I’m looking for some advice on how much to charge for an animation that I have been asked to quote for.
I was contacted through Youtube by a family fun park after they saw the following video that I made:
They are after a similar thing for a Christmas Sleigh ride experience they are putting together. They have asked for the following:
(No father christmas hands, map etc just a view of the reindeer and front of sleigh.)
Clip to last 105 seconds.
Reindeer static on snow runway. (0-30sec)
Reindeer start to speed up and take off. (30-40sec)
Break though clouds level off (40 - 50)
Bank left (50 - 60sec)
Level off (60 -65 sec)
Bank right (65 - 75 sec)
Level off (75 -85 sec)
Slowly descend to land (85 -105sec) Ideally in a Christmas village.
Now I’ll say right off the bat that they have said that their budget is £350. Obviously this is not enough but I have no idea what this kind of thing is worth. The original video took me 6 months of work in my spare time but this is clearly not going to be the case now as I have most of the assets set up already.
I found this website that does those explainer videos and it’s given me an idea of a starting point.
Obviously this is going to be put to bed once I tell them that their budget is not going to work but I’d be really interested if anyone has any experience with charging for animation.
According to my research the average price of 3D animations are
between $100 and $350 dollars per finished second. 2D animations cost
less; from $50 TO $250 dollars per finished second. Prices are also
given by day; between $1,200 and $3,000 per day. Prices vary depending
on the complexity of the project
Below you will find available pricing models taken from different
sources. I hope this data will help you get a better idea of existing
3D and 2D animation price ranges.
3-d animation pricing model
?On average, the price for 3-D Animation is $95 per finished second of
animation, with a minimum charge of $1000 per scene (a scene is
defined as a change of “environment”, i.e. multiple characters moving
through a single environment is one scene, while a single character
moving through two environments is two scenes).
Pricing is not redundant. An average 40-second animation with two
scenes would total $4000, not $6000. An average 40-second animation
with 5 scenes would total $5000. Please note: These prices are
guidelines based on animations of average complexity. Pricing for a
specific animation may include additional charges based on complexity
of design, modeling, animation, rendering, or post-production work.?
?3D animation typically runs around $100-$150 per finished second of
standard television resolution (NTSC) animation. This figure can
change drastically depending on the complexity of the animation and
detail of the render. For example, a freelance animator would
typically charge about $3,000 for a thirty-second animation of a motor
vehicle collision with three camera angles and very basic colors.
However, adding additional details such as reflections, glare, and
other factors that may be important to the case may double the cost?or
more.?
Production Services Rate Card
Fiscal Year 2006/2007
Graphic Services
Animation 2D $ 85
Animation 3D $100
All rates are hourly unless otherwise noted. Rates shown are internal
University and State Agency rates. An additional 47% will be charged
for external clients.
IMDC
===================================
2D Effects and Support £300.00
3D Animation By quotation based on a guide daily rate of -£2000.00
?Rather than set a flat “per finished second” rate on our animation
projects, we believe our clients are better served by bidding the
project. A flat rate would necessarily be set based on the most
difficult jobs, which could greatly overprice more simple projects.
However, when estimating projects, keep in mind that the following
parameters can significantly affect the price of the project:
Complexity and number of objects
Number of moving parts in an assembly
Number of elements moving simultaneously
Hierarchical relationships between moving object (Forward and Inverse
Kinematics supported)
Compositing “live” and animated elements
Duration of the scene
Animator, computer and software is $60 per hour.
http:www.imcstudios.com/areas/graphics/index.asp
?Both animators and law enforcement officers agree forensic animation
is more prevalent in civil cases than criminal suits. This is
primarily due to the cost of producing them. The cost to the consumer
has also decreased over the years. When Gold was new to the field, he
says “animations were going for about $1,000 a finished second. Now,
the cost is more like $50 to $100 per finished second with 10 times
the quality and 10 times as fast in terms of turnover.”
Video 3D animation, estimate per second of finished product$ 250.00
Video 2D animation, estimate per second of finished product$ 125.00
Integrated Systems Improvement Services, Inc.
average price animation “3D OR 2d” Price “$ per second”
average price per finished second of animation
“average price” 3D OR 2D Animation " finished second"
Pricing models 2d OR 3d animation
If you reuse your assets that can save them money and you time. If you can calculate approximately how much time it will take you and multiply that by what you would want to make hourly, that’s a good start.
But as a quick estimate I’d say 800 - 3000 would be reasonable for the job.
It’s worth whatever people are ready to pay. It’s really pointless to look at what other people have charged, especially the averages, if you know you don’t have a client willing to pay that much. You seem to be based off the UK, so your cost-of-living is high and therefore the offer sounds low, but if you were in Eastern-Europe or parts South-East-Asia, you could charge much less.
