How much to charge for a 20 second commercial

[shift]

I was asked to do A 25-20 second commercial. How do I charge and how much? I'm thinking $250-300. Not sure if that's low or high.

The animaton has:
2 characters
2-3 backgrounds
simple animation mostly zooming, panning spinning the camera and characters rocking back and forth.
Simple character design

How do I charge?
Is $250 too little?

Do I qoute for each character, line and colour art (even though I plan to do everything in AS), Animation, post editing or am I missing some steps?

[slowtiger]

How long will you need to do this? This sounds like a job for at least two weeks. So add up your costs of 1 month, and quote half of it.

[InfoCentral]

I don't know how good you are at accurately projecting the amount of hrs it will take to complete plus artistic license fees but that does seem way too cheap. Also, where is the commercial going to be show? Over the air or online? What about sound. Is there going to be music and sound effects and voice acting? You have to have some background noise. It all adds up...

[Droxon]

How long will you need to do this? This sounds like a job for at least two weeks. So add up your costs of 1 month, and quote half of it.

Come on! Really 2 weeks? 20 Seconds you can do it in less than 1 day (3 Days MAX)

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If your just starting working as animator I think is a great price to start, once you start getting more experience and get a strong portfolio/reel to show your abilities you can start charging more

Good luck on your project

[slowtiger]

Come on! Really 2 weeks? 20 Seconds you can do it in less than 1 day (3 Days MAX)

Not when you start from scratch, not when you have to get approval for designs etc.

[hayasidist]

I'm with SlowTiger and Infocentral on this one. How much involvment will your customer have? will they give you the media and the scripts or will they be involved in approving what you create for them? How many views of the character will you need? Just one? or maybe 3/4 plus front? and maybe (depends on exactly what you mean by camera pan/spin) you'll need to have body turns in there too. Are you giving them unrestricted rights to re-use your work in perpetuity or are you licencing them to use the material for just this commercial for a given period? All this affects price.
Many customers have no idea how to describe what they want, but are very good at saying "no that's not quite what I wanted ... can you just ..." That's everything from art work to marketing messages. All this affects the total time taken to deliver an approved product - and you'll maybe spend more time "discussing requirements" than you do drawing, animating and compositing.

There's a world of difference between throwing 20-25 seconds of stuff together to amuse yourself, your family and friends and crafting exactly 20.00 seconds of material (because that's the airtime slot they've bought) that will pass scrutiny by a critical customer.

[heyvern]

I have to agree with Slowtiger and others that it will take longer than you think for 20 seconds of animation. I wasn't sure if I should say anything because I don't have as much animation experience. Think about what needs to be done, storyboards, character designs, background designs, approvals, changes etc. Oh and don't forget render times, editing, what about sound? It's amazing how fast the time adds up. Before you know it you are working for free.

I remember doing a really fun, cool 3D logo animation video intro for a low budget client. WAY less than 20 seconds... more like 5. Had to convert the logo to 3D, figure out the motion, sound effects, lighting, color tweaks. It involved physics and bouncing letters in the logo so that had to be figured out. It took at least 3-4 days. This was for a buddy, so we didn't charge full price, I think we got $500. It takes time to do it right. It's "cheap or good" not both.

You could probably do 20 seconds in one day if you rushed it... JUST the animation... even 3 days max would be a rush job especially if you have to get approvals and make any changes. I would want more than $250 for all of that. $250 would maybe cover character design and backgrounds just in a fair hourly rate. It really isn't that much at all. It's practically free when you think about the work involved.

[slowtiger]

Of course I could do 20 sec in 1 day - if I re-use stuff, don't have to build complex rigs, and so one. (I prefer to draw frame-by-frame then.) But I will still charge 2 weeks' worth of time - because I don't want to spoil the market. In fact, a client who insists on being served within 2 or 3 days is charged double.

To work in a too-tight time frame always diminuishes the quality. December/January I did such a rush job, planned for 20 min, which turned into 28 min in the end, and I did that in 3 weeks. The result was "good enough", but really not much better than a pimped powerpoint presentation with some bits of real animation in it. I drew about 300 assets, short animated clips or single drawings (in TVPaint), 25 AS files of 1 min length or longer, and about 95 GB of intermediate video clips. Each drawing had to be right in the first version - no corrections later.

[Droxon]

Well I have to agree, sometimes i have to wait 1 week to get an approval on something but still you are not working "the waiting time" and yes it takes me like a week to finish a 1 minute project but not because i need a week but because I'm kind of lazy (x I always end up finishing most of the project in 1 day :p BUT now thanks to heyvern and his awesome script I don't have to spend hours in after effects waiting for RAM previews, now I can do almost everything in Anime Studio (I still need after effects for a couple things)

I get your point about not charging too low because you don't want to spoil the market but I believe you have to charge depending on your skills and experience, if Shift is asking how much to charge for a project this means he doens't have a lot experience maybe he is just starting and remember that the more you charge, the more the customer will expect from you.

[hayasidist]

agreed completely about "waiting time" not being billable... unless it's stopping you doing other things

Nonetheless, I'm (often) amazed how long it takes (and how disruptive to other things it is!) just to have a discussion (sometimes they even want to see you in their office!!) that results in a tiny change (to words, music, images, actions ... whatever) which you deliver and which then results in another long-winded discussion that takes that change out again when they decide they liked it better the way it was... That's where the time goes - so unless you can take control of your customer and manage that sort of behaviour by contract terms e.g. "more than one iteration and you pay more"; "only one pass at this" (as per SlowTiger); ... you're forever at their whim and end up working long hours for little reward.

Also, IMO, undercharging first time is a dangerous precedent because if they do come back they'll likely expect the same pricing; so even though this might be first time out that doesn't mean lunatic under-pricing.

as to what I'd charge for this - the first thing I'd do is look at their contract terms especially with regard to their obligations, how they agree to deliverables and penalty clauses for such as consequential loss (and if they haven't got a draft contract that means they're not used to buying this sort of stuff, so watch out!!) ... and take it from there.

Bottom line for me is that this is about business first then animation second. Sort the contract than you've sorted the pricing.

((@shift: BTW, looked at your "Runners" viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19499&start=15 - laughed out loud at the wing-mirror / head incident.))

[acid breakdown]

.

[Droxon]

If you are required to do the sound design and sound mix then add another day - 10 days work for £3000 ($4600).

I wish I could get $4600 for a 20 sec animation (x
Where are you getting your jobs?

[AmigaMan]

I wish I could get $4600 for a 20 sec animation (x
Where are you getting your jobs?

That's because you are doing 20 second commercials in "less than one day"

[Droxon]

I wish I could get $4600 for a 20 sec animation (x
Where are you getting your jobs?

That's because you are doing 20 second commercials in "less than one day"

So you are saying that just because I can work fast, I deliver poor quality or something?

I was kind of being sarcastic when i said i wish i could make that kind of money, so if you charge $4600 for 20 sec then you'll charge $13800 for 1 min?

I don't know.... it just seems too much, I don't think anyone would pay that much
Even a studio can do it for less money, of course is just my opinion.

[heyvern]

It all depends on the level of quality required by the project. 20 seconds of high quality professional animation is going to take longer than a day.

If all that is needed is "talking heads" with limited secondary motion or acting, then 20 seconds in one day is doable. The quality or style is going to be noticeably different. Maybe "quality" is the wrong word. For a low budget project a simplistic "style" that doesn't have a lot of action might be all that is needed. Just lip sync and subtle motion.

20 seconds of a scrolling background can be done in a few minutes. 20 seconds of a character acting out a scene from Shakespeare is going to take longer.