Animation Pricing; Or why art costs

[fluffkomix]

I just read this blog post on animation pricing right here and i couldn't agree more.

I've seen people on this forum asking for pricing help and people asking to pay animators for animation and this should set a pretty good guideline for what you SHOULD be paid for animation.

However this doesn't mean that you will get paid this amount. A lot of you guys (as far as i can tell) are still in school and living at home and have a lot of time on your hands before you actually start careers in the field of animation. Just because he's charging cheap rates doesn't mean much. If you can justify the cheap rates with good quality work (even if only once) then it will look great on a resume or demo reel, and is also a great motivator as well as good for practice. My recommendation for a barebones minimum payment for about 30 seconds is 100 dollars, but you can go above or below that depending on the amount of work required. It all depends on your talking the project over with the person who hired you and what you would require to do it. You probably shouldn't demand the normal (albeit high) rates of a professional animator because most of us aren't professionals yet, and should take whatever we can get. But this doesn't mean we should stick to doing things for 20 bucks apiece.

Also, while i'm on the subject of people getting hired off newgrounds, allow me to address a small problem in the community here. If you see someone asking you to do work paid, don't chew him out immediately, calling him a fake or a sham. I know this doesn't happen too often as of late but it still tends to happen. If it's a paid job, take it professionally and contact the person via PM or some other secured way that they have given out (like say an e-mail address), instead of just posting in the thread to tell everyone else how good you are (exaggeration). The more professionally you take it, the more seriously the employer will take you, and the more likely they are to raise their rates if needed. In the end, it all comes down to money, but also the image we portray to potential investors who visit this site. If word gets out that the people of Newgrounds are friendly people who work hard and dish out quality work, more people will come here, which results in more opportunities for the people here. And if you have nothing to contribute to the thread (for example "i don't think you should go for this guy" or "i'm gonna consider joining up") then it would probably be best if you didn't post. A good post would probably be along the lines of asking for more specifications of the project at hand and showing genuine interest at the same time.

I know that things seem a bit unfair for the amount paid against the amount we are supposed to work, but in the end work is work and money is money. The two go hand in hand in this industry, and when applying for a real job the more experience you have in your pocket the better off you will be. And the earlier you can build this experience, the better.

[RPGShadow]

are you talking directly to Sacros?........ that would be funny^_^

But on a more serious note, I used to do all sorts of commissions(around 30,just art pieces, mostly backgrounds and signatures) for dirt cheap, but I also warned the guy who commissioned me to know what they were in for, and in the end they liked the products that I gave. And my final work ended up being for a local in my city who wanted a painting, it cost him 300$, after that I stopped, since I had to concentrate more on the job that I had.Right now I'm in college and I'm really excited to learn the thing I always wanted to learn and make a career. I know now that I have to work just a little cheap, to get name recognition and then use the name recognision to get payed the right price...

:P

[Celshaded]

This is a subject that really annoys me. People are more than willing to drop a couple thousand dollars for a 5 page html website, but when it comes to animation people always want "volunteer" work or "student artists" to weasel free art. And they always want a ridiculous amount of animation.

Here's the best advice you'll ever here in your life:

NEVER WORK FOR FREE!!!!

Like never. Even if people can't afford to pay you what your stuff is worth, they should at least be able to pay you something.

(and please note, I'm not talking about collaborations and personal projects, I'm referring to work for hire)

[fluffkomix]

At 1/6/12 04:51 AM, Celshaded wrote: NEVER WORK FOR FREE!!!!

The only exception i can bring to this is when applying for a job at a studio. Studio jobs look much better on resumes than normal commission work, and when starting out in the industry (as said earlier) you need all the experience you can get.

I mean, that's how i got this job at atomic cartoons. They brought me in for a 2 week volunteer gig and by the third day they decided to hire me

[Sacros]

i find everything said by the dude there and fluff reasonable, except for mike´s conclusion, yhea, animation doesnt cost a dime given you have the right materials and the skills

that doesnt mean much, isnt that the case with pretty much anything? in animation unlike other art forms and disciplines a monstrous ammount of time AND effort is spent for seconds of material, dont forget effort.

regarding the forum situation...i wouldnt take it very seriously, i can say there was only one serious payed request the last 10 days, you can tell who is full shit and who isnt

hey you said you were a professional animator, would you say this is $50?

anyways, i think our forum is dedicated to animation newcomers mostly, sharing and improving our skills as well as discussing animation, this shouldnt be a job board

and seriously, we could have a dedicated space for job requests and people offering their uber original series writing skills looking for free animators to post (the later ones seems the majority)

At 1/6/12 02:44 AM, RPGShadow wrote: are you talking directly to Sacros?........ that would be funny^_^

lolwut

[airman4]

That would be nice to pay animators
i'm leaving the animation 2d field for videogames because it's almost impossible to get money when you are an indie , especially an indie who do 2d
In 5 years , people would not even know what 2d means
So , yeah a market place for 2d movies and stuff would be cool

animator need to live a bit.