If you’re not comfortable with doing it for that sum, figure out whatever you are comfortable with and make a counter-offer.
If the counter-offer is rejected, then that’s that. You can also give alternative offers for less work. Some of those shots seem way too long to me (30 seconds of a reindeer on a runway?).
Also, I suggest to negotiate the terms of payment, i.e. define a milestone after which 50% of the sum must be paid, for example.
Interesting on the £$ per second never looked at it like that before.
Not gonna do anything for pennies.
The biggest shame is that this is one of the first genuine enquiries I’ve ever had and they are offering much less than I’ve earned for doing a lot less when building websites.
I guess I have the option of tailoring a package to suit a price point that they might try and meet, i.e. “I can do this for this much”
Yeah that sounds right, just make sure you don’t feel like you are doing more work than you are being payed to do.
Let them know that the price they pay will reflect the quality they recieve, especially considering they seem to want a quite detailed and complicated scene (for 1 animator to pull off on their own!)
Do what you feel is best, but as said before, don’t work for scraps. it diminished the art form and paves the way for more employers to offer less and less to animators. It’s a highly skilled field of work, and that should be respected, and reflected in the pay offered for work.
Yeah I know it’s all relative to your situation but it’s always good to have an idea of what other people are charging. I appreciate I’m in a different situation being that I have the exact product that they want so I could flex my muscle if I wanted to, but given the low offer they started with it’s unlikely to even come to anything anyway. Yes I live in the UK and as it happens the company are not far away from me, which is a little fortunate considering they found me by stumbling across my video on Youtube.
In my experience, these low-end clients can’t even tell quality.
Do what you feel is best, but as said before, don’t work for scraps. it diminished the art form and paves the way for more employers to offer less and less to animators. It’s a highly skilled field of work, and that should be respected, and reflected in the pay offered for work.
This, unfortunately, is ass-backwards. What paves the way for clients offering less is an oversupply in labor and an undersupply in demand. It has nothing to do with “diminishing the art form” or “respect”. If you’re in a position to charge more, by all means, charge more. That implies there’s a buyer on the other side. In reality, you can’t charge what you feel is right, only what your client actually pays. It’s notoriously hard for many artists to find work, so sometimes scraps are better than nothing. Also consider you might enjoy doing the work - isn’t that why you’re an artist in the first place?
Again, make a counter offer that you are comfortable to work with. These people may simply have no idea about the real cost of an animation. Maybe they’ll find the money, if not now, maybe later.
I’ve gone back to him with £2500 based on potentially 50-80 hours work getting new environments made, new animations and new simulations. Thanks a lot for all the advice, maybe one day I’ll get another call and I can get something out of it.
I get my enjoyment from my personal projects If i’m doing a project for work, I’m most likely doing it to put food on my table. So i wont work for just enjoyment as that time could be spent elsewhere looking for worthwhile employment.
Although i do agree it can be hard to find work so sometimes it’s hard to turn an offer down if it comes your way.
@tomjelfs - Good luck man, I hope you can come to a reasonable agreement that you are both happy with
The problem I have found is this. It is rare to find clients who understand what it takes to produce 3D. And usually the ones that don’t understand the costs and efforts are the ones that are adamant about a budget. And additionally can usually be the ones adamant about quality. And when you get those, they are the worst of the worst.
But considering you had to ask the question, “How much is this worth?” , here on an open forum full of mostly people who actually don’t know the answer, this makes it a tad different of a situation, doesn’t it?
This means that if you don’t know, it means you are just starting out. And at this stage of the game, the best advice for you is to do as much work as you can and build your resume and experience.
Counter offering a client like this with 2,700 is pretty much the same as saying no. And that is perfectly fine.
What will happen is that they will find someone willing to say they will do it for that price and two things will happen. 1) they will get a crappy product. or 2) wind up with nothing at all. It will be a rare thing that they actually get something good. But that is their problem not yours.
What you need to be thinking about is not what the job is worth, but a) do you want to do it for the experience and have something on your reel or b) is it something you will be satisfied with in the end? And will you have learned something.
I find that building a freelance career is a matter of finding stepping stones that get you from one place to the other and are not far apart. And the only one who can make those calls is you. No one can decide for you what is the right price to charge at any given stage. It will always be a combination of two things. Clients you have available, and work you are willing or not willing to do. And those two factors will change over time. To the point where you build up your experience, different than just building a reel, but experience working in guidelines and servicing a client and then getting paid and moving on to the next thing. Budgets will increase over time and clients will get better.
