If I ever find the time, I will breakdown the hours into the different tasks. There´s a astonishing variety of exercises to produce an animation-movie. Just one of these is  to animate the characters. Why is it called animation-movie? It should be named something like make-a-lot-of-things-and-plan-with-intelligence-movie. But this could be a little long. I´ve recorded everything I did in a giant report-file. Should I show it here?
 
Here I  try to classificate my tasks:
 
define your character. What´s his situation? Where does we want to go? What´s in the way?
write a storyboard
draw sketches
find a speaker
record the speaker
compose music
make a slideshow with the sketches, timed to speaker and music (animatic)
rewrite the storyboard
rerecord the speaker
remake the animatic
build your (virtual) models, characters and environments
make the lighting and testrender stills
paint textures, moved and still
test the prototype characters (let them walk, sit down, dance...)
animate (ah! here it is!)     <<<--- look! I am Animating!
dream about your characters, talk with them, open your ears to what they want, how they see it
program the cameras
optimize the lighting for every shot
blow your savings
render
composite
cut (edit)
produce, edit and add sound
rearrange the timing of the speaker, fitting to the rendered clips
record the english speaker
make the finalcut in German and English
make subtitles in english for the german version (Festival need)
correct and optimize scenes, rerender, sometimes back to model-making
dvd-making
buy a lot of software-updates
find out where and when the festivals are, deadlines for submissions
produce documentation for the press (and this website)
produce stills, write your biography, every festival has different ideas, often good ones
choose festivals, send out your dvd´s or send out online, pay money, some festivals charge you
dig money (mum?)
find out, what format the festivals want as screening-copy. Produce this in time, if they invite your film
calm mum: „sure it makes sense what I do“, hopefully
documentation-writing
finally: ponder if all that is worth the work. And to whom? (german speciality)
getting rejections from all the important European festivals. enjoy your depression, it may be your last
wait
get invited by the SIGGRAPH. Two weeks of smiling
again digging for money. Now you could sell your Computer?
buy a cheap flight-ticket to New Orleans! You can call me the big easy!
 
 
animation-format: 1024x576 Pixel, 25 Bilder/sec
 
duration of production: 3 years with breaks (or two)
production time: 500 hours
number of Frames: 7582
 
used software-tools :   Cinema4D
                                       FinalCutPro
                                       DVD Studio Pro
                                       Motion
                                       Soundtrack
                                       Garageband
                                       Photoshop
                                       Matchmover Pro
                                       Commotion
                                       Audacity
                                       Celtx
chosen hardware:         1 Mac Pro, DualCore
                                        Tascam 644/Shure MK50 Mikrofon
                                        2 Sony Multiscan G400 Monitore
                                        Sony HD50 Linear Kopfhörer
                                        Midistart-3-Keyboard
                                        Contour Shuttle pro
                                        Wacom Tablet