The genga-douga handoff, and why it’s the biggest headcount on a production

A key animator (genga-man) draws the poses that define a movement — a punch’s wind-up and full extension, say — along with a rough note of how many frames should separate them. Everything between those two drawings is the inbetween animator’s (douga-man’s) job: interpolating the character’s position, frame by frame, along the path the key animator implied.

Because a single key pose might need anywhere from one to a dozen inbetweens depending on how much time the storyboard gives that movement, douga headcount dwarfs genga headcount on almost every production — it’s the largest single line item in a typical episode’s drawing count, and the stage most commonly outsourced when a schedule is under pressure.