A 12-week animation project sounds easily manageable. Enough time to rig, animate, light, and compose a short-to-mid-length production, provided you know exactly what you have to work with before the clock starts. The problem is that most studios do not find out their delivery pace until week ten, when the gap between available hours and remaining work becomes impossible to bridge. The consequences are well-documented: crunch that burns out senior artists, quality cuts made in the final stretc