[fluffkomix]

At 1/6/12 01:38 PM, Sacros wrote: hey you said you were a professional animator, would you say this is $50?

I'm not a professional animator. i just work for an animation studio as a production assistant, which is giving me a great experience both for learning and on a resume.

Technically i guess i AM a professional animator because i did animate one scene? (it was a camera pan and nothing but)

But yeah that right there would probably be around the 50-75 mark, at least for the kind of pay we would be looking for in this forum. (my personal estimate, probably wrong)

[00-BEN-00]

So far, I've been doing everything for free.

But then you get 'my quality'..

[Sacros]

dunno fluff, to me animation is a hobbie and i dont think its respectable to go around charging for stuff if you dont have a professional level

that mike said and i quote: "a dollar a drawing" and i dont know him but he sounds like he has some heavy experience under his belt

i belive ill be the first to stand up in favor of paying animators for hard work

but the thing i showed you was done by an amateur for a friend in highschool and as far as i counted, it has 10 symbols or less (thats 10 drawings) and the rest is just tweens - the creature was done in an afternoon, 5 hours, said the author; whats 5 hours of a non professional underage kid time? have you looked at the amount of time played on your games save files? anywhere from 10 to 100 hours

i dont know, i belive in values like moral and ethics, i dont think a kid should rob a friend 50 bucks for low quality work and little time spent, please dont go around telling the kids: "yhea, go make something in an afternoon and sell it for like 100U$D"

[fluffkomix]

At 1/6/12 04:19 PM, Sacros wrote: i dont know, i belive in values like moral and ethics, i dont think a kid should rob a friend 50 bucks for low quality work and little time spent, please dont go around telling the kids: "yhea, go make something in an afternoon and sell it for like 100U$D"

I dunno i was just eyeballing, didn't look too much like a quick job, but then i don't know the skill level of your friend. I think i may have said this earlier (i'm not sure) but the whole point of being able to charge 100 bucks is that you're able to turn out high quality work and make it worth their money. Yes we shouldn't work for free and yes we should demand our money's worth but make it worth the person's money or don't charge so much. My 100 dollar estimate is still just that- an estimate, and it can go either way depending on the time put in and the skill required

[Celshaded]

I think some of you guys are getting confused. when we are talking about charging people, we aren't talking about group projects and collabs with friends. Also, volunteer internships are a different thing altogether. I was talking about somebody commissioning you for a service. It's up to you to decide the difference.

Also, that "I'm a kid in highschool so I shouldn't charge people" idea is bullshit. Being in highschool or underage has nothing to do with it if you have a skill and talent. When I was in highschool and everybody found out I could draw, everybody I knew started hitting me up for free art ALL. THE. TIME. After a while I started charging them something like $5 for pinups and stuff and they were happy to pay it. Once you start pumping out work for free people start to take your talent for granted and are in your face every day telling you they want another poster sized color drawing with 20 characters on it. Normal people can't understand the value of art until you stick a price tag on it. If you don't see that early on then you're setting yourself up to be taken advantage of later.

Building "experience"? If you are already producing quality work, then you've obviously already have the experience from working on your own projects and stuff with your friends.

All I'm saying is that there is nothing wrong with doing this stuff as a hobby, that's different from what I'm talking about. If you are trying thinking about making this a career, you have realize that people will gladly screw you when given the opportunity.

--whew, that was a long post. I'm a jaded artist, can you tell?

[RPGShadow]

At 1/6/12 08:08 PM, Celshaded wrote: I think some of you guys are getting confused. when we are talking about charging people, we aren't talking about group projects and collabs with friends. Also, volunteer internships are a different thing altogether. I was talking about somebody commissioning you for a service. It's up to you to decide the difference.

Also, that "I'm a kid in highschool so I shouldn't charge people" idea is bullshit. Being in highschool or underage has nothing to do with it if you have a skill and talent. When I was in highschool and everybody found out I could draw, everybody I knew started hitting me up for free art ALL. THE. TIME. After a while I started charging them something like $5 for pinups and stuff and they were happy to pay it. Once you start pumping out work for free people start to take your talent for granted and are in your face every day telling you they want another poster sized color drawing with 20 characters on it. Normal people can't understand the value of art until you stick a price tag on it. If you don't see that early on then you're setting yourself up to be taken advantage of later.

