Production Management

Learn how animation studios estimate rendering costs and predict farm capacity. This guide explains the factors that affect render time, the core cost formula, and a practical framework for reliable render estimations.

Learn how to scale an animation studio from a small team to a full production environment. Discover best practices for team structure, asset management, production tracking, review workflows, and pipeline infrastructure.

Learn how to automate Kitsu production onboarding using CSV files and the Gazu Python API. Import artists, assets, and tasks in bulk to eliminate manual setup and create repeatable, scalable studio pipelines.

Western and Eastern animation are shaped by cultural values, visual languages, and storytelling philosophies. This article explores how studio structures, aesthetics, and narratives differ between traditions—and how modern animation increasingly blends the two.

A strong animation production brief prevents scope creep, wasted effort, and misaligned visions. This guide shows you how to write briefs using the Golden Circle method—covering purpose, tactics, and deliverables—to streamline communication and keep teams aligned from concept to final delivery.

Outsourcing in animation helps studios save money, scale faster, and access global talent without compromising quality. Learn how to define your outsourcing needs, choose between freelancers and studios, manage assets, and streamline reviews to keep projects on track.

Discover how remote animators successfully work from home, from building ergonomic workspaces to mastering collaborative tools, securing assets, and managing feedback like a pro.

Learn how to streamline client communication in animation production. From onboarding to offboarding, this guide covers strategies to align expectations, manage feedback, and keep projects on time and on budget.

Curious how to go from animator to animation director? This in-depth guide covers the key steps—building your craft, leading teams, and defining your creative voice—so you can direct with purpose and confidence.

Landing your dream job pushes you to stand out from the crowd, and it starts with a strong animation portfolio―a chance to showcase your talent, skills, and creative vision to potential employers.

The very nature of the animation pipeline, with its collaborative workflows and reliance on digital assets, creates a unique set of security challenges: protecting these valuable IP assets from unauthorized access, leaks, or malicious attacks

The animation industry sees a rise in collaborative productions where multiple studios join forces to tackle a single project. This approach is more and more common for big productions but also with independent animators.

This article explores the importance of diversifying revenue streams and provides actionable tips to help studios achieve financial success.

As the animation industry continues to evolve in a digital age, understanding the importance of data analytics becomes increasingly crucial. Behind the scenes lies a treasure trove of production data waiting to be mined for valuable insights.

This article aims at highlighting tools and best practices to avoid crunch time culture: crunch time as an expected part of work, rather than a happy accident to strive for what’s best.

In this blog post, we explore nine of the best animation blogs to help you broaden your horizons and become a better animator!

Getting into an exercise routine can be overwhelming. Maybe you don't know where to start or you're just too scattered to keep yourself consistent, or you don't feel very inspired by the exercises you found online.

You pour hours of work into completing a task only for your team to give vague, contradictory, or harsh feedback upon sharing your progress. Your day is ruined. You go through it anyway and sleep on it. But the next day, your client praises you, and it's like the sun shines a little brighter.

Your budget is your animation studio’s lifeline: you need to take care of it because your team’s livelihood depends on it. In this article, we list 9 points to consider to make the most of your animation budget!

If you're an animator looking to make your mark on YouTube, you've come to the right place: this article will guide you through the essential steps to kickstart your animation channel!

Animation comes in different shapes and forms, each with its pros and cons. As a business owner, marketing manager, or producer, it's important to understand them to hire the right animation studios and increase your return on investment.

It becomes frequent during production that the work is separated into several studios. Either because the main studio is only a delegated producer and has no production studio or artist, because of lack of space, or to take advantage of a better rate on certain stages.‌

It is commonplace for TV shows to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode, if not millions. But CGI TV shows budgets aren’t cheap either...

Creating your own company is thrilling. It’s an opportunity to shape the way you work while discovering an entirely different world, which can be frightening at times. But fear not: we come with solid hints to help you create your studio.

In production, it's common to set quota goals to facilitate planning and budgeting. These quotas are then used as indicators to know whether the team is going at the right pace or not. Quotas can be calculated in terms of frames per day, seconds per day, or finished tasks per day.

While discussing with our customers and watching their Kitsu, we figured out that they do interesting things that we didn't expect. In this blog post, we want to share with you a few tips coming from their usage. To make this post even better, we added two highlights on the hidden features of Kitsu.

After years of work, you meet success and your studio is growing. You have more important and demanding projects. It’s time to hire more…

That’s it; production is over! You’re proud of the result, and your production quality seems to have reached a new level. You were able to…

During my career, I realized that making a mistake in shot casting is one of the best ways to set a fire in a production.

As you know, Animation Productions are like all projects. To manage them properly, you need to track KPIs and particular events. Tracking…

When running an animation production, what matters the most is to identify what can slow down the production. For that you must know all…

It is not uncommon during a production to come across a file whose extension is unknown. For instance, during a meeting, everyone is…

It is not uncommon during a production to come across a file whose extension is unknown. For instance, during a meeting, everyone is…

If you read our previous post, you will know that we were having doubts about our choice of an animation studio. In the end, a visit to…

A few years ago, I took on a job managing production at a studio. It was undergoing a full restructure but the financing plan had been…

My name is Gwénaëlle Dupré, I worked in cartoon TV show production for more than 13 years, I get through all the positions: from Second…

Some productions require to work with an animation studio overseas. It’s great to dispatch the work and limit budget but it brings…

As a young production manager, you may not know how to position yourself toward the other teams. You may be too friendly, but if you do so…

Every production relies on a schedule. It’s something you can’t avoid and that will follow you during all the production lifetime. So, it’s…

Preparing a production is always a difficult task. It’s like reading the future into a crystal ball! However, you can prepare yourself for…

In a Cartoon TV show, it’s usual to have the animation work done outside of the studio. It can happen in the same country or overseas. For…

As Production Manager, you are prepared for everything. You have done your schedule for the whole production. You have included all the…

In a CGI production, the camera defines the shot. The background set, the props, the FXs and the animation of the characters are all…

You were hired to manage this new TV Show. You feel the excitement of working on a new production. It may be one of your first jobs as a…

One of the key point of production management is to have up to date information about the current state of the production. One of the key point of production management is to have up to date information about the current state of the production. It ensures that everyone is on the same page and that

Everytime we visit a studio or discuss with a CG Artist about pipelining, the question of the file hierarchy comes at some point. It may…

A few months ago, we started a community of CG Pipeline Engineers. To achieve that, we invited people to discuss on a private Slack…

At each step of fabrication, a validation is needed. During the process, there are numerous back-and-forth between producers, directors and…

In any field, whatever your expertise level is, it’s a good idea to stop by in order to study the state of the art of your profession. Our…

In a CG production CG artists are rockstars. Management and Technical Directors make sure they’d have everything they will need in order to…

One of the most critical action of a production is the validation step. Every assets and components built must be reviewed by directors and…

The thing to understand about production management is the main steps of a movie production. You probably already know these concepts. But…