I was just wondering, for an animation lasting about 10 minutes, how many frames would be required? I'm planning on making a "dramedy" animated series with each episode being around that length (once I get better of course) and I'm just curious as to how many frames I'm up against
How many frames per second are you going to play it at?
If you are going to 30 frames per second then you are looking at...:D
There's 24 frame per second in standard film animation, so 24 x 60=1440.
1440 frames per minute x 10 minutes equals 14400 frames.
For video, the usual standard is 30 frames per second, so 30 x 60= 1800, or 18000 for 10 minutes.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
I'm not sure why but I thought that number was going to be a lot higher than that, that doesn't sound bad at all thank you for your comforting response also. I should be doing 30 frames per second? I don't think I have flash set to that, should I change it?
The fps rate you want will likely be determined by what you are going to output to, as either rate might one, or one may work better than the other. Research what media you want the work to end up in and adjust for that.
A lot of times it depends on how you want to animate to determine how much work its going to be. If you choose to animate on twos, those total frames above are halved because you'll shoot each frame twice. If you shoot on ones, then you'll shoot every frame.....and the differences will tend to be the smoothness of the animation. Animating on twos is probably better/saner because its less work and the end-result on screen isn't usually perceptible by the layperson. Using ones is usually a case to show off something special or supple in the animation--example animating something in slow-motion.
Also bear in mind, if you have not already, that any scene with more than one character, or one layer of effects/shadows/highlights etc will effectively double/triple/quadruple the frames needed for that given scene. Not that the length of time for the scene will increase, but that the internal layers/levels and elements within the scene will increase.That's because most of those added elements need subsequent passes on the animation, after the basic element of the scene is done. So it will feel like animating it once, twice, three-times over as per whatever elements are called for to be done.
That, of course, will increase the workload and will tend to slow the progress down--depending on the medium used.
Make sense?
Something else to consider: depending on the media used to animate( traditional hand drawn, FLASH, CGI etc....) your actual output can influence how much time it'll take.
An example: a 2D traditional animator usually has an output of anywhere from about 10, 20, maybe 30 feet a week, on a modestly busy schedule. This would be for full animation keys, on twos.
Yeah, new term you might have noticed: "feet"--the old film definition of the amount of film produce was "footage" or a literal foot.....and I believe that 12" inches ( 1 foot) of film stock worked out to 16 frames of film.
So if you have 14400 frames to do, it'd be about 900 feet to do. And since the average output for a single animator is......oh lets be conservative and call it 30 feet ( 320 frames, it works out to) a week.....it would take you 30 weeks to animate a 10 minute episode, or 7 1/2 months. That would be doing both the keys and inbetweens, but with a single character on screen and minimal effects etc, if any. Now, different media can compress that a bit, but single-handedly, you could be looking at a minimum of about 5-6 months to animate your 10 minutes.
There are tricks and shortcuts, and different media have different means of economizing the work. 10 minutes is 30%-50% longer than the average short and is quite a lot to do. Good luck!
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
Thank you for the help and especially for the history lesson. I'm not going to hand draw these shorts, I'll most likely use flash, unless I can figure out how to effectively use blender. I would like the animation to be as smooth as possible so I will be looking at a lot of extra frames, however I plan on having a lot more movement on screen than I probably should, but I want it to seem more like a movie than a cartoon. I however am way too inexperienced to try to tackle a project that big just yet, so I'm still looking at a good bit of time before I get to start. I'll just have to keep trying new things and playing around while I make shorter animations. Hopefully my skill will catch up to my ambitions fast, but regardless thank you for the knowledge and the time.
Extra frames does not necessarily translate into smoother animation. True smooth action comes from the placement of your in-betweens in a believable arcing path. There is also the issue of motion blur which helps tie the images together.
Perhaps you should work to fill 30 seconds with whatever action your planning. You may even wont to drop the time down to as low as 10 seconds. In 10 seconds you can see a lot of action and you will be working out issues that you will be confronted with in a more manageable slice of time.