Building "experience"? If you are already producing quality work, then you've obviously already have the experience from working on your own projects and stuff with your friends.

All I'm saying is that there is nothing wrong with doing this stuff as a hobby, that's different from what I'm talking about. If you are trying thinking about making this a career, you have realize that people will gladly screw you when given the opportunity.

--whew, that was a long post. I'm a jaded artist, can you tell?

yes I'm 100% agreeing with you.

the Idea that at "because you didn't hit puberty" is so damn ignorant. You should be judged by your talent, not your age, or how deep your voice is. if you are talented on something you should ALWAYS consider having ambitions for it.

as for the article, today we can make the cost of animation be nonexistent, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't get paid for the efforts put into it.
The guy who made the article is obviously a traditional animator by trade, so he's used to make animations with papers, many pens, and so so many hours of finesse. I would understand that he wants to get paid way more than a mere 250$ for a 22 min. animation. The money that goes for the materials alone would not be enough to cover the expenses, it would at least be somewhere around 5000$, if not more(only for the materials).
And if you want to talk about his own salary to make the animation, It would surely be around 5000$ and 7500$ maybe more, why? Because Traditional animation is a discipline, a lot of effort goes into even a 1min animation. He is also right about not being able to do it by himself, he would need the storyboard guy, 3 colorist, 3 animators, the director and assistants. So he is absolutely right to be Livid about having his time wasted for pennies and dimes.

As for the flash animator, there is also a whole different discipline, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to be payed less, no. but you have to still give out the maximum amount of quality that you can.
I currently studying in college in the Video Games program, I am studying every aspect of video-game making, animation is one of them ;-).
If I were to do a 22 animation I'd have to:
-make every model( that means every object, character, even the sky), that's at least 3 to 10 hours per model
-texture everything,(that means UV unwrapping, finding the right texture or even color it by myself), that's at least 3-5 hours per texture)
-I have to rig everything(put the bones, color the weights, testing the character) that's another 4-20 hours(to backtrack and correct the faulty characters)per model
- I have to animate every scene, that's the time of the animationsx2-10hours per scene
-finally I have to render, (that comes with co$t$ for the render farm those are really expensive) and that just simply depends on the quality of the animation:if you want Pixar or Dreamworks quality then that's at least 2-4 weeks, because many times the render will stop working and you have to pick it up to where it was.

that's too much for anyone.....I could still do it but with a whole lot of determination.

Really, if you're asked to do any series, get some form of payment. I respect any animator that can finish quality products. Because as the director and sole animator of The Killer Bean Forever "the challenge is to finish your work"(i'm paraphrasing).....

:P

[BCRice]

So is there a concensus here? I'm currently working on a flash based comedy series and was considering outsourcing a 10-15 second anime-style cut away of a girl vs a giant dragon-headed snake. I thought to keep costs down I could color it myself. Would $50 be enough for just black lines of something like that?

Thanks

[Celshaded]

That's a reasonable price if you already have the shots worked out and storyboarded in advance.

[BCRice]

At 1/7/12 06:00 PM, Celshaded wrote: That's a reasonable price if you already have the shots worked out and storyboarded in advance.

Thanks for the reply. If anyone else agrees/disagrees, please post.

I'd like to eventually get to the point where I'm outsourcing 100% of my animation work (for the series that would mean all rigs -side, front, 3/4th- of each character, all backgrounds and storyboards provided with occasional FBF cut scenes), so pricing on all these fronts is extremely helpful (to myself and I'm sure plenty of others).

Is pricing from artists here on Newgrounds extremely subjective artist-to-artist?

I'd love to be able to hire artists like Jazza to handle the kind of symbol-oriented animation I'm doing for my current series.

(hopefully this isn't a hijack, I just think a consenus on pricing from Newgrounds folks would be invaluable to project manager folks).

[Sacros]

i wouldnt trust any pricing listed here man

take our ranting as personal opions, we are not in the industrie and therefore are just amateurs

i dont think there is many people here entitled to price stuff, and claim you can based on charging for drawings on middle school

so please, take pricing claims here as advise

as for what i think you should charge? well, i think quality is the criteria to judge, if its super awesome dont let your creation go for $50 bucks, conversly, if its shitty you should consider a lower price, the trick is being reasonable

[Celshaded]

Dude what the hell are you talking about? The guy is asking for opinions, based on the price he was quoting. You might be an amateur so maybe you are ok with doing free work for the rest of your life.

If charging people in middleschool makes me feel entitled to be paid for my work, then my degree in animation at the least gives me enough clout to give this guy advice.

