Simpsons episodes, this fact DOES NOT MAKE SENSE?

Question

I saw a short behind the scenes clip shown on sky one some time ago, and the creator Matt Groening looked at the camera and said, each episode of The Simpsons takes 6months to make, but obviously this does not make sense because there are hundreds of episodes!
SO how the hell is this done? ive wondered for years

Answer 1

its kinda like how microprocessors work using pipelining

they can be making 10 episodes at the same time by having each episode in a different stage of production

Episode 1 can be in storyboarding, Ep. 2 can be in animation, Ep. 3 can be in sound recording, Ep. 4 can be in lip synching. And those can all be done at the same time.

Answer 2

Producing an animated series is sort of like building cars in a factory; the guy who starts the process by puttting the body on the frame doesn't wait around until the completed car rolls off the other end of the line to start the next car; he immediately starts on the next car to be built. In the same way, it's not as if every single person involved in the production of an episode does nothing but work on that particular episode for six months straight, and then starts on another episode; each step in the process takes place after the previous step and before the next step - the actors will record the voices for one episode one week, while at the same time the animators are working on the episode whose voices the actors recorded last week, while also at the same time the writers are writing the script for the episode the actors will record voices for next week . . . with each step going on simultaneously throughout the process. Groening was obviously talking about a lead-time of six months from the initial story-pitch to the time that the episode airs - most of that time spent in Korea, doing the animation (especially matching the lip-motion to the voices). The work on The Simpsons never really stops, so the production is pretty much continuous at all times.

Answer 3

The creators (including Groening) do storyboards which is the basic outline of the episode. Then they send them to the South Korean animating company to create the actual film. There are dozens of episodes in production at any one time.

Answer 4

I think he must have meant that it takes 6 months from the initial writing to the finished animation. However, while the first one will be going off to be animated, they will be writing the second. When that goes off to a different animation team, then they start writing the third and so on.

Each will take about 6 months from beginning to end, but they can probably do a whole series in about 12 moths as they do it like a conveyor belt system.

They probably also split the series up amongst several teams of animators as the animation takes so long.

So while the writing is a serial process as far as I can tell, the rest of it gets done in parallel to keep the length of time between series down?!

I hope this helps!

Answer 5

Well the answer to that is simple. They don't make one epsidoe at one time. It takes 6 months from begining to end, but it's not one person doing it. There are concept scetchers, animators, and voice overs (and many more steps). They don't all happen at once. While one department is working on one episode another department is working on another episode.

Answer 6

Multiple episodes are being made at any one time.

Answer 7

They make more than one at a time.