Lesson 3: The three levers of animation pricing

15 years. 15 lessons.
By Matt Cooper

“How much does an animation cost?”

Probably the question I’ve been asked most over the last 15 years.

And the annoying answer is... it depends.

But it doesn’t depend on quite as many things as you might think.

When we’re working out the cost of an animation, there are basically three big levers we can pull:

Style. Complexity. Length.

1. STYLE
At one end you could have something very simple: like animated typography and basic vector illustration.

At the other, you could have beautiful handcrafted illustration, detailed characters or 3D.

Different styles require very different amounts of time to create.

2. COMPLEXITY
Here’s the ridiculous analogy I sometimes use with clients:

If you want an animation about wildlife, animating a slug is going to be considerably easier than animating a centipede.

One body versus 100 bloody legs.

Same with a scene.

One character against an abstract background is very different from a living, breathing city with people walking around, cars driving past and planes flying overhead.

3. LENGTH
This one seems obvious, but there’s a slight twist.

The first minute tends to be disproportionately expensive because we’re establishing everything: the style, illustrations, assets, music, voiceover and the animation itself.

Once that world exists, extending it becomes easier.

But 30 seconds still matters.

If your style requires two days of animation for every 30 seconds of finished content, adding another minute has just added four days of production.

Equally, shaving 30 seconds from a script can save a surprising amount of money.

And this is why I actually LOVE it when clients tell us their budget upfront.

Got £8k but fallen in love with a £30k reference?

Fine. Let's pull the levers.

Maybe we keep the beautiful style but make the film shorter.

Maybe we simplify the backgrounds and reduce the number of characters.

Maybe we reduce the number of scene changes.

That's why I'd much rather someone came to us and said:
“We've got £10k. What can we do?”

Give us the budget and we'll show you two or three ways of spending it.

Style. Complexity. Length.

Three levers.

Pull the right ones and you can usually find the sweet spot between ambition and budget.

Still want a price? First tell me: slugs or centipedes?

Lesson 3 done. Only 12 more opinions nobody asked for coming your way.