Price for NON-arhviz animation

[Morne]

Hi all

EDIT: 13 March - Estimated Costs added on page 2 of this thread

Another touchy subject. This time for NON-arhviz animations. I would like to find out how much to charge for animations as in the non-arhviz stuff. Now the purists of you out there would immediately say: "well it depends on the quality and how long it will take". Ok lets say something like the motorstorm2 video clip Shoey posted recently or the kind of stuff Richard Rosenman usually posts or the very cool pontiac clips Chris Nichols posted a while back. Granted Richard's stuff is mainly tv commercials and the motorstorm2 clip is a game trailer.

Does it make a difference? I mean a game trailer vs. tv commercials vs. corporate product promotion? Does one usually charge per hour for these things? I saw a local company here charging about US$500 per second of final animation. That's a mind blowing US$240 000 for an 8 minute animation. Again granted this company mainly does feature film work. Again the question, does company A doing feature film work charge different rates to company B that does TV commercials to company C that does game trailers to company D that does corporate promotion? If so what are the average going rates? I googled it and main info I could find was in the lines of the company A doing feature film VFX and the likes. That seems to mainly be charged at per second of final animation rates, which by the way seems very, very high to me and I imagine those companies have 3d staff of about 20 people or more.

Your help in shedding some light on these issues would be very appreciated.

Best Regards to all,
Morne

[thablanch]

A guy I used to work for was charging 1000$ / sec. So for a 30 sec. commercial, he would <lower> the price to 20 to 22K. May seems a lot, but when I was looking at the amount of time spent overall... I mean...It is a lot of work.. It was not something done in a minute.....

[Morne]

I've done some more digging on various sites and I'm still not any closer to an answer. I'm getting conflicting info. Mainly people seem to charge either per day or per second of final animation. It is not mentioned if this is for broadcast, feature film or corporate. I'm geussing (but could be wrong) these are broadcast rates and so far for per second of final animation I'm getting figures from US$95 per second to US$1000 per second. Obviously a very big difference between $95 and $1000.

Can somebody out there please confirm these figures or at least give their view on "market related" rates for the different fields I mentioned ie: commercials, corporate product launch etc.

[Morne]

ok some more digging and I found these interesting articles:

1. http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=C...rticle_no=2649
2. http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=C...rticle_no=3165
3. http://answers.google.com/answers/th...id/784826.html

Would you guys agree with these articles or would you say these guys don't know what they talking about?

[tammo]

I have seen the ratecard of "the mill", they take 300 pounds PER HOUR for motion graphics based on after effects.
700 Pounds per hour for flame/inferno.
3d animation is only "by quote" which sounds expensive, too but it shows that 3d animation costs depend much more on the type of project then motion graphics or other graphics.
So it doesnt make much sense to give an quote per second.

For my clients i ask them first if they have a fixed budget.
If that is the case i tell them what i can do for that amount in what what kind of quality and so on.

If they just want a quote i try to deconstruct the script into small elements and write a time estimate for each element and add some time for changes.
I send them the list so they can see that some things take long to do and some things are easy.

In the next step usually the talking characters with dynamic clothing get thrown out of the script and only the easy stuff stays in.

I multiply the remaining hours by 40 Euros and send them the final quote.
I don't go lower then that, if they try to negotiate i send them the mill ratecard.

I hope that helps.

[joconnell]

This is it, the price does vary an awful lot - the rate card in here is around 2,700 per day for 3d stuff but that rarely gets used (unless it's a single day). What generally tends to happens is that a client will have a certain budget for a job and see can it be done for that amount. As tammo mentioned it's tough to price 3d since it varies so much in terms of standard - you need the best folks in the world and the heaviest machines behind you for top end visual effects work and that's probably going to be housed in a pretty looking comfortable building in a central location to keep clients happy - a games house might be able to do similar things for less money by using a cheaper setup and spending more time on it.

Unfortunately there's too many variables in what you're asking so it's going to vary a huge depending on what's needed.

[Morne]

OK I'll sort of simplify it. I was thinking in terms of approaching new prospects who probably have never used services such as 3d animation before. They either don't have a budget for such things (since they never used such services) or the budget is very small since they don't have a clue.

So the 1st thing they going to ask before they even think about a storyboard or what they want is: "So what is it going to cost me for say 5 minutes of animation?" First thing then in your mind is well it depends on the quality and what you want. But how do you define quality? Ok for something crappy 5 minutes of animation will cost you "amount A", for something that is the quality you usually see in games is going to be "amount B" which is amount A X 10. For something you see in movies like Shrek it will cost you amount C which is amount A X 1000. For something that is realistic such that you can hardly tell it is 3d will cost you amount D which is amount A X 100000.

[v_wrangler]

Pricing is a difficult thing - so in our case we do not really set a standard. We always base it on the type of animation. We try to ask first for a rough storyboard and calculate the cost based on man/months that might be required to accomplish the project. Man/month system is pretty much a standard in Japan and since we have studios in Asia Pacific as well - we can pretty much bend the costs depending on our clients' budgets. Man/months may vary from 2.5K to 6K US$ approximately (I do not know the current dollar to yen exchange rates)

Frankly I think the per second billings a bit ridiculous because it doesn't really reflect the actual amount of work alloted on the project. At least in my side of the globe - it will always be frowned upon by clients.

[glyph]

correct me if I'm wrong and don't take this the wrong way but have you actually done much animation?

if you have then you should have a good idea of how long something will take - so then you have your yardstick for pricing

if you havent done much prepare for it to take a lot longer than you thought it would take - and every new technique will add another big chunk of learning/integrating/fixing plus some other time for the unexpected

I've not done vast amounts myself (unlike others here) but I've certainly done more than move the camera around and its only from that experience that I can come up with ballpark figures

[Morne]

Thank you all for your replies so far...

[Morne]

MotorStorm2 posted by Shoey

Let's take and stick to the motorstorm2 example. The video Shoey posted a while back. Obviously they can't reveal how much it cost. But can you make an estimated geuss?

[v_wrangler]

Is there a link for that motorstorm2 video?

[Morne]

Is there a link for that motorstorm2 video?

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ad.php?t=41414

Also I think you can download the mov files from Shoey's website:
(Shoey I hope you don't mind me posting it here)
http://www.philshoebottom.co.uk/cgtalk/MS2/

[Morne]

Estimated Costs (well it's a good geuss I think)

OK, Phil mentioned in his thread that the motorstorm project took 7 weeks for 6-8 people.

The next is all assumptions:
For our calculations lets say only 6 people worked on it.
So then if you take the salary brackets which can be found in 3D World mag issue 113 page39 for VFX artists, then:

A) If those 6 people are all juniors their monthly salary would be between US$2291 to US$3958 per person. If they only worked 8 hours a day monday to friday the total cost just for salaries excluding any other overheads would be US$24055 - US$41559

B) If those 6 people are all mid level artists their monthly salary would be between US$3958 to US$7083 per person. If they only worked 8 hours a day monday to friday the total cost just for salaries excluding any other overheads would be US$41559 - US$74371

If you take into account the figures on page43 in the mag for games artists, then the junior salaries are much higher and the junior salaries start for games almost the same as the midlevel salaries for VFX.

But now remember also that the mag shows in the graphs the salaries in the UK are about 20% less than those in the USA. So then the totals for VFX could be:

A) US$19244 - US$33247

B) US$33247 - US$59496

The above were all assumptions based on an educated guess.
Also those figures were just for 6 people and only for salaries. The rest of the company overheads must still go on top of this.

Please give your crits and comments about this.

Regards,
Morne

[Morne]

Best info so far

I also found this way to calculate rates to be VERY VERY informative:
http://www.fxguide.com/fxtips-262.html