Animation for Pilot - how much?

[lizzimba]

Hi there,

Me and some friends have a very exciting prospect on our hands as we have been funded a fair whack of money to get a 3 minute pilot for a animated show for a major animation company. We are going to see the studio we wish to animate the production in a few days, and I am trying to work out how much is a fair estimate for 9 weeks on animation to complete the animation for the 3 minute short, probably in Flash.

The pre-production and post production will most likely be handled by ourselves, so that hopefully wont cut into the nine weeks we would pay for. How much to you reckon we should be paying?

[skinnylizard]

since the kind of animation and the team size is unknown i would offer you my experience where i worked something similar for about 1500$ minute(5 animators did 3 mins in 3 weeks)

however in this case the preproduction was already done and we simply did the animation.

[ocampos]

Well it is also relative to the technique I guess. For instance, I made a 2 minutes in 3D animation with 3 characters and scenes in 5 weeks. However I'm agree with skinnylizard, it also depends if you already have the pre-production material or if you want to outsource that too.

Pre-production takes as long, or even more, as the production itself. Plus, on my experience with clients, there are always unexpected changes that may delay the first time estimate and budget so, have that in mind.

Regards :p