Hi guys. I have a quick question some of you might help me with.
I did some product animations for a big skin care company. Now they want to buy the project files, so they can do changes and adaptations themselves and don’t have to pay me for it.
As I am a director and did the product animations on the side, I’m open to sell the files. (First I just did the animations for my own director’s version of the commercial, but the clients loved them and instantly ordered some more versions for them.)
Now the big question - how much to charge for a project file, which includes the model, materials, lighting and animations?
I have never done this before. But maybe some of you did and have experience with this? If so, it would be very helpful to get to know how much you charged?
Personally I would charge a lot more than what you charged for the work to create it…because, as you said, it will be potentially a lot of lost revenue in the future for you.
As a starting point, I would take what they paid you so far and triple it for the files.
But that’s me. Everyone’s financial situation is different and their negotiation stance can vary greatly.
My price for source files is - at minimum, double the original invoice.
Also, that’s assuming I’ll agree to sell them. In every contract I’ve had with a client, this particular was mentioned specifically from the onset; either a price for the source, or a declaration that source files remained my property.
Selling source files is a guaranteed loss of future income with the project, and in addition provides someone with my proprietary methods, assets, etc. I’ll only consider it if the buy-out amount highly exceeds what I would expect to invoice for future revisions.