how long on average?

[Anonimator]

how long (on average) does it take to finish a 5 minute flash. is it typical to take 8 hours on just coloring 20 frames of 1 character ?

it should vary based on everyones individual work, but i just want to know if im going at a healthy pace...

[Resolution]

It depends entirely on quality.
Adam Phillips will spend months on 5mins of animation, the Kitty Krew would spend like 10mins :P

But a decent 5min should be >5hrs I would say, but then again it also depends if it is action based or more of a sitcom.

[UnknownFury]

At 24FPS that's ~7200 frames. So at 20frames per 8 hours that's going to take.. forever. But remember that's talking FBF where you're redrawing every single frame. Actual frames you have to animate should be a lot less than 7200 due to tweening etc. You should also, once you'e done the backgrounds once, just be able to paste them in place. Similar things with the characters. Anyhow, 8 hours just to colour 20 frames seems like a very long time.

[Slim-Bean]

As stated above; the time it takes depends entirely on complexity and quality.

Frankly I think its a great thing that you have spent 20 hours!

Producing quality work is actually easier then it sounds, its producing quality work in a short period of time that's the trick. None the less remember that professional animators (the guys who make cartoon series or movies) usually take at least a full year with an entire team. (But I guess you also have to factor in that a part of that time is spent in pre-production/post-production)

Good luck to you and send me a PM when you finish this project so I can check it out!

[Cryoma]

I've spent 4 years on a game and haven't even finished the first few frames.

[psicodemon]

5 minutes of flash. If your talking about decent flash movies you have about 18 to 20 frames per second, wich means you get about 6000 framesf . (that's alot!!!) But you can fill most of the space pretty easy. Just draw a okish background and just stay in that place.

You can use the same mouth animation for every character, well usually.

But a pro tip, don't go for 5 minutes as it's to long or it has to be really , reallyy reallyyyyy good. Go for 2 or three minutes, this is usually alot better and won't drag the story to much. Hmm em, I mean, you don't really need to get those 5 minutes or 3 minutes, if you got a story line but you feel it's to short, don't go fill it up with endless loops or dramatic half hour crying scenes. Good luck