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When it comes to art, I love it all. Well… all except 2D animation. I really have a ton of respect for those who can survive hour after hour of drawing the same thing… only slightly different… for a living. Seriously, 2D animation has to be one of the most tedius tasks a person can ever undertake.

Lets break down exactly what is needed for 2D animation to occur:

1. In animation, there are 30 frames per second
2. In 2D animation we animate on twos. This means that we’re actually only working with 15 frames per second.
3. That’s 15 Drawings for every second of animation.
4. The average cartoon show is 15-20 minuets long (once you cut out commercials)
5. That’s 13,500-18,000 drawings for your average cartoon show.
6. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the first animated full-length English color film) is 83 minuets long
7. Thats 74,700 drawings. To save time these guys actually traced stills from video of actual people. That’s why the movement and proportions look to realistic.

This brings me to my conclusion. Based on the experience I have had with making short 3-5 second animations, and judging by the amount of work needed to produce such things, I have decided that EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY 2D ANIMATOR IS INSANE! Yep, they’re all crazy, every last one of them. I’m actually so certain of this that I would bet that every last 2D animator would agree with me completely. These people must really like punishment… not that this fact makes them crazy, but rather that it doesn’t help things at all. These facts are backed up by pretty much everyone in the same art program as I. It’s fairly unanimous, not everyone thinks it’s evil (although most do), but we can all agree that it sucks your soul out through your finger tips. This is likely the cause of the severe cramping that results from drawing thousands of pictures of the same thing over and over and over and over again.

Just keep in mind, next time you’re watching a cartoon that it was created by a bunch of raving loonies.

Type to you later,
~Nathaniel