ENDA Episode 216→ The time when ENDA understood the extension of a project (Part 2)

In a previous episode, we mentioned that production timelines can vary depending on the type of project. We also hinted that there was one type of production that stands out as an exception, and the answer is…

Feature animation.

Believe it or not, animation is one of the few formats that can take longer than most live-action productions. Even an animated short film can take as long as a live-action feature, sometimes even longer.

Speaking from experience, the animated short film I produced took almost three years to complete. And if we look at well-known examples, we’ll see that long timelines are often the norm in feature animation:

🔹Beauty and the Beast (1991) started in 1989 and was released in 1991.

🔹Interstella 5555 started in October of 2000 and was released in June of 2003.

🔹WALL-E started production in 2002 and was released in 2008.

🔹Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse started production in 2015 and was released in 2018.

Why does it take so long?

There are many reasons: everything has to be created from scratch; pre-production becomes essential to avoid wasting resources later; there is creative control at every stage (and therefore more notes and more revisions); and sometimes fixes go so far that you have to redo whole sections, or even entire sequences.

But there’s also an upside: you get the chance to push the work further every time.

I truly understood this after working on multiple animated series and getting used to the pipeline. You might think I had it easy, because the deadlines felt generous, I could take feedback calmly and work without rushing…

Sadly, there was a catch.

Each episode still had to be delivered every week.

So how do we handle the demands of feature-level animation… while also meeting the pressure of weekly deadlines?

Well, that will be for a future episode.

The journey continues...