Jeff Raz, former director of the Clown Conservatory in San Francisco has said it takes 100 hours of practice to prepare one minute of performance.
If we apply the same math to creating an animated shot, and the shot is 10 seconds long, that would mean about 16 hours of practice. By practice, I mean 16 hours spent rehearsing, developing reference, or drawing before beginning to animate a shot.
Jeff points out that the 100 hours is before taking it in front of an audience for the first time, and that’s when the real development starts. The valuable feedback starts then. Animators can’t continue to develop the work, so their is more pressure to get it right.