First of all, I work 8 hours daily. I love my tempo and I try to work every day. That's my little secret.
So, here is my workflow:
1. Storyboard, sketches, poses.
Drawing stage. Getting everything I might need during the production.
2. Animatic (not always; depends on animation)
3. Reference
4. Staging, layout
5. Blocking
Do the blocking of the main controllers (moving character around, testing hands moves).
Set the timing and key poses based on reference and sketches
6. Lip sync (if required), facial expressions, blinks.
When the head is stiff and there is nothing to distract, I work on the face.
However, when the main part of the animation is the body move, I include this step in point 9.
7. Animating straight ahead - legs and hips. Giving a sense of weight. Arcs. Checking with timing.
Animating upper part of the body.
Animating hands.
8. Create a daily to-do lists based on notes taken from last playblast. Make changes.
9. Start polishing up the animation. Same trick - create a to-do list. If I got another thing in mind to work on, I just take a note and move it on the next day. Trying not to do two things at the same time - thinking of what to change and animating.
10. Final check.
It's kind of combination of both techniques (straight ahead and pose-to-pose). It fits me perfectly.
