Mobile animation selling- Can you solve this challenge?

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love for animation
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Mobile animation selling- Can you solve this challenge?

Post by love for animation »

Hello everybody,


I will appreciate your advice concerning the following-


I created a one minute animation that I am wiling to sell on the mobile market.


My initial thought was to sell the animation using a wap-page, yet I was afraid of piracy, as it is very easy to copy such video and spread it illegally (I even considered selling it through a wap-page and just comment the costumers that I will appreciate avoiding any illegal duplicating, yet some of my friends suggested that it might be a "naive" approach)


My two other options, following some problems, are-


1. making an app(android, Iphone etc') from the animation - problem: development costs increase significantly, as I need to outsource (I also do not want to become dependent on a programmer in future projects)


2. Selling through mobile aggregators- the problem is that they cut more than 50% of the profit and it is still easy to copy the content illegally.



I am trying to find a solution to the above and will be very thankful for your ideas concerning a reasonable way to sell the animation while avoiding illegal copying.


Thank you in advanced for your effort.


Kind regards,


me.
Genete
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Post by Genete »

There is not way to avoid illegal copying.
-G
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slowtiger
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Post by slowtiger »

Way to go.

Is this the first animation you did? Do you have a showcase with lots of examples of your work? Did you win any awards?

I'm afraid that your chances of selling just one single minute of animation are null, even if it were the most beautiful animation of all century. Possible ways done by others, without any guarantee of profit, are:
- make a series and deliver episodes regularly
- sell to a broadcaster
- host the video yourself and try to get money via flattr
- give the video away for free, but sell merchandise.
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Diana Kennedy
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Post by Diana Kennedy »

I'm also afraid that there's no way to prevent illegal copying. Also I agree with Slowtiger, the chances of selling the animation are not really high. But I think you should go via mobile aggegators, even if they cut of a lot of the revenue, they at least have the distribution platform.

And yes, best is a series with regular new episodes.

Good luck!
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

Not that I've ever tried selling on it, but wouldn't something like itunes be ideal? Maybe that's just an example of an aggregator, but I'm pretty sure they only take 30% not 50%, and they also support DRM, so that should help with your piracy concerns. Anyway, good luck selling your work. I just started selling my scripts on CP, and while it's tough, it's great fun making money at what you love doing.
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Diana Kennedy
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Post by Diana Kennedy »

As far as I heard, Itunes charges an one-time fee if you want to sell apps there. It is probably similar with films.
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

Diana Kennedy wrote:As far as I heard, Itunes charges an one-time fee if you want to sell apps there. It is probably similar with films.
No doubt the model has changed over the years, but according to this FAQ from apple.com, it is currently free to sign up as an itunes content provider:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/content-pro ... e-faq.html
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

Oh right, when you actually get into the application process it becomes clear that you need to be distributing at least 5 feature films to qualify!

I guess an aggregator is your best bet after all.

I found this link, which has some useful info:
http://www.angelobell.com/2009/12/how-t ... on-itunes/
It mentions amazon.com as a more affordable alternative to itunes, but it requires you to do your own marketing.

An aggregator that charges a yearly membership fee instead of a percentage of each sale, plus one that converts your video to an app and sells it at the app store also responded in the comments.

If you did want to sell your video as an app at the app store without any coding, apparently Flash CS5 can export to a native iOS app:
http://ipodtoucher55.blogspot.com/2010/ ... h-cs5.html
crsP
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Post by crsP »

The fee for selling on itunes is to join the Apple developer program - which is mandatory before selling apps. I can't imagine they would expect musicians and filmakers to have to join a coding group before they can submit.

Either way, who is going to buy one minute of animation, and for how much? Assuming you have no established reputation as yet, you will need a trailer for your film. So that's half the animation seen, for free.

If your 1 minute short is very good, use it to advertise your skills so you can acquire some paid work. I think the days of 'Crazy frog' are over.
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

crsP wrote:The fee for selling on itunes is to join the Apple developer program - which is mandatory before selling apps. I can't imagine they would expect musicians and filmakers to have to join a coding group before they can submit.

Either way, who is going to buy one minute of animation, and for how much? Assuming you have no established reputation as yet, you will need a trailer for your film. So that's half the animation seen, for free.

