This interview is the first of two parts. Can you please describe a typical day during production. Well each production varies enormously depending on The Directors and the Budget. One of the nice things about being an animator is that there is a certain degree of flexibility in your hours. Once your scenes have been cast to you and you have been briefed by the Directors then you usually need at least a couple days to rough it out and can be left alone to get on with it.
Some animators are late starters but then work late into the evening.
As a Lead Animator I like to stick to normal hours so that I am accessible to other artists and production people. This way you can work out and agree on the major acting issues of the scene and go into your scene with confidence because the Director has a rough idea of what you are going to give him. When we rough out a scene we refer to the storyboard which is a rough drawing that suggests the staging of the scene. If I am supervising a sequence then I will have been given a block of scenes and I will then cast some of them to animators working on my unit. Pre-production is supposed to be fun time where you can experiment with your designs and drawings.