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How do you even begin to calculate your animation rate? Unfortunately, this is not an easy question. Once again, my advice is strictly from my own experience… I’m not sure if it’s the right answer. I’ve met other studios and freelance animators over the years, but none of them seem to have a concrete or universal answer for this. So my advice to you all is based on where you are in your career, find the best rate you can that keeps you competitive while also being enough to pay your bills (or as close to that as possible). Here are a few rules I go by. 

I never negotiate an hourly rate. This is a big no-no for us. Someone hires you to receive a product, which is the storyboard, animatic, artwork and animation. The price is the value of that, not the amount of time it took you to create that. First of all, I don’t want a client micro-managing my time. It’s also a big trust ask on your part for them to trust the hours you submit to be accurate, and that you’ve only being working for them in the hours you submit. All that is far too messy imo. And giving your client a concrete price instead of a guess is going to help persuade them to move forward in working with you. No one wants to sign up for a guesstimate… they want to know what they’ll get and what they’ll owe you for it. 

If not hourly, how do you calculate a rate? If we’re talking animation, I go by the amount of animation produced… aka per minute of animation created. For us, this includes all the steps to get to the final delivered animation… preproduction, animation, revision sessions, adjustments/corrections, and final export and delivery. From the time we started up Paper Brain until now, there has been a huge range of rates we’ve offered. When I was starting up and it was just me animating (and I didn’t have any big network names in my experience box), my ‘ballpark’ range I aimed for was somewhere between 2-3K USD per minute of animation produced. Not to say I always got that… I did some music videos back then, and while they helped get me a lot of exposure, they paid next to nothing (I did a 4 minute music video for $500 once, but it got tons of awards and paid for itself in the exposure that came with it). Nowadays, our budgets still have a wide range with many different determining factors. Are we selling all our rights to this animation, or can we still use it promotionally on demo reels or upload it to our portfolio pages? What’s the scope of the audience exposure intended for the animation? Is it a corporation or a ‘mom and pop’ shop? And, of course, what type of animation is being requested, and how complex is the idea? We price this out in a range that usually starts at 6K per minute and has gone up to 30K per minute of animation produced, depending on the project. 

Just remember the more gigs you successfully complete, the more your credibility increases, and the better footing you’ll have in negotiating a decent rate for yourself. In our experience, working our way up to making animations for shows and networks and international companies really changed the game for us in this department. When someone hires you for a gig, they know nothing about your reliability, how easy you are to work with, or how closely your end product you make for them will match up with what you pitch. But seeing big names on your experience list helps give them trust that if you can swim in those waters successfully, you can get the job done. 

I feel this isn't something that's spoken about openly enough. Here at Paper Brain, we're just trying to find the right balance of being able to pay for our time to deliver the kind of animation people expect from us. Let me know if you all have any specific questions.