A single seven-minute Tom and Jerry cartoon required up to 14,000 individual hand-drawn pictures.

The standard speed for movies is 24 frames per second. This means 24 different images flash on the screen every second to create the illusion of motion. For a 420-second cartoon, this equals 10,080 frames if every frame is a new drawing.Animators at the MGM studio in California used a mix of techniques. They often drew on 'ones,' which means one new drawing for every single frame. They also used 'twos,' where one drawing stays on screen for two frames. Fast scenes like chases or explosions usually required more drawings to keep the movement smooth.MGM animator Ken Muse noted that a typical short used between 10,000 and 14,000 drawings. This total includes the characters, the backgrounds, and special effects like smoke or water. Each drawing had to be perfectly lined up with the one before it.A team of about 100 people worked on every cartoon. This group included artists who cleaned up rough sketches, people who painted the colors, and camera operators. It often took several months of full-time work to finish just one seven-minute episode.