But keeping one key thing in mind. Always do your best work!
If you follow that as a guide then you will be successful. It has worked for me. And I have seen my share of ups and downs. I have seen it all from the near top to the bottom of the barrel.
But no matter what you do. What you charge, what stage you are at, always do the best work you can!
@Richard Culver I’m not really looking to get into this as an income for me, I already run a family Signs and Print Company so know what my priorities are. However if I can get paid to do something I love in my spare time then I don’t want to be doing it for nothing. The £350 budget he had was half what I have charged in the past for programming basic websites.
My reason for wanting to know what it is worth is because I know how quickly times can change and technology can suddenly make things plug and play. This project took me 6 months last year and all the way through it I kept looking to see if there were any similar videos about, there was nothing, but having just looked online again I found this:
It’s free to download!! Admittedly it looks like it was originally produced for Coca Cola, meaning they would have got paid.
But you can now download it for free.
Stuff like that suddenly makes my assets worthless, at that point if I was looking for experience and stuff for my Reel then I would perhaps consider doing work for a knock down price, but like I say this is not my priority.
The park contacted me saying it was well beyond their budget.
The thing is, there’s lots of artists starving to get any sort of work, because the idea (not necessarily the reality) of being an artist is so appealing to many and there’s only so much demand. It’s not unusual to not be able to make a living as a creative. It’s a terrible career to have unless you really really want it. If you are already running a business, you’re looking at investing into something less profitable.
Stuff like that suddenly makes my assets worthless, at that point if I was looking for experience and stuff for my Reel then I would perhaps consider doing work for a knock down price, but like I say this is not my priority.
Assets are generally close to worthless “on average”, unless they’re widely reusable and get lots of traffic. Otherwise, it’s just too unlikely anyone will ever ask for it and you’d have better odds at profit by gambling on zero to come up in Roulette.
That VR project however may be free, but that doesn’t mean you can re-use the assets freely (if you can even get them out of there). You can probably still get a bunch of trees, reindeers and Santa for free (or very cheap) online. The real cost (not value) is in all the bespoke work, something that only a CG artist can do. Your prospective client saw something “almost finished” and just didn’t realize the amount of work required to get where they need it.
Depending on where you are this is not true. Here in Germany you can make pretty decent money as a 3D Artist in the car or advertising industry for example.
Yeah I know they probably wouldn’t be able to use the VR thing but my point was that technology moves so fast that, by this time next year, a VR Experience like that might be available as an app on a phone. In that not so unlikely scenario it could be screen cast to a TV by someone with very little technological experience, at which point the guy I quoted would be thinking “that guy was asking for 2 and half grand, what was he on?”
As far as technology and art and worth of a product, well I’d say some things might be effected by that. Technology that makes something easier, faster.
But there has not been anything in this field that has made the creative process and the value of those services worth less relatively. There have been market changes due to a lot of factors that have made the average pay scale of a 3D artist come down over time. But that is not the same thing.
Clearly it ain’t the 90s anymore.
But the reason a guy will not be willing to pay you for your services at a reasonable fee of 2.7K has nothing to do with this.
I would say just apply the same things you did to your other business to get that going if this means something to you. I am sure you know it would mean some sacrifice. Otherwise it won’t really go anywhere. And if you are a pro, I am sure you are, you will know that it won’t work to dabble in this if you plan to make any money at it. You’ll have to build it up from scratch.
I know you realize that. Just that I think it helps to get the reminder that you are dealing with a new area. The the other areas of professional expertise do not cross over to your pay scale in the new thing.
There are people who make pretty decent money, just like there are painters that get rich, but that doesn’t mean just everyone gets a share of the pie. Also, the less creative and more technical it gets, the better the pay tends to be.
If you’re already established, your opinion has survivorshipbias, which can be misleading to people starting out.
It kind of is the same thing. Again, if there’s a surplus of labor (and therefore price pressure), even if the demand stays the same, prices go down. What else could it mean for your work to be “worth” something, if not the amount of money you can successfully charge for it? Technological progress means the same work can be done more efficiently, further lowering demand.
Of course, prices can’t go below sustainable levels, but that then just means that less market players can be sustained. It’s much harder to get a job in CG than many other professions, as a result.
It depends if you are good or mediocre(bad). If you are a good artist, you shouldn’t have a problem making a living. If you are mediocre, you will struggle. So, these starving artists you speak of probably just need to up their skills to get some gigs. I don’t know a single good artist who struggles to make a living. But I know a lot of bad/mediocre ones who do.
If i’m doing a project for work, I’m most likely doing it to put food on my table. So i wont work for just enjoyment as that time could be spent elsewhere looking for worthwhile employment.