Reason why Animation is so costly

moneyinc.com/costs-animation-shows-2-million-make-single-episode/

TRUE OR BS?

Because men oh men, it doesn't excuse the shit animation of Fox animated comedies.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=du3qGXwfr0E
youtu.be/cNi2Z7IB4W4
youtube.com/watch?v=oTEB1oP3FQE
youtube.com/watch?v=XWo5aUzJ4_c
lineboil.com/how-much-does-an-animated-tv-episode-cost/
crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2011/10/30-1/how-much-does-one-episode-of-anime-cost-to-make
youtube.com/watch?v=4GNPgAQ4SuA
youtube.com/watch?v=92cesUa9ORc
cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/rick-and-morty-co-creator-justin-roiland-fuck-the-union-103723.html
youtu.be/4W87BtYDmAg?t=87
sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/17747/
sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/17740/
youtube.com/watch?v=-ctujLIA8kU
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

without any research at all, sure why not?

animation is expensive, plus the supporting team

aren't the Big Bang theory actors making a million each per episode?

>TRUE OR BS?

According to people I know in the biz, most of a show's budget goes to the salaries of the writers, producers, and voice actors.

Everyone else gets the peanuts.

It's usually about a fourth of that for regular animated shows, but Family Guy has so many special guests, licensed music, and other factors, that it wouldn't surprise me.

Last figure I always remembered hearing was around $200,000 for every ~22 minute episode. I wouldn't be surprised if that's outdated now though.

It will always depend on the show, who's involved, and how many fucks the network gives about it though.

McFarlane VAs get most of the budget in his shows along with the Simpson cast.

Aside from mentioning licensing, voice actor, and writer salaries, FOX shows tend to have A LOT of animation. It's not very good animation, but think how many times they have large crowds chasing Peter or extravagant Chicken fight sequences or when they draw the entire fucking town of Springfield for one show and animate every single one of those background characters clapping. Or when Family Guy has "slow" jokes like a character crawling out of a room because they don't want to talk to Meg and it's literally hundreds of drawings for that one joke.

The animation is fucking shit but that doesn't mean there aren't tons of drawings going into some scenes. Shows tend to get penalized if they have too many characters in one shot because it just means more drawing/animating, Family Guy and Simpsons can pay off those studio fines and not give a shit. Futurama got fined all the time.

No way is animation that expensive. Look at the countless kid's shows, Adult Swim stuff, and anime that is released yearly like candy. Even the Don Bluth full length movies had a budget of around 10 million each. No way can Family Guy's animation budget be at 2 million per episode. Like everyone else in this thread has mentioned, that money is probably over-inflated for the writers and producers to pick up.

The majority of the budget does not go into the actual animation.

God-tier animation is ridiculously fucking expensive and there's no way anyone could get funding for it nowadays.

Family Guy is expensive for several reasons

>voice actors
>licensed music
>special guest appearances
>use of CG in certain scenes to aid animation
>having to produce many episodes at once to have them all air in time for the fall season, requiring many more people to subcontract the work to, even if the initial crew is 40 or 50 people
>almost inevitably making revisions to the story and correcting errors

Despite all of these costs, Family Guy continues to be renewed because...

>it's one of FOX's highest rated shows and consistently pulls in an audience
>because of the high ratings, advertisers fight for commercial time and are willing to pay big bucks for it ($250K for a 30 second spot last I heard)
>merchandise, even if not nearly as prevalent as the Simpsons' merchandise

And sure, you could probably make an animated series that looks and moves better (not necessarily more fluid) than Family Guy, but the usual issue there is...

>crew isn't large enough to produce enough episodes for a season in a timely manner, cost too much money
>unusual style or customized animation that doesn't look traced off model sheets or among the usual pre-made art assets leads to more errors, requiring more time and corrective work
>completely unmarketable, can't be made into merchandise, advertisers object to show's content or negotiate paying less for advertising during the show's slot because ratings are down

Now I know at this point you'll probably say, "But a lot of animated shows aren't successful, they get like two or three seasons and there's no merchandising whatsoever, and the executives had to know it wasn't going to be a hit. What gives"? I'll tell you what gives - however low television ratings might drop, even if a Nielsen rating of 1.0 is considered "great" ten years from now, as long as those networks are still around (and they will be in managing brands of internet content creators and streaming services), they have to put on SOMETHING.

This is some of the most disgusting bullshit I've ever read. Talk to an actual animator.

the question is why the cost didnt come down TREMENDOUSLY when it went from 'assemble and carefully place sheets of holepunched lucite down on a table, then photograph before repeating the process' to 'save file'
because it clearly didnt, animation budgets didnt change whatsoever when they switched to digital

(cont) because studios aren't about to let that OTHER network gobble up any viewers at any point they don't pick up the slack. Executives want better TV shows, too, they're just happy if a show happens to pull in great ratings/profits even if it looks awful. They may have twenty guys pitch their animated series to them and they have to pick one or two to greenlight, and they have to do it quickly, otherwise that OTHER network will approve two shows and, regardless of their quality, get more eyeballs because their cartoons are simply new, whereas the first network was airing reruns. Of course, that doesn't stop a studio from deciding that reruns will get just as many viewers as new episodes, so at a certain point (usually right before the collective bargaining agreement, or CBA, stipulates that pay raises are mandatory after a certain number of seasons/episodes), they will cancel a series and then air the reruns, which is why maintaining the rights to the show even after it's over is very important. You wouldn't throw away a potential winning lottery ticket, would you? It would really suck if you found another network willing to air episodes from your show that's now in syndication and you can't make that sweet moolah because the rights reverted back to the creator.

