---
title: 'I Worked Like a MAPPA Animator For 72 Hours'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=CWOkzGoOqBA'
video_id: 'CWOkzGoOqBA'
date: 2026-06-17
duration_sec: 0
---

# I Worked Like a MAPPA Animator For 72 Hours

> Source: [I Worked Like a MAPPA Animator For 72 Hours](https://youtube.com/watch?v=CWOkzGoOqBA)

## Summary

A creator attempts to work like a MAPPA animator for 72 hours, taking on 12-hour shifts to produce a complex animation sequence in just three days. The video documents the intense process, from planning and storyboarding to the final, imperfect product, highlighting the immense pressure and tight deadlines faced by professional animators.

### Key Points

- **Preparing for the Challenge** [0:10] — The creator wakes up at 7 AM, eats a nutritious breakfast, and takes a morning walk before starting 12-hour shifts from 9 AM to 9 PM.
- **Animation Concept** [0:34] — The animation will be a showdown between Gojo and Sukuna from Jujutsu Kaisen, planned in 10 cuts.
- **Early Exhaustion** [0:40] — After 3 hours, the creator finishes the storyboard but feels exhausted and faint due to lack of quality sleep.
- **Failed CGI Attempt** [2:01] — The creator attempts to use Blender for CGI backgrounds to save time, but fails and switches to 2D animation.
- **Day One Progress** [4:26] — By the end of day one, only one animation cut is completed.
- **Day Two Techniques** [5:37] — On day two, the creator focuses on Sukuna's shots, using onion skin tracing for consistency in close-ups.
- **Day Three Progress** [7:57] — The creator finishes all Sukuna shots by 11 AM on day three, then moves to Gojo's shots.
- **Using Blender as a Guide** [8:39] — The creator uses a rough Blender model as a guide for a complex camera rotation shot, drawing only keyframes.
- **Skipping Cuts and Rough Backgrounds** [10:33] — Two cuts are skipped entirely due to time constraints, and backgrounds are drawn quickly and roughly.
- **Final Output** [11:55] — After 36 hours of work, only 16 seconds of animation are produced, highlighting the immense effort required.

## Transcript

for the next 72 hours I'm going to work
like a mapa animator this means 12-hour
shifts and a crazy deadline of only 3
days to make a highly complex animation
let's hope I can finish this in time and
not burn out I actually woke up at 7:00
to be able to make myself some breakfast
to get the day started well my shifts
are going to be from 9:00 a.m. all the
way to 9:00 p.m. so eating a nice
nutritious breakfast was going to be
very important after breakfast I took a
little morning walk to warm me up for
the torture the light ahead then the
second the clock hit 9: I got to work my
first task was to plan out what I was
going to make and since it needs to be
mopa related I'll be animating a little
showdown between Gojo and sakuna not too
long after I started drawing I began to
feel terrible presumably from my lack of
quality sleep I'm 3 hours in and I just
finished the story board man I'm
exhausted I feel like I could faint at
any moment and I still have about 9
hours left which really does not make me
feel any better I can't lie however I
kept on pushing forward as there is a
lot more that has yet to come this is
the plan for the project The First Cut
is going to show sukuna on the ground
looking up at Gojo who is standing on a
huge Rock there's also wind blowing in
the environment to add some drama the
second cut is a shot of sukuna face he's
going to transition from a serious
expression to an evil smile and the wind
is still blowing on him pause cut three
features a close-up of Gojo's face the
camera slowly Zooms in as he blinks and
hair blows in the wind cut four will
show fire igniting from sukuna hand then
in Cut five sukuna is going to raise his
hands to start charging up for an attack
cut six has a crazy camera zoom and
rotation shot up to Gojo revealing that
he's charging up his purple attack and
cut seven sukuna is going to pop up his
head and then raise his hand with fire
next in Cut 8 Suk kuna's fire arrow
attack will be revealed with the camera
moving away from his face in Cut N9
sukuna will charge up the fire arrow
attack before quickly releasing it with
a ton of force and in the Final Cut the
camera will zoom out to show both of the
attacks colliding with each other all of
this has to be done in only 3 days MAA
animators have to deal with stuff like
this all the time and under a lot more
pressure than me so I'm only getting a
little taste of what they have to go
through on the daily given the
background heavy scenes I thought it
would be a good idea to use quite a bit
of CGI to save me some time and a lot of
headaches so I spent a significant
amount of time on blender making the
environment where the characters reside
only for me to learn a very harsh truth
I suck at blender I can't lie I
just wasted so much time trying to
figure out the CGI background it looks
horrible I'm breaking my head over this
I don't know what I'm doing anymore I'm
just going to do this in 2D sometimes
things just don't go the way you want
them to so I skip cut one for now since
it relies on a background to do the
animating my plan is to tackle all the
sukuna shots first and then move on to
the Gojo shots I then started with cut
two I drew all of the static elements
first then I animated his mouth
transitioning from serious to an evil
smile with proper spacing making the
animation look super smooth all right
now it's time for my little break I got
myself some Panera Bread I'm about to
Feast you already know and I'm kind of
sad cuz I'm kind of cooking right now
but you know what I'm saying we'll get
it back once I continue I couldn't find
anything on what MAA animators typically
eat so for this video I'll be eating
fast food in my 15 to 30 minute break
each day since I assume assume they
don't have much time to prep a nice
home-cooked meal most days I'm not going
to lie I don't even care about my mess
up no more this life is looking good
right now this is amazing next I worked
on animating the hair and the clothing
I'm not too proud of how this part of
the cut looks but I really don't have
the luxury to make everything to my
standards if it wasn't obvious already I
tried to match the colors as closely as
possible to the show and I think I did a
good job with that I'm also keeping the
shading to a minimum to stay consistent
with the look of season 2 as you can see
I have a little over 4 hours left in the
first day and I've only completed one
animation cut so let's see if I'm able
to pull it off cut four what's next
hands Lord help me I'm just kidding I'm
not scared of drawing hands everything
was coming along very nicely up until
making the inet of the fingers I was
having some pretty bad inconsistencies
with the thickness of each finger which
caused me a lot of problems and led me
to spend a significant amount of time
trying to fix that I then animated the
fire coming out of his hand which was
done in straight ahead and it was such a
nice therapeutic moment in the day for
me I honestly thought it gave all pretty
cool again I tried matching the colors
of the fire to the fire arrow scene in
the anime I noticed there was some pink
and the fire in the anime which I think
looks beautiful so I made sure to
implement that into my own animation as
much as I could then I got to work on
Cut five which is similar to cut two for
the most part I drew sukuna and yet
again animated the hair and clothes
waving then I sketched out sukuna hand
coming up which looked really cool I
can't lie before being able to finish
this cut the clock hit 900 p.m. meaning
it was the end of the first day I fing
did it I did did it look at that it's 9
it is 9: after the day ended I took a
nice hot shower and went to sleep
shortly after and after a long day of
work I should get some really good sleep
right no not really it's all right I
guess I'm getting myself some Morning
Sun for my circadian rhythm 7:43 I'm
about to eat my breakfast and then I'm
about to go for my morning walk and get
back to work this is truly a beautiful
day today I'm going to have this Jimmy
Dean sandwich and some Celsius and
that's about it cuz um I'm not trying to
cook today I'm trying to get right to
work as fast as I can now this right
here this is
epic day two going to be animating for
the next 12 hours I'm going to try to
get as much done try to finish most of
the sakuna shots I mean I I kind of have
to finish them all today it's time to go
to work and it's time to work hard I
continued right where I left off I
cleaned up the animation of the hand
colored it shaded it in and animated the
fire I then moved on to cut seven and
cut eight I stuck both of these together
in the same animation timeline since
they're kind of connected the thing
about animating close-up faces is you
need to be able to draw them
consistently because even if a tiny
thing is off it'll end up looking like a
totally different character so what I
ended up doing was tracing the previous
onion skin of sukuna face and then
placing it wherever I wanted it to go
thank God for digital art I also made
sure the hair animation follows the
movement of his head so that it flows
more naturally animating the camera
movement for cut 8 turned out to be
pretty hard to do especially getting the
force shortening to look right I then
animated the hand coming in which is
going to be completed once I add the
fire to it I envisioned this cut being a
lot smoother but obviously with a time
crunch my vision for the sequence wasn't
going to be fully realized I think the
worst part about this entire thing is
how it could be relatively late but then
you start thinking about it and you're
like hold on I still have another 6
hours of animating like this doesn't end
but on the bright side I got myself some
Chick-fil-A you already know got myself
a yogurt with some fruit and some cookie
crumbs and I got myself a spicy chicken
sandwich for about a feast next I
started animating the fire on both of
the cuts which took an extra couple
hours I just finished this little
sequence and I'm kind of sad because I
feel like I could be a lot better I
can't I can't really do much I got I
just got to keep on moving on because I
don't have enough time to make the
drawings better and do more in between
so I need to lock in super super hard
tomorrow I'm not even kidding I spent
the majority of the day on these two
cuts I then immediately started
animating the last cut that features
sakuna since the charging up of the
attack is going to be a bit long each
frame is going to be fairly spread out
making it look less smooth but necessar
at this point in order for me to have a
chance of finishing this animation I
sketched out the rough animation and
even made an impact frame for the
release and after a long day of
animating my second day was coming to an
end day two is officially finished I'm
nervous I might be able to do it I might
not I really hope I can finish it I
really do it's all up to me to be honest
so I got to lock in it's truly a
beautiful day today too bad I won't get
to spend it outside also you see how
like my lens is getting foggy it's so
humid outside oh my God holy all
right so today is June 6th today is the
last day 7:26 a.m. I'm going to have the
same breakfast as yesterday
M
yummy it's about to be 9:00 so it's time
to get to work I started the work day by
cleaning up the cut I was working on
yesterday I then added some extra impact
frames and some cubes and dust flying
everywhere to add more impact to the
release even though it's not fully
realized the animation ended up looking
pretty dope okay so I finished all the
sukuna shots now it's time to move on to
the Gojo ones I think it's actually
looking pretty good it's only 11 right
now so I still have a long time but I
still have to make all the backgrounds
and paint them in and that takes a
really long time so I need to keep on
working and I have to do a crazy like
rotation shot so that one I might not be
able to finish but I'm going to try my
best regardless I then went on to draw
Gojo as majestically as I could then I
animated his hair waving from the wind
and then his clothing bro actually looks
like he's straight out of Studio GI I
don't know if I uh I don't know if I
like that it's 1:00 p.m. so I only have
8 hours left the shot that I was mostly
scared of was up next I didn't know how
the heck I was going to pull this often
time till I remembered I had made a
really crappy environment in blender so
I opened that up downloaded some basic
rig of a human being placed them on the
Rock and roughly animated the camera the
way I envisioned it then I imported the
video onto clip Studio paint and used it
as a guide to know where everything
should be the thing is my camera
animation and blender is extremely rough
and was a lot longer than what I had
anticipated so I skipped around the
video to draw only the key frames I
would need to make this cut work the
more I drew the more depressed I grew
ooh bars it was truly starting to look
hopeless this is so sad I actually have
like no time to make this good like
everything is so off there's nothing I
can do man this is actually so sad 3:00
p.m. eventually came around meaning that
it was lunch break time for my last meal
I got myself some Chipotle let's see
they actually hooked me up when you
order ble online they barely give you
any food but it looks like um pretty
good not bad I then went on to do the
cleanup which took a lot of time but
this workload and this annoying due date
was also starting to take my soul this
is so much work man this is so much work
and to think this is like a fraction of
what mapa animators go through every
single day and I'm already like ready to
finish this and never look back and just
be done with this but this is some
people's job like it's actually insane I
have no idea how they do it every single
day I'm struggling just like trying to
finish this one animation and like yeah
I have a due date but like I don't have
the pressure to do it because I don't
have a contract with like a company and
whatnot also I'm doing this at the
comfort of my own home the fact that
there's such low pay in the Japanese
anime industry I would find it very
difficult to keep myself altogether then
I colored in every frame and added a
little bit of shading next I animated
purple which looked like an actual piece
of donkey but as time was running
out I finished cut six okay I pretty
much finished this shot it doesn't look
that bad but it is 6:30 I got another
cut left then I got to draw the
backgrounds and then I got to composite
everything so I still got a lot to do I
ended up skipping cut 1 and cut 10
entirely due to how much time I had left
and went directly to drawing all of the
backgrounds which ended up looking
extremely rough I just drew some of the
backgrounds like pretty fast so I'm
going to start exporting everything and
put everything in After Effects for
compositing the other two shots that I
have left that I haven't animated yet
aren't 100% necessary so if I'm not
going to be able to complete the
animation at least I'll have something
where you could watch it and not be
confused so that's what I'm going to do
right now and if I have time to do the
other shots I'll do them this is
probably the saddest part of this
project because if the background had
been better and more detailed every shot
could have looked astronomically better
I didn't have much to work with in terms
of backgrounds for compositing I only
Drew one long background and a couple of
middle grounds so I kept on reusing
these assets over and over again at this
point in time I kept on looking at the
clock and the lack of time made me work
faster but also Messier which led to
some of the shots not looking all that
great and unfinished I tried my best to
make everything in the composition look
as consistent as possible I attempted to
work miracles with the limited amount of
backgrounds I had made and even though
it looks super shitty it sort of gets
the job done as the clock was reaching
N9 I actually quickly went back and
animated cut one which I had skipped
earlier the animation would have been
weird if it started with sukuna smiling
and then Gojo smiling back it could give
people the wrong idea you know what I'm
saying I went 15 minutes over time but
after 36 hours of work in only 3 days
this is the final product only 16
seconds of animation this is how it is
for MAA animators every single day my
goal for this video was to show why some
of the cuts in your favorite anime look
a bit unfinished and unrealized and
that's because a lot of the times they
are sometimes the deadlines are
extremely unrealistic and it's due to
the horrible work schedules and abusive
work conditions a lot of animators face
MAA animators have expressed their
frustrations obviously feeling upset
that they weren't able to deliver their
best work due to these terrible
deadlines and now I can sort of share
that feeling it's sad to not be able to
make something you're proud of and have
thousand have people Dogpile on you and
call you worthless but that's the anime
industry and anime fans for you if you
want to watch me suffer further you can
watch the video that's up on the screen
right now where I animated the world's
most offensive manga in only 3 days