Animation Producer Steve Burch |
After all, many of our students at Escape will found their own companies, and create their own characters and content.
As we get ready for our September evening class in Producing Animation, we ask the key question: what are the challenges involved in successfully bidding on, winning - and delivering - an animation production?
- Skill/Talent
- Speed
- Helpfulness, being easy to work with
Animation production - just like a football team? |
In particular, who are the players? And what do they all do? After all, on a football team, everyone does their own job. A goalkeeper does not try to score goals, nor does a striker try to defend goal. No one player tries to do everything. A production works in a similar way - everyone on the team has their own job that they do.
What do producers have to deal with? |
What are the key issues that Producers must deal with?
He divided the students into two groups, in front of the white board, and asked them to jot down ideas on the board. Each group came up with a list of what they thought the key issues might be.
He then went through the lists with each group, emphasising along the way that there are no right or wrong answers - these are simply lists of things to think about and consider. Every production is different and unique.
Some of the issues that the students identified were:
- who to hire?
- how much will the job cost?
- Where will the work be done?
- What are the rights issues?
- What hardware will be needed?
- What software licenses will be needed?
What Questions do you ask the client?
Among the questions that the students came up with were these:
- What/who is the film for? Who is the audience?
- How much time do we have?
- How much money is there - what is the budget?
- How long should it be?
- Who will be making the decisions?
- What style is it in? Is it 2D or 3D animation? Does the client understand the difference?
- Is it for the web? Is it a movie? TV?
- What resolution will it be? What is the final output?
The schedule and the budget
The brief he gave each group was as follows:
The students were to take notes and individually work out the cost of producing some animation over the summer holidays. If they did not themselves have the skills for a particular job, they would have to hire someone else. The rate for talent was assumed to be around £500 per day. So…an artists’ day rate at this level is budgeted at £100 per day.
What do the students need to think about, to produce a short film? Some of the items on the list are:
- Design
- Storyboards
- Modeling
- Texturing
- Animation
- Rental of a studio, gas and electric. (Assume utilities at £500 per week)
- Some cash for publicity
- A profit margin. 10%? 20%? 30%? What should a profit margin be?
- 2 x human characters
- 1 x alien four-legged character to move like a lizard or a dog
- A desert landscape with rocks
- 20 x still images
- 2 x 2 second cycles for each character
- facial rigging/animation required
Each group had to come up with a schedule, and work out a budget, ie the total cost of the job. Again, there is no right answer to the question: how much will the job cost? Bid too high, and you won't get the job. Bid too low, and you may not be able to deliver. This is the dilemma that faces freelancers and small businesses (and even large businesses) every day of the week.
The answers that our students came up with differed wildly, from very low to very high. But the important thing that everyone took away from the session was an understanding of the process of estimating the cost of a production and bidding on it. After all, every job has to begin with an estimate of cost before the creative work can begin.
Here at Escape Studios we want our students to think not just in terms of finding work in the animation industry as employees, but also to succeed as freelancers. After all, in a business which is largely project-driven and where lifetime employment is almost unheard-of, knowing how to pull of a freelance job successfully is a vital life skill.
If you'd like to know more about the business of producing animation, we're running an 8 week evening class at Escape Studios starting on 5 September.
The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link. To apply for our storyboarding evening class, visit this page here. For the next 12 week animation course, click here.
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