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Most certainly, you’ve experienced this difficulty and wondered, “How do I speed up animation working time but still provide a quality product?” Fortunately, we have some ideas for meeting deadlines while also satisfying your clients.
Plan what you need to speed up animation working time
Planning what you need to accomplish for a project ahead of time might save you a lot of time and frustration in the long run. Starting a project is considerably easier when you already know what you’re going to do.
When you begin arranging specific scenes, make a list of what you want to do in each one.
Then, when you’ve been provided with background music and a voiceover, spend some time listening to the audio recordings. Draw a few simple thumbnail sketches of the scenes after imagining how they will look. These can be used as references when storyboarding.
Estimate how much time each scene will take after you have a vision for them. When you start working on scenes in your animation software, you’ll undoubtedly need to fine-tune your timing, but doing so will help you plan out your project and finish your animation on time.
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Observe your daily and weekly activities to speed up animation working time
Observing your daily and weekly activities is sometimes the best approach to speed up your animation time. Your hobbies and social activities may be taking away time from your animation endeavors. If you believe that is the source of your slowdown, work on your schedule so that you can prioritize your work when necessary.
If you don’t believe your schedule is the cause of your deadline problems, the issue could be that the work itself is taking too long. It can take a long time to make progress if you put too many movements in a single scene.
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Have a high APM (actions per minute)
Use Shortcuts
It’s embarrassing to see some experts go through menus to get things done. Believe it or not, I’m 20% faster than other animators simply by employing shortcuts. What’s the big deal? When I perform freelance work, clients hire me because they know I deliver on time, even though we do the same things and go through the same procedure (using shortcuts).
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Personalize Shortcuts
While some products, such as After Effects, do not allow you to customize your shortcuts, if you can, DO IT! The optimal Keyboard Profile is one that handles your most often-used shortcuts close to your right hand. The less your right hand has to move across the keyboard from left to right, the better. As a result, you should strive to put all of the major functions close together in your keyboard “mapping.”
Use a Gaming Keyboard, Gaming Mouse, or Gaming Keypad
The Gaming Keypad (like the Razer Orbweaver or Logitech G13) is the one I recommend the most because when the software doesn’t support shortcut customization, you can customize your Keypad to have all the major functions next to each other, and better yet, instead of pressing three keys (like CTRL+SHFT+P), you only press one single key on your keypad.
Use a good rig to speed up animation working time
A high-quality setup is required. It allows you to be more creative and free when animating, as well as have a faster animation time.
Look for rigs that allow your character to effortlessly change stances. If possible, have someone assist you in developing a good rig for the key postures, after which you may execute the additional animation yourself.
Understanding inverse kinematics and applying it to your rig is one approach to determining its quality. To summarize, inverse kinematics takes a target location (animation character) as input and calculates the pose required for the end-effector to achieve the target position — the pose is the output.
Change your animation software to speed up animation working time
It’s likely that what’s slowing you down isn’t you; it could be a problem with your gear. If you discover that your computer or tablet slows down when you animate, don’t be afraid to try out different animation software. Some programs may perform faster on your computer or drawing tablet than what you are now using. It may take some time to become accustomed to utilizing new animation software, but it will undoubtedly assist you to shorten your animation time.
Optimize your process in animation
Optimizing involves making the most use of the resources available to you for your project. The ideal way to approach your animation process is to focus on the two most critical aspects of every project. Your pipeline and your launch Keyframes.
Pipeline optimization
The folder arrangement of all your files is critical to successfully completing the job. Make distinct folders for your sounds, music, photographs, video references, characters, and project files (toon boom, after effects, etc.). If we make some motion graphics at our studio, we put them in a folder called AFTER EFFECTS, the main project in a folder called TOON BOOM, and the edited animation in PREMIERE.
So if we need to make adjustments, we know where to look, and if we need an audio file, we know exactly where to look. Every animation school teaches this, and not just because it looks nicer and more beautiful, but because it works.
Set up the key poses first, then deal with the details later
It’s best to block (pose your character) the important keyframes first, such as the beginning, middle, and end of the action. Then, later on, add more animation.
Recycle what you use
Recycle keyframes
If the stance is very similar to one previously blocked, you can copy and paste keyframes and adjust them. For example, if you have a fighter who is throwing a low punch and require a high punch later, copy and paste the stance and then edit it. You will have the correct hip rotation and foot posture, and you will only need to adjust the height of the fist and possibly the torso. That is faster than blocking everything.
Recycle animations
The most common example is the blinking of the eyes. You copy and paste keyframes throughout the timeline instead of manually opening and closing your eyes.
Another example is a walk cycle: if you require the character to walk and do anything with his hands, such as give commands to other characters, you can recycle the animation but delete the keyframes for the torso, hands, and head and animate them. In this manner, half of the work has already been completed.
Use older animations as a reference
Sometimes the timing is excellent, and the animation curves (for interpolation) provide the smoothness you desire, but now you’re working on another project and are experiencing issues, and you can’t figure out what you did. This is where a previous animation can come in handy as a reference. All you have to do is check the number of frames between keyframes to ensure proper timing and the animation curves.
Conclusion
Above are some tips to speed up animation working time. Planning thoroughly, observing what slows you down, taking more breaks, using keyboard shortcuts, organizing your files, using a high-quality rig, and referencing previous animation projects will all help you save time while animating.
Keep in mind that wasting time means wasting money and effort. Follow these tips if you want to finish your animation projects on time; you’ll save yourself time, energy, and stress!
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Animost – Vietnam 3D Animation Studio
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