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Please help an indie producer figure out how to switch animators mid-project!!!

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Please help an indie producer figure out how to switch animators mid-project!!!

Hello, I am a newbie indie producer in the process of developing an animated cartoon series I created. In September 2021, I hired a freelance animator from Venezuela to animate a 5 minute pilot episode. I had hoped to release the pilot on October 31, 2022, but to date, my animator has only produced 31 seconds of rough animation and it was like pulling teeth to get that out of him. I love his work but he consistently misses deadlines and has a tendency to ghost me for weeks on end rather than communicate issues that affect his ability to produce work product on time. I have discussed my concerns with him countless times. He always promises to meet deadlines and be a better communicator but never follows through. I have endeavoured to be super accommodating and supportive but I've run out of patience and intend to let him go on Monday.

So now I have to find a new animator. That alone is a daunting task but there are other issues that concern me. 

My Venezuelan animator has always been very reluctant to upload work files created on Toon Boom to the Dropbox folder I set up for this purpose. I now suspect that this is because he has been using pirated software. (D'oh me... I never asked him to verify software licenses when I hired him a year ago.) I do have files for character and background designs but no rigging. Does this mean that my new animator will have to rig all of my characters from scratch? Is this even possible? Any advice on how to proceed would be very much appreciated!!!