Production Resouces

Production is the backbone that sees us from start to finish. Schedules, contracts, clearances, budgets, pay, distribution, talent acquisition, and oodles of problem solving. There's so much to managing a project that falls on their plate. They may not have much control over the creative choices but production doing their job is what directly allows the creatives to do theirs.

Many people who Want to start their own studio, will want to learn a lot about production because management will become the majority of your concern as a owner.

A great reading resource is the book Producing Animation by Catherine Winder, Tracey Miller-Zarneke, and Zahra Dowlatabadi. It stands as a very comprehensive guide to managing animation focused productions.

Tracking

Keeping your project organized is one of the most important things that first time multiperson projects underestimate. When working alone you can often Wing it, but having a system of organization is a major help and a must when working with multiple people.

You can do this in various ways. Many big studios have adopted Autodek's Flow (formally Shotgrid) software to manage projects. While very powerful you often need a Technical Director team to really get your worth out of it. It can be exceptionally pricey for smaller productions to take on.

Alternatives like Reel in Motion are excellent for asset management and have one of the best footage review tools built in.

You can even go low tech and use spreadsheets too!

I was going to post my own I had made for others in the past but I came across the awesome StormStarDragon of Faerie Dragon Studios who has made an amazing set of tools and tracking sheets.

They are especially perfect for supporting indie productions. The best part is they offer it on their ko-fi for completely free! I do recommend going back and tipping if you can. It's a very well done and we should support the people who donate their work to the community.

Ink's Note - I'd love to colab with them sometime to make a optimized for rigged animation version but out of the box its absolutely awesome.

Pipeline

Animation is a collaborative effort that works in what is called a waterfall style workflow. It is where one department's work flows into the next. Each department tries to build apron the next adding their talents to make the best shows we can within production limitations (things like timelines and budgets).

The 2D Rigged Animation Pipeline

This is the standard pipeline for a 2D rigged pipeline. There are sometimes where more collaboration will happen between departments. Like an instant of back and forth between backgrounds and props for designs that will exist as part of the background in one shot but be a prop in others.