Fun Fact! Given the nature of how shows and pitches will start to run together and appear the same, studios don't want to be held liable if they bring in someone to develop some cop show after some guy before pitched a cop show to them. That's why when you pitch a show, you'll be required to sign a contract that makes it so the studio can develop a show with the EXACT SAME PREMISE, or at least a very similar one. This happened to the guy who was trying to get his "Least I Could Do" webcomic made into an animated series. So many tears.

(cont) So yeah, in the glory days, animators from Disney, WB, MGM, Walter Lantz, and others would leave to animate hundreds, several THOUSANDS of commercials through the 1950s and 60s. This was before globalization and outsourcing made producers think to pass these veterans over who knew how to make a snappy commercial in a flash. That was then, this is now. Even then, you had notable Disney animator Milt Kahl telling soon to graduate college animator hopefuls "you missed it".

Still, to keep this from being too depressing, how about you guys go to Youtube right now and look up something like "Rod Scribner commercial". He's done plenty, and his loose, plastic energy still remains from his work on Bugs Bunny cartoons in the form of highly stylized figures. It's really fuckin cool. As a matter of fact, here.

youtube.com/watch?v=du3qGXwfr0E

Scribner animated the first 36 seconds, Benny Washam did the rest.

God those cartoons were gorgeous.

The few modern shows with good animation are already dead or on the chopping block

take WOY for example, this animation is so fluid and flawless

youtu.be/cNi2Z7IB4W4

WOY's my favorite cartoon that McCracken's made, just because I feel like it represents how his style has continued to grow and mature. From the anime and Hanna-Barbera inspirations in Powerpuff Girls, to the more 70s look of Foster's (and a robust effort for his first time handling a show that used flash animation), and now to this show, with characters that are made to move well and flourish even considering the limitations of TV. McCracken doesn't seem to be a guy to wring his hands over not having his show look like some fancy, cinematic movie, but benefits from lateral thinking, art from adversity, that kind of thing. Of course, WOY had the benefit of Disney's usual production power, but I think animators will look at Wander for years to come in how to have a show with digital animation not feel like a bunch of art assets simply being puppeted around.

It's also got some of the best voice acting I've heard in a long time, along with a perfect sense of humor and self awareness

it's a shame we wont get another season

It was a nice return for April Winchell, I hadn't really heard her voice anywhere since Recess. I was also shocked to know Keith Ferguson, the same guy that voiced a character I couldn't stand (Bloo) was now doing Lord Hater.

And yeah, considering both of Craig's shows went at least five years, I was really bummed to hear the bad news.

Hell, PPG got a reboot Even though it was god fucking awful

What's to say they can't learn from their mistakes and make a wander reboot someday?

plenty of billionaires in the world

Superman's Batman's TAS

>countless kid shows
It's debatable, and it depends on the show's popularity, quality of animation, worker salaries, and the general complexity of the production at the very least.

>Adult Swim stuff
Have you ever realized how cheap the animation looks on some of these shows? Often it's just a still frame of a character with maybe a moving mouth, eyes, and arms. I'd imagine that it wouldn't take too long to churn an episode. I heard that Comedy Central takes about a whole weekend to fully animate a South Park episode, which is why it's so fast on keeping up with current events by release time.

>anime
Anime often has a fuck-ton of filler to speed up episode production -- 2-3 minute long musical intros (are a given), flashback scenes, recycled frames, slow pans of still background images, camera tricks to divert from animating significant areas, plucky easy-to-animate chibi/expression scenes, and 2-3 minute long credits.

>Family Guy
For a show as popular as this, it would come as no surprise that the workers are going to ask the producers to pony up their salaries if the show must go on. VA's are the real money-making stars of the show, no one gives a shit about the animators.

I'm surprised writers get paid enough to compare to producers and actors.

>when you pitch a show, you'll be required to sign a contract that makes it so the studio can develop a show with the EXACT SAME PREMISE, or at least a very similar one. This happened to the guy who was trying to get his "Least I Could Do" webcomic made into an animated series. So many tears.

Wait, what happened there?

They're spending all of their money on blow and charity donations.

Actually anime these days are better animated than what they were a few years ago. The industry just shits on animators HARD to get it done, infact animators get paid fuck all and often below minimum wage.

Your statements about anime intros/eds are false too. They're a minute and a half at most and rarely go above or below this threshold.

This seems like a good time to post this
youtube.com/watch?v=oTEB1oP3FQE
The first 26-episode season has aired, two more are in production

>income
>college student

I don't understand. Are they getting paid to attend college?

I'm assuming student loans as well as money from their parents.

The animator girl from the show is pretty much fending for herself and it's established that her parents aren't supporting her. It really shows since her apartment is bare as fuck and she has to buy budget food.

So in theory, if some folks put up 10 billion dollars for a 1.5 to 2 hour animated movie they could do decent work?

What sort of money would need to be invested (wasted) for a jaw dropper of an anime or cartoon epic?

It depends on where