[Celshaded]

At 1/7/12 10:51 PM, Ilssm wrote:

the trick is being reasonable

considering most of us are students in either high school or college, this is the best we can do right now.

Are you serious? Alright, I wash my hands of this thread, you guys do what you want. (picks up soap box)

next time I get an email from somebody asking me to 22 minutes of animation probono, I'll just send them a link to this thread.

[Celshaded]

At 1/7/12 11:16 PM, Ilssm wrote:

Are you serious? Alright, I wash my hands of this thread, you guys do what you want. (picks up soap box)

I don't mean charge that all the time, maybe the first few times, or at least until you get some recognition. It's called slowly raising your rates, as soon as you get more at at least decent credentials, you can start charging regular prices. If your a student in college you should also have a real job, and do animating more as a side thing, that is until you get your degree.

You can't expect a random person to pay $100 for a 20 second animation off the bat from a person who has no prior credentials, can you?

(unwashes hands) ok, what you are not getting is that once you decide you are going to start commissioning work for hire, your putting on your big boy pants and doing business with adults. I'm not talking about your friends dad asking to make his wife an animated ecardfor his wedding aniversary, I'm talking about a person representing themselves as some sort of industry professional and trying to get his million dollar project made for Pennies by taking advantage of of some naive young person that doesnt know any better.

And seriously, $100 for 20 seconds of quality animation is more than reasonable

[BCRice]

Well and one of the things I'm hoping when I out source, that just commissioning black and white lines
Instead of full color animations I might get a better price.

In the end though it sounds like its going to be animator to animator. When I'm prepared to commission (pretty soon) I'll just post the request with the $50 tag and see who bites and what their work looks like.

[fluffkomix]

Just as a little price quote from some of the bigger animators/artists from Newgrounds and DeviantArt, i would like to throw in that for commission work when drawing single pictures their rates tend to average around

$5-$30: Rough sketch
$30-$50: Final pencils/pens
$50-100: Colored and shaded
$100-$150: for an animated gif or swf (when applicable)

Keep in mind that while these are artists of great quality, all of these (except for the final one) are only single drawings.

I think for a decent/unproven artist this would be a good average for animation. Rough animation would be 30 bucks, finished animation (only lines) would be 50, colored and shaded would be from 50-100, and colored shaded and backgrounds and everything would range anywhere from 100 to 500 depending on the amount of work given. The animation time i used in this example to price these was a complicated run/walk cycle, with teh final one having a scrolling and looping background (approx $150)

This is still only for fairly decent artists/animators though and should only be used as a guideline if at all. Also this is just my opinion, and i'll let you guys help refine this.

i'm loving the discussion going on in this thread btw

[BCRice]

Yeah and you can purchase run/walk cycles and explosions and everything else. I think the pricing question largely centers around scripted/ storyboarded animation and how much that animation is per... 20 seconds? Per minute? That's the most important pricing question, I think for creators.

[fluffkomix]

At 1/8/12 02:52 AM, BCRice wrote: Yeah and you can purchase run/walk cycles and explosions and everything else. I think the pricing question largely centers around scripted/ storyboarded animation and how much that animation is per... 20 seconds? Per minute? That's the most important pricing question, I think for creators.

Like it was said in the article i linked, the price highly depends on the amount of effort and work needed in the animation requested.

[Celshaded]

I promise you guys I'm not trying to sound like a dick(at least not on purpose), this is just an issue I take personally because I have been screwed over a lot in the past from people with good intentions. I don't like seeing artists taken advantage of, and I'm not saying that excepting little to no pay for certain projects means that the person hiring you is taking advantage of you.

I have done free animation for friends and colleagues before and I given people like 85% discounts on things before for whatever reasons. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that.

It's just that a lot of times, people will see your talent and come to you with just ideas and not really understand the work that goes into it, especially if you are doing it from scratch. We classify it as 1 job, "Animation", but it's actually several equally time consuming jobs: character design, storyboarding, backgrounds, animation, ink and paint, audio mixing...that's a lot of work for one person to do. I find that explaining it to people that way helps justify the expense.

Even if you don't feel your work isn't professional enough to charge major money for, that doesn't mean it lacks value. You possess a skill that most other people can't do. If that weren't the case, people would just animate their own cartoons. People that aren't artists have a hard time understanding something until you dangle a pricetag from it.

--ok, that's going to be my last long post. XP

[Sacros]

jesus christ is its posts and posts on people agreeing on the same thing making it look like they arent

we cant debate if we all agree

if i were to do the 21 second dight thing id do it for something like $100U$D frame by frame