HOW CAN YOU SPEED UP YOUR ANIMATION MAKING PROCESS / IS IT POSSIBLE? - PART 1 OF 2

As a no budget film director who makes himself ill from working on these short films I think about how to make life easier on myself with regards to getting films completed quicker.

I speak to Cos about this and also was writing to James Wadsworth the other day there, and he raised the exact same topic too...its something that becomes quite apparent when your making these animations...and plagues us all.

I still cant remember the name of the guy who made the Cinema 4D animation that was all set in one room...his basic statement was along the lines of this “all I have to do is model one room...I can make that one room really, really detailed...and not have to worry about anything else...if I set the entire story inside this one room”

I went on to write a list of things that could reduce the time.


1) Make your film extremely short.

2) Have everything happen in one room.

3) Go for minimalist approach where the sets and characters are very basic...we’re talking extra very basic here...it increases the speed you get things done in a big way.

Arguments against all of this:

1) You cant rush art.

2) Detail for many directors / artists (including myself) is a really important thing for us.

3) To restrict yourself into one room means that there’s going to have to be very good character animation...

I always find myself back at looking at a film like Alien and think to myself “this film has got everything right...it's going to live on and on as a classic until the end of time!”

The cold harsh realitiy of things:

1) I will tell you something here which is a fact, the truth here...my short film The Rescue was made in three months, and I worked flat out every single day of that three months...really very hard work, and that was with the firm intention and concentrated effort to make things minimalist with a view to speed increase.

2) Projects for me have always started off small, and then gone on to grow and grow...this I think varies from director to director...I myself always want to have those long shots in there.

3) In the animation world, there really is no such thing as “I’ll just make a quick animation here”