Animation Is NOT Easy

This is actually a new pet-peeve for me, being an animation-major. I've seen some people have the mindset that "Oh, animation is easy! "
....You say that in front of me and I will come at you like a demon out of hell and chew your head off.
_{How dare you mock our profession!}

"Animation is easy," my fucking ass...You don't even know the fucking half of it. This is coming from an animation-student in her second year in this chaotic industry.

Want to know how much goes into just 2D traditional animation (the entire thing is drawn out)?
There's layouts, backgrounds, concept design and pitching, storyboarding, character designing, character-sculpting, script-writing, rigging, color modeling, character-design, in-betweens, special-effects, etc.

And here's what goes into the filming of the animation-piece:
There's the producers and directors, then the visual department, story-writing/script-writing, casting voice-actors, story-reel, layout departments, the actual animation process, rough pencil-tests (rough animation clips, all done in pencil), clean-up departments, special-effects, sound-effects, backgrounds, color models, mark-ups on color models, registering the animation, paint mark-ups, the actual painting process, animation checks, compositing all of this together, film print, and then post-production.

I could go on with this list. And don't get me started on what goes into a computer-animated film.

Guess how long it took me to film a 10-second traditional animation clip for my final my first semester?
Almost 36 hours straight. 36 fucking hours in a studio, with only 3 to 4 hours of sleep for 2 nights, and almost over 80 PAGES OF DRAWINGS. That includes drawing the background, timing everything correctly, and trying to film it altogether at 4 AM, the same morning it was due.

And I did all of that while dealing with a cold. Most of my class looked like they were going to drop dead that morning, since we pretty much spent those last 36 hours in that studio together, working our fingers to the bone...

Try doing that, and then come tell me animation is easy.

Think about how long and how much it would take to animate a 30-second film, by hand. That would be over 100 pages of drawings. Try 30 minutes and it'll be 10 times as many pages. How much do you think goes into animating 15-30 minute episodes for a 2D traditional cartoon, such as Spongebob Squarepants or other hand-drawn animated shows?

I thought it was going to be easy, until I was blown back on my ass my first semester. I had a retired Disney-recruiter as my professor and got 2 inches of paper on what goes into traditional animation and what goes into film. TWO INCHES...to fill up a 2-inch binder.

You have to really love spending hours and hours in a studio drawing, to like this career. Because that's how hard this industry is. It's not all fun and games. Not even animating simple 30-minute cartoons is easy as it looks. Even Nickelodeon has tried to show their audience that, with special "How to animate" clips during commercial-breaks.

And I've just been thrown into this chaotic industry and have seen the work of the seniors in my major; you have to do several hours in studios and with the rest of your group to get that good. Their finals were amazing.

Despite that hard, slap-in-the-face experience my first semester, the only reason why I'm still in this major is because I have a life-goal of turning my WHR story into an animated series. And I'm not giving up that easy, just because I was tortured for almost 36 hours. I'm glad I got to experience what it's like to literally live in a studio for days, with barely enough sleep at night. It gave me a taste of what to expect in this industry. Because that's what animators experience as part of their job.

_{Whoops...Ranted a bit more than I meant to.}

And don't get me started on the ones that go around calling themselves "professionals" when their work clearly doesn't show it. I'm sorry, but FUCK YOU if you do that. Please don't go around calling yourself a professional when either A) you're still in school, or B) your work clearly doesn't show professionalism. You're pretty much mocking my career when you do that and makes me want to slam my giant stack of animation-drawings in your face.

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