Just to clarify one point, the new ILM/LucasArts campus at the Presidio has a render farm of 5000 processors - that's five thousand...!

there are many many other trix that you can use in animations, but the main concept to grasp is that only what people think they saw is important. You have to get far away from literal reality and just use what works to convey the story. You don't need a 37kPoly car parked on the street when a still image texture of a car on a square poly & transparent surround will suffice. etc, etc, etc.

storyboard, storyboard, storyboard and then go back and storyboard some more so that you only ever render what that shot actually needs. Use cutaways to simpler shots. Move in to medium closeups to minimize what needs to be seen in the background. If it isn't seen, you don't need to render it and if it is seen, it can often just be a billboard.

Shrek2 had 300 people working on it and there were shots that took over a year from concept to completion. By comparison, render times are the fastest part of the process!

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