ABSTRACT
As an animation producer, building the crew is where you get the opportunity to perfect your juggling skills. Hiring a team for an animated project does not happen all at once since not everyone is needed at the same time. As a result, start dates and end dates are staggered. Unlike live-action filmmaking, there is no one moment in which cast and crew work on the same scene simultaneously. The staff's work is very segmented as each scene independently proceeds from one department to the next. See Chapter 6, "The Production Plan," for more information on putting together a crew plan. The producer paces the production in terms of the number of artists and production staff needed. This is more easily said than done since projects are always in a state of flux. The producer thus has to protect the budget and yet be willing to take risks and hire the artists prior to the production pipeline becoming fully functional.
