What does an inbetweener do in animation?

An inbetweener is an animation artist who creates the frames that go between the keyframes drawn by the lead animators. Their work smooths motion and ensures consistent timing and character volume across a shot.

Key responsibilities

• Draw the intermediate frames (inbetweens) that connect key poses so movement reads fluidly.
• Follow timing charts or exposure sheets that specify how many drawings each action should take.
• Match the style, proportions and line quality of the key animator’s drawings.
• Clean up rough key drawings if those are roughs, or work from cleaned keys depending on pipeline.
• Add breakdowns (important transitional poses) when required and hand them off for approval.
• Make corrections requested by the animation lead or supervisor.

Where they work in the pipeline

• After key animation (key poses) is approved, inbetweeners produce the intervening frames.
• Their work is passed to clean-up artists (in traditional/2D) or compositors/rendering (in digital/CG) depending on studio workflow.

Skills needed

• Strong draftsmanship, timing sense and understanding of motion.
• Knowledge of squash-and-stretch, arcs, weight, overlap and follow-through.
• Ability to match line quality and model proportions.
• Familiarity with exposure sheets, onion-skinning, and industry tools (paper, lightbox, TVPaint, Toon Boom, Flash/Animate, etc.).
• Speed and attention to detail.

Levels and variants

• Junior inbetweeners often handle simple inbetweens; senior inbetweeners or “assistant animators” may handle more complex motion, breakdowns or partial key responsibilities.
• In CG, “inbetweening” is often done by animators adjusting curves rather than drawing frames; tasks are similar conceptually but use different tools.

In short: inbetweeners turn key poses into believable, correctly timed motion, bridging the gap between a scene’s major poses and the finished animated movement.