How Do You Actually get Better At Animation?

The short answer is practice and time.

But this can mean a lot of different things for different people.

Someone who practices once a day for 3 hours vs someone who practices for 3 hours a week total.

The difference in who will reach a hirable level or improve the fastest is obvious.

What might take the first person 1 year will take the other person 5 years.

Obviously there are variations of this, 8 hours a day twice a week vs 16 hours a week. It doesn’t matter how many days; the idea is that you are constantly animating and improving every chance you can get.

There were two things that led me to reaching a hirable level and ultimately getting a job.

The first was a decision. I realized that if I got a job, I would be required to animate for 8 hours a day. At the moment, I was not doing this. So I started animating 8 hours a day and the improvement was instantly noticeable and I was getting more and more confident animating more complex shots.

You might think, how can you animate 8 hours a day and still have a job, social life, etc.?

Well, I didn't. I was working part time, just enough to pay rent and eat, and animating the rest of the time. I gave it my all, and it paid off. I didn’t have to do it for years, only 3 months.

If you are working 8 hours a day, every day, every chance you get, your timeline will shrink dramatically. It doesn’t have to take as long as it does to reach a hirable level.

You just might need to make some sacrifices. If you don’t want to make sacrifices and not animate as much as possible, that’s 100% Okay! Everyone's on thier own journey. It will take you longer, and that’s fine. If it’s something you want to do, then you will eventually get it.

However, I traded 3 months of hard work for my dream job and dream life and would do it again anytime.

The second thing that helped me was getting professional feedback from a feature film animator for the first time.

Up until this point, I was just practicing on YouTube by myself and not getting any notes specific to me, where I was lacking, where I could improve, and how to get better and also learning things I had absolutely no idea about.

If there was ever an “aha” moment, it was when I did my first mentorship and was shown what it takes to work in feature film and the level of attention to detail. Things I never learned in school.

The thing that a lot of people don’t realize about the work they see in feature films is that it is hardly ever the sole work of one individual.

The final shot you’ve seen has been reviewed many times during dailies and given countless notes from supervisors, leads, animation directors, and directors before it ever reaches the screen.

Professional animators still get countless notes on their shots.

The reason a mentorship is so powerful is because it allows you to see your potential as if you were working on a film. The exact notes you get from your mentor are the same notes they’ve received for years working in the industry.

They are giving you industry knowledge you can’t get anywhere else.

Things you can only learn while animating on a specific film, on a specific character.

When you have a mentor showing you what you need to do and how to do it, coupled with working your hardest, success is inevitable, and the timeline is shortened by years.

I went straight from never working in the industry to working on my first feature film and animating hero characters. I skipped crowd work. I skipped BG. All because I put in the work for 3 months with dedication and professional feedback.

I’ve built Lupin House over the last 5 years to offer everyone the same opportunity I had, the opportunity to grow with professional animators from the world’s leading studios. And we have helped 1000's of students. Weather it be through our mentorship, courses or free content.

Now I’ve created a new option that we're taking into 2026 designed for animators ready to go all in.

Unlimited Reviews

If you're ready to put in the work, I'm ready to help you.

It’s slightly different from a mentorship, more affordable and more flexible. You can join for a month, three months, or a year, however long you need to reach an employable level in your animation.

Because it’s cheaper and more affordable, you don’t get access to all the character rigs available at Lupin House, but we still provide 4 of our production-quality characters so you can join at any level.

If you’re fairly new, we have our beginner rigs, Bleu and Lucy.

When you’re ready to animate some character performance, we also offer our feature characters, Xander and Kiary.

We’re also including 3 of our premium feature courses that cover appeal in animation and acting, giving you a complete workflow for creating feature-quality animation with three different characters, which far exceeds the cost of the subscription itself.

We’re doing this because it doesn’t have to take as long as it does to get good at animation. If you want to truly improve in 2026, I’m here 100% to support you. I’m excited to help you, and I’m excited to work with you.

If you're interested in learning more about the Unlimited Reviews and working with me directly, you can learn more about it below. Just click the button! :)

Learn more about Unlimited Reviews

If there’s anything I want you to absolutely understand, it’s this: anything you want in life is achievable and within reach. More often than not, it’s closer than you think. You just need to really want it, truly work toward it, and it becomes impossible to fail.

Much love,

Steven J.

P.s Not Written with Chat GPT