Animation Question

I was wondering, how much hard work did you put in at school? What was an average day for you in school? 8-12 hours a day working on animation? What is your process of animating?

I worked long hours mostly because I wanted it to look good, but also because the majority of animation classes I took were during the last two semesters.

Towards the end I spent evenings (or afternoons depending on what time I'd come home) up until 3 or 4 in the morning and I would get up at 6 or 7 on week-ends or if I had school in the afternoon. I did a lot of days like that during my last semester.

I usually start animating once I "see" the animation in my head. I'm really bad at thumbnailing, so either I plan out the shot using super rough blocking (rarely, also depending on how light the models are), or (most of the time) I try to visualize the shot until it feels like I've just seen it on TV.

I then block out the animation with main poses and/or beats keying all the controllers on the character. Then I adjust the keys depending on timing issues.

After that I go in and key individual controllers for the more detailed stuff until final polish.