Beakus
Animation for Everyone

Ideas

A growing collection of thoughts on the animation industry, penned by our founder and producer Steve Smith.

A growing collection of thoughts on the animation industry, penned by our founder and producer Steve Smith.

 

007. The Cost of Creativity

Or, how to budget for animation.

Well… Just how long is a piece of string?

That enigmatic rhetorical question often appears when we’re talking about budgeting for animation. Sometimes we’re approached by clients who know exactly how much they have to spend, but often they don’t. Or perhaps they do, but they’d rather hear from us first. Unfortunately, in animation there are a lot of unknowns at the start of a project:

  • Format - Is it a 30-second teaser? A 2-minute explainer? A 7-minute pilot? The length really does matter.

  • Technique - Is it 2D, 3D, hybrid, puppet, sand-on-glass, or something gloriously experimental? Will we need to shoot a pack-shot, or license footage?

  • Scenes - How many shots are we talking? How complex are they? How many characters – and are they all doing something interesting? Any crowds? Fly-bys? Repeats? Close-ups?

  • Narrative - Are there action sequences or mostly static shots? What’s the journey from A to B? What has to be shown – and can we do it more simply?

  • Sound - Will we need a voice artist? Sound designer? Composer? Foley? All of the above?

  • Usage - Where will it be shown? Online? In galleries? Globally or locally? For a month or forever?

  • Schedule - Do you need it next week? Or do we have the rare luxury of time?

Animation is all about layers.

Images from Beakus’ Lifebabble for CBBC.

Each answer gives us clues - how many artists we’ll need, what they’ll be doing, how long they’ll be doing it for, and how much that costs. Labour is by far the biggest chunk of any animation budget. So, when we’re scoping a project, it really comes down to how many people, for how long, at what rate.

Of course, knowing all this up front is a bit of an art form in itself. That’s why, from day one, we ask our clients to share as much as they can.

We’re visual thinkers - ideas spring into our heads quickly (usually too many at once). We’re good at making the abstract feel concrete. So as soon as we understand what the film needs to do, we can start shaping it - creatively and financially. We’ll focus on what we love about it, what makes it work, and how to make it sing within the resources available.

Once we agree a price, we stick to it. The only time that changes is if the brief does. You wouldn’t expect to buy an apple for 50p only for the cashier to ask for 75p because it’s bigger than everyone expected! Same goes for us. Once the brief is locked, so is the budget.

Everything has it’s price. A still from Beakus’ work for the British Library.

We’re here to make something beautiful, on time, and on budget. No nasty surprises. No sub-par work. If you’ve seen our films you’ll know we don’t do ‘good enough’. We know how to find the sweet spot - where creative ambition meets budget reality - and make it work.

So… how long is a piece of string? As long as it needs to be. But we’ll make sure it’s the right length for you.

You know who you are! (from Beakus’ work for Oxford University).

Steve Smith