Animating can seem complicated sometimes (understatement of the year). But really, when animating a shot the only thing you need to do is hit the necessary beats. If a shot calls for a character to enter a room, wipe his feet, and dive face-first into a comically large bowl of chowder, those are the only three things you need to accomplish. Simple. Crank that thing out and go home, Game of Thrones ain’t gonna watch itself.

But great animation lies in the mindfulness of character.

Since the specific actions necessary to a shot are often already established in the storyboards, the task of the animator is to define the manner in which the action is carried out. And to do this the animator must know the character, and have a sense of how exactly this particular guy/gal/six-legged subhuman would dive into that aforementioned bowl of chowder.

So how does one…