Question for you all

[Roger]

So if it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, how many hours do you need to accomplish something significant?

That's a pretty open-ended question, I guess, with I imagine the answer being "it depends".

 

I ask, because I'm trying to figure out if I can finish my film in a single year (or at most, 18 months)

 

My story is 100%, rock-solid, done

Both main characters are 90% of the way there, as far as being modeled and rigged.

All props and scenes I could probably knock out in a month or two, if that is all I did.

I'm still learning animating and rigging, and of course lighting and texturing will probably also be stumbling blocks, but I was planning on using darktrees for as many textures as possible and sticking with basic 3 point lighting to keep things simple.

 

I figure part-time, I can dedicate 900 to 1200 hours a year to it, without my job suffering. Any more than that, and I risk my employment or health or both.

 

Anyway, I'd be interested in what people think, I've made some progress but not nearly as much as I would like. But I haven't gone all out on it, either. I tend to fall down the rabbit hole of surfing the tubes or other time sinks when the day is over.

[itsjustme]

It depends...on what type of quality expected on the finished product and on the person making it (how good they are, how obsessive they are, etc).

 

My favorite animation done by a single person (The Passenger...

) took eight years in his spare time. Your mileage may vary.

[Roger]

Thanks, for answering, I guess I already knew the answer before I asked. It is kind of a ridiculous question. Along the lines of "hey, I'm morbidly obese, can I become Mr. Universe in 18 months?"

If I am doing this part-time, then 1800 hours on the low end to 3000 hours on the high end over that time frame will have to be enough. If I were fortunate enough to be able to work on it full time for 2 years, 12 hour days (minimum) 6 days a week, I could put in about 7200 hours on it. I don't have that kind of time, though. Unless I stretch the project out to 4 or 5 years, which means I don't finish until my early 40s.

[robcat2075]

The other end of the scale would be someone like Mark Largent who got his 15 minute "Stalled Trek" done from start to finish in less than 6 months.

 

However, he is a confident, experienced A:M user. There isn't much about A:M that baffles him or leaves him stuck without ideas for solutions. And... his design for the production lent itself to rapid execution. That is part of good planning; understanding what can and can't be done.

 

I think you need to get more of the nuts and bolts process under your belt before you set a schedule. You want to get way past the point where every step is something that you have to develop new skills to do. Your project is a good laboratory to learn those skills but to imagine a schedule before hand is impossible.

 

The time factor between doing something you haven't done before and something you have mastered can be like 50x. I can do a proper bouncing ball now in a few minutes, but when i had to do a proper one for the first time, even though i had seen a lecture on it and understood the concept, it took me 35 clock hours to get it right.

 

You might not get your project done before you're 40? I'll never get mine done before I'm 40, it's mathematically impossible.

[Gerry]

If 40 is your deadline for getting something done you probably shouldn't do it!

[Roger]

The other end of the scale would be someone like Mark Largent who got his 15 minute "Stalled Trek" done from start to finish in less than 6 months.

 

However, he is a confident, experienced A:M user. There isn't much about A:M that baffles him or leaves him stuck without ideas for solutions. And... his design for the production lent itself to rapid execution. That is part of good planning; understanding what can and can't be done.

 

I think you need to get more of the nuts and bolts process under your belt before you set a schedule. You want to get way past the point where every step is something that you have to develop new skills to do. Your project is a good laboratory to learn those skills but to imagine a schedule before hand is impossible.

 

The time factor between doing something you haven't done before and something you have mastered can be like 50x. I can do a proper bouncing ball now in a few minutes, but when i had to do a proper one for the first time, even though i had seen a lecture on it and understood the concept, it took me 35 clock hours to get it right.

 

]You might not get your project done before you're 40? I'll never get mine done before I'm 40, it's mathematically impossible.

 

Well I am currently on break so thought I would post a response.

You are correct, I don't think I can accurately estimate how long it will take, given my current situation. There are too many "unknown unknowns" as it were.

 

The only way to do this will be to push myself to learn something every day. Then in a year's time I might be ready to do nothing but animate.

 

I've done a lot over the last few years and am in a better place now, and will readily admit this has not been my number one priority, which is part of the problem. I've just been noodling around with it as time and desire dictated. Unfortunately, that isn't the best way to accomplish much of anything and I'll have to schedule time for it. I have been reluctant to approach it that way, thinking that turning it into a job will kill my enthusiasm for it.

 

I didn't intend to give any offense, with my "before I'm 40" comment. I didn't realize there was anything specific you were working on, but I haven't been in the WIP are lately. I guess I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and lamenting past bad decisions, since there is absolutely nothing I can do about that now. I don't care to get into my life struggles on a public message board, if you're interested I'll send you a private email.

[thejobe]

it depends on many factors.

how long is the movie?

how much time do you plan to spend each day on it?

how much production quality are you looking to do on it?

are you working on it alone or with someone else?

what do you plan to do with it after you are done?

 

but then there is other questions.

how many scenes are there going to be?

how many sets do i need to build? can i reuse some?

how many props do i need to make?

can i reuse props from previous projects or from contributor cue?

how many characters do i need to make? can i reuse some for background scenes?

how long do each scene take to render?

 

these are the list of questions i made up for when i started my film (which im still working on)

it all depends on how well you want the film to look in the end.

[robcat2075]

I didn't intend to give any offense, with my "before I'm 40" comment.

 

No offense taken.

 

When I was 30 there was no Animation:Master and when I was 40 I had given up on it.

[TheSpleen]

I do 5 to 6 minutes in a month (And I am considered fast)

[Roger]

it depends on many factors.

how long is the movie?

how much time do you plan to spend each day on it?

how much production quality are you looking to do on it?

are you working on it alone or with someone else?

what do you plan to do with it after you are done?

 

Movie is no more than 3 minutes. I was planning 3 to 5 but it probably makes sense to tighten it up a lot.

Currently, I can't spend more than 2 to 3 hours a day on days I work, and maybe one long 10 hour day per week.

Production quality: that is a hard one to answer, obviously I want to make it as nice as possible but am time constrained. If "The Ant Who Loved a Girl" is the low end of the scale, and anything by Pixar is at the high end, maybe somewhere in the middle? (I realize The Ant Who Loved a Girl" is not CG, but I needed an example of something with low production values - and that definitely qualifies)

Working on it alone. Internet collaborations almost never work out, unless you know the parties involved really well. I also can't afford to pay, so there's that.

What do I play on doing with it? Screen it for friends and family, send it to Image Union and maybe a children's film festival. If response to it exceeds my expectations, I might send it to one of the bigger festivals or SIGGRAPH. After that, I would probably Youtube it.

 

Can I reuse scenes? Not many, but there really aren't more than 5 major sets.

There are only 3 main characters, one of which has very little screen time.

I might use some community props, but want to do as many of my own as possible. I plan on using Darktrees for as many of the textures as possible.

I have no clue what rendering time will be like, I want to render at 720p and shoot for no more than 10 minutes a frame. So it would be about 54000 minutes to render a 3 minute film at 10 minutes a frame. So if it was ten minutes per frame it would take over a month to render at ten minutes a frame. Probably want to cut that down to 5, or build a render farm At least I have two machines, so one could render while I continue to work on the other.