Anime production divides the labour of drawing motion into two principal roles: genga (原画, key animation) and dōga (動画, in-betweening). The key animator draws the principal frames of an action — the start, end, and any pose at which the motion changes direction or speed. The in-betweener draws the intervening frames that make the motion smooth.
The two roles
Key animation (genga) is the senior of the two roles. A key animator receives the shot's layout and the director's notes and draws the action's defining frames. The in-betweener (dōga) takes the key drawings and produces the intermediate frames that complete the motion — typically three to six in-betweens for each key, depending on the desired smoothness.
Pay structure
Most Japanese in-between work is paid per drawing on a piecework basis. The per-drawing rate has long been low — often quoted around ¥200–¥250 per finished in-between — and has not kept pace with the increasing complexity of modern character designs. The animator-pay crisis discussed in industry press through the 2010s and 2020s centres on these per-piece rates rather than on key-animator income.
Outsourcing of in-betweening
From the 1980s onward, Japanese studios have outsourced large portions of in-between work to studios in South Korea, China, the Philippines (Toei Animation Philippines was founded in 1986 for this purpose), and more recently Vietnam and India. Outsourced in-between work is widely understood within the industry as a structural feature rather than a recent change.