You can create Gantt charts with Google Sheets. The cloud-based app is more than suitable and advanced to create this timetable-type chart. It’s one way to make it easy to share the timetable of your project visually to the rest of your team.
They’ll have a better idea of the length of time it’ll take for each task or phase of your animation project for a 30-minute video with the assistance of such a chart.
How to Make a Gantt Chart in Google Sheets
Step 1: Let’s open a new spreadsheet (click this link to do so) and then put in relevant timetable info for your Gantt chart.
We’ll cover the timetable for making a 30-minute animation show, which roughly takes 6-7 months of work, from the conception of the storyboard to post-production work.
The rough breakdown of such an animation project is like so.
- Storyboard: 4 weeks
- Voice work: 2 weeks
- Animatic/Timing: 1 week
- Layout and backgrounds: 4 weeks
- Animation (key frames): 4 weeks
- Cleanup/In-Between: 4 weeks
- Digital Ink and Paint: 6 weeks
- Music: 4 weeks
- Sound Effects/Post-Production: 4 weeks
To streamline the chart, I’ve changed the weeks to days (just multiply them by 7). This is because I’ll be using formulas to fill the chart.
Step 2: Choose a start date then enter an end date formula. We’ve entered “7/1/2022” then used the formula “= C2+B2-1” (Start Date + Days – 1) to get the end date (“7/28/2022”).
Step 3: On C3, simply enter the formula “=D2+1” (End Date + 1) in order to get the next immediate start date below the previous one. The new start date should be directly tied to the previous end date.
Copy and paste D2 on D3. You can now copy and paste C3 and D3 together across both Column C and D to get a fairly accurate start and end dates.
Step 4: Insert the formula “=int(C2)-int($C$2)” (based on C2 or the very first start date) in order to calculate on what specific day number the start date will happen. It starts on Day 0.
This metric will be important for the stacked chart we’ll be making later. Now copy the formula across the rest of Column E. You’ll be starting on Day 0 (Day 1), Day 28, Day 42, and so forth all the way to Day 203.
Step 5: Now that you have enough data to work with, select the “Animation Phase” set of headers, the “Days” or duration header, and the “Start on Day” header.
Now go to the “Insert” menu and click “chart” to get your Gantt chart based on the data provided.
Step 6: So we’ve inserted the chart but it looks funny. That’s not what a Gantt chart is supposed to look like! The red bars are supposed to be shorter than the blue bars.
In other words, “Start on Day” should be on long blue bars and “Days” should be on short red bars instead of the other way around.
There are two ways to fix this. The easy way is to go to the “Chart editor” sidebar. Click the “Setup” bar, scroll down to “Series” and swap “Days” and “Start on Day” on their respective boxes.
From there, we now have an almost proper Gannt bar that requires one more edit—the blue bars should be made “clear” or “white“.
Step 7: Customize your Gantt chart. First off, go to the “Setup” tab and click the “Chart and axis titles” submenu. From there, change the “Title text” to something appropriate.
Change “Chart title” to “Horizontal axis title” on the dropdown menu on “Chart and axis titles“. Now put in “Days of the Month” on the “Title text“.
Afterwards, go to the “Customize” tab, click on the “Legend” submenu, and then on the first dropdown menu for “Position“, select “None“.
Finally, change the fill color for the Start on Day bars. To be more specific, go to the “Series” submenu under the “Customize” tab, select the “Start on Day” element, and select “0%” for the opacity of the stacked bars there.
The final product should look a little something like this.
Step 8: An alternative to making the Gantt bar easier to make from the table level is to edit the table itself. Move the “Start on Day” before the “Days” column or move the “Days” column after the “Start on Day“.
It’s easy enough to fill in the rest of the info as long as you have a start date and the duration or days needed for each animation phase. The formulas can also auto-adjust accordingly.
For instance, I’ve right-clicked the “Start on Day” column and selected “Delete column” with the intention of moving the column before “Days“.
Afterwards, I right-clicked the “Days” and selected “Insert 1 column to the left“, which is where I’ll be putting my new “Start on Day” column.
After putting in a new header, I then put in a new formula—”=int(D2)-int($D$2)“—to reflect the column designation changes on the table (the very first start date is now on D2 instead of C2).
It even prompted auto-fill so that Google Sheets can fill the column up for me instead of me having to do it myself! How considerate of Google Sheets.
Whatever you do or whichever path you take to fix the table, make sure to put in the necessary edits to the formulas you’ve used to fill the table.
Regardless, you now have chart placement that’s easy to select and easy to turn into a Gantt chart!
What You Ultimately Need to Find Out
A Gantt chart is a chart that uses a series of horizontal lines or bars to show the amount of work done or the duration of said work across a give timeline, thus giving you a better idea of your overall time table.
Digital Ink and Paint eats up the most time because it combines all the elements together, scans them into the computer and paints both animation “cels” layer and the background layer. It also ends up with basically the final product of the animation save for music and sound effects.
References:
- Vertex42, “How to Create a Gantt Chart in Google Sheets“, YouTube, June 22, 2020
- WhizBusters, “How to create a GANTT Chart in Google Sheets“, YouTube, March 19, 2021
- Mr. Rozon, “How to make a Gantt Chart in Google Sheets – The Easy Way!“, YouTube, February 23, 2021
- “How to Make a Gantt Chart in Google Sheets“, Wondershare EdrawMax, Retrieved July 13, 2022
- “How to Make a Gantt Chart in Google Sheets: Free Template“, TeamGantt.com, Retrieved July 3, 2022
Google Sheet: Make a copy