx

I don't know what your skill level is, but you should be focusing on quality first and foremost. When you have a steady quality level to your work, you should start thinking about how to save time. I would love to tell you to do x in y amount of time but it really depends on the complexity of the task. An attack animation for a character can take 1 day to 3 days depending on what kind of move it is. if it's simple it can be half a day or in rare cases even a few hours. Boss characters that have lots of different attacks + locomotion (so that's at least 50 animations) can take a moth or more, but it's because of the iterative process, game design wise and style wise etc. Also if you get hired as a junior, you will be given more time to finish your task, compared to a regular or a senior.

For now i'd say just make sure your work becomes good and then try and figure out how to save time.

AGoodFella

Ok, thanks for the reply.

Zitch

Like basically everyone else is saying, work on the quality first. If your animations are not good, you're not going to get the job. You get the speed overtime after you've got the quality down.

slipsius

your speed is going to increase ten fold in the first 3 months on a job. focus on quality. speed comes with time. 

AGoodFella

Thanks for the replies. I'll focus on getting good.