If your 1 minute short is very good, use it to advertise your skills so you can acquire some paid work. I think the days of 'Crazy frog' are over.
I don't know. Isn't making 60 second animations for the mobile market how Grey Kid got their start? Besides, for that sort of market, short is what you want. People aren't exactly going to pass your animation along to all of their friends if it's feature-length, are they?

Actually, I'm surprised Smith-Micro don't provide a platform for this, since I thought their background was in developing media for the mobile market. What would be cool is if they could act as an aggregator for the usual media distribution networks, but perhaps offer a discount if you're a registered customer for one of their products.
crsP
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Post by crsP »

Well, I don't know either - I don't have any statistics to prove anything. However, it just seems unlikely, given that, after crazy frog there were a slew of copy-cats, but now that has quiet down. The circumstances have changed significantly. Before, to get things like ringtones, and these animation and video clips, you had no choice but to go to these premium rate suppliers. Phones, from iphone to blackberry, and all the androids in between allow you full internet access - not the sandboxed crap that was offered in the past. So why would anyone sign up to 5 bucks or more per week to get access to this one minute clip, when they can just use their phone to head on to Youtube or similar to get these type of things? The only reason ringtones could not be put on phone without the content suppliers is because the manufacturers restricted that ability. Now that many phones are also music players, the industry lost their control on this and people know they can just select any song in their library as a ringtone. I think if kids could pass on an entire feature length film on their phones, they would.

Grey Kid seems to be a comparatively old company, so if they made money like that, it was likely in the same past that allowed this industry.

And if we are talking about 'passing along' the animation, there is no profit in that directly - it just advertising, if that. The original poster wants to know about direct profiting from this one minute short.
Rudiger
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Post by Rudiger »

When I said "pass along" I didn't mean literally transfer the data from their device to their friends. I don't pretend to know what kids these days do, but I can imagine them still messaging their friends about a cool app even if it meant their friends had to buy it. I also meant that media for mobile devices tends to be shorter than normal, as you are usually using them when your on the go and don't have a lot of time to watch a feature length movie.

I totally agree with you. What's the point of buying stuff on your phone when you have the whole internet at your fingertips? All I know is that Apps are a billion dollar industry, even though most of them can't do anything you couldn't do by accessing a website on a Flash-enabled device. I guess for whatever reason, people seem to like paying for stuff they could otherwise get for free!
crsP
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Post by crsP »

Maybe Apple are geniuses for banning Flash on ios devices then!

As much as I love the idea of an animator being able to produce then sell their work over the internet, it just seems to me a very difficult prospect. Mainly my answer was referring to this particular case of a 1 minute animation from an [assumed] unknown animator. Personally I think someone like Jeff Lew could have sold his Killer Bean Forever movie on itunes and make a nice bit of change from it. At the moment his sales are limited to Canada and North America [through his own choice], and Europe seems to be getting some, via Germany. He could have still went through these distribution channels [as many people still prefer physical copies] AND had a slightly cheaper [as you don't have postage and manufacturing costs] on itunes, for the rest of the world. Too bad he didn't and now the pirates have stepped in.

The difference, however, is that KBF is 85 minutes, which is comparable to Hollywood's output. I find myself sceptical that 1 minute of animation from an unknown would garner much interest. I think Crazy Frog was embraced more for it's stupidity, than for the quality of the animation [which i am not making any judgements on]. If the OP uses his animation as promo, and creates more to build up a reputation [cult or otherwise], he could then start making something of more substance to sell directly to his fans.

The perception of animation is not very good these days. It doesn't help that television has taken such a nose dive in terms of quality, but people assume it is easy, therefore worthless. When you see job postings of people wanting 5 minutes of animation for little or even no money, you can see this to be true. In that thread about Crazy Talk Animator, I suggested with no sarcasm, that if the users were finding it difficult to create or animate their character, that they pay an animator to do it for them. This went largely ignored, even though they were willing to pay for another software, which only solution to making character animation easier was to provide a bunch of lacklustre content. Then, worse still, one implied that those who enjoy animating were imbeciles, because now computers can do all the animating for us! HAHAHHAHAHA
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