Animation Pricing Structure?

solo

A very difficult one to answer, depending on the complexity the price is based on working hours. Small projects are like renderings and charged by hourly rate and design and setup. Larger projects that require render farms get very complicated so my normal pricing is charged, but render farm costs are paid by customer, however then it comes to the time taken by render farm, how much does one charge for waiting for render to complete? Sure it occupies your workspace but does not totally cripple your workflow, so that takes some thinking and being fair (on the lower side) ensures repeat business as most companies do not factor those times as discounted and price themselves out.

tinanne

This is great information guys... keep it comin' I really your help, thank you! Would you say there was an average time frame of a rendering, let's say for residential? 3-5 minutes?

Andy, congratulations on the aerospace project! How exciting is that!!

solo

3-5 minutes at 15 fps or 30 fps?

I have never sold a SU animation, I use MAx, Vue, Maya etc and normally go for smoother higher quality, however if i was to price a SU animation of say 3 minutes, at 15 fps it will be 2700 frames and depending on the complexity/polygons the rendertime will vary, so having a base minute price for animation render seperate to setup/design price is probably the best.

tinanne

Another question... is there a standard format. Meaning, should my animation be set up to play on stand alone DVD and just assume that if they want to play on computer they will have computer with DVD? What if they want both. To play on DVD, but also want a format that can be put on a website. Should I convert that for them, should that also be included? Do I assume that whomever is doing their website can convert it?

solo

Depending on he client, some will be very specific about format. are you doing any post editing with 3rd party software?
I always do post processing with a video editing app, for transitions, audio, credits and legals. I normally ship on DVD for use as stand alone as well as .avi and wma (easy conversions) I include .swf or .gif for web applications (that also depends on length of animation)

andyc

@tinanne said:

Andy, congratulations on the aerospace project! How exciting is that!!

Was very exciting.

Watching the actual thing fly was a lot more exciting though :ewink:

Re: formats - I always agree this at the outset, and charge accordingly. On some projects I've thrown in a PC-friendly version for free, as the extra time taken is minimal.

A.

Scotty T

As far as it goes here we adjust with the client. Your clients might have a preferred method of how you charge so its easier for them to sell the idea to who ever. In a nutshell we charge for modeling ,lighting,and material per hour and then we charge for what we call rigging the set for aniamtion which is a flat fee inturn is priced in phases depending on duration.

Oh, and I would be ecstatic if someone in the forum would do a educational tutorial on the proper set up for creating a dvd for set top and pc's. I dont know why but I at times have trouble fine tunning my post production settings for low file size and getting the animations to play on set tops. I do use Adobe Premier.

Anyone?

o2bwln

i usually charge by the Second. Typical cost is $100 a second. If i have to add movement and other animation features the cost includes that.

Most clients don't mind paying that type of price.

Hope this helps.

O2bwln

tinanne

All this information has created new questions... if you charge by the minute how do you set that up at the beginning of your meeting. If they only have the budget for a 3 min animation, do you cut it off at 3min exactly? If it happens that you really needed 3.25 min to illustrate the needed information do you charge the client more or do you throw in the extra 15min? Do you charge more for music?

O2bwln... Wow! 100 per sec.... I'd really love to see some of your work. That is amazing.

Scotty... Have you seen Paul Raussum's tutorial? I don't think he's talked what you've said specifically. I just upgraded to Premiere 4 and they have some pretty easy options for different formats. I really don't know what I'm talking about. I just started doing animations, but already have the opportunity for more work, so that is why I posed this question.

andyc

I've learnt to be very strict on the pricing - that extra 10 second freebie becomes 30 seconds, becomes a minute.... Not a big fan of working for free 8O
Pretty easy to tweak an architectural animation to fit within a set time-frame (just walk a bit faster )
The aerospace work was much more time-critical, hence the per-second charging.

Ultimately, as with all this stuff, just be sure that you're getting what you consider to be a fair price for your time - and don't under-value your skills and expertise.

A.

ScottPara

I have always priced rendering and animation work on a "not to exceed" basis. That way the client knows the high end of the cost and if I come in less at the end they are even happier. This way they can budget for the project in case they are billing an end client themselves. Also, this gives me and idea of how much I can get done before I am dipping into my profits. Just another alternative.

Scott

Gaieus

An animation is pretty much dependent on what exactly you need to do for it. If you start from nothing, yo will even need the construction before.
We are now trying to bid for 3x4 minutes of animatin modelled in SU and (probably) rendered in 3ds max (something like the stuff I have in the Gothic reconstuction project - but 4 different ages of the town throughout 15 centuries and of course more details).

Anyway, now what we need to do is

model the four different ages
texture them properly in 3ds max
plan and set all the camera locations (scenes+transitions) very precisely
hit the render button and and wait and wait and wait...
post process...

With a SU animation step 2 can be skipped (and render time is way shorter, too) but most of the work has to be done.

Now we said a price (don't want to share here for the bid is not over here) on a "per minute" basis but then it turned out they do not have the money. Then they go "let them be half as long videos for half the money". Certainly this is not acceptable for I'd need to build all the buildings and the whole surrounding for a 20 second video too, but they don't seem to understand this.

Anyway, what I wanted to say with this is that the per minute basis only works with an already existing model that does not even (really) need a surrounding either (for it is there for instance, too).
With just a 2d image output you can always cheat; put "fake", 2d bakgrounds or just build 3-4 other buildings around for a good view. For a whole animation though you need to do everything, too.

andyc

Which is why I always charge animations as a separate entity : as you suggest Gai, the ammount of modelling, texturing etc is fixed, regardless of the length of animation. Separating your costs into modelling and animation makes this clear to the client from the beginning.

A.

Gaieus

Yes and I think this should be obvious but they did not think that way.
Well we won't do it this way of course.

tinanne

Thanks for all the info everyone. It was really helpful. I bid the next project as suggested seperately with modeling time and animation. That was VERY good advice.

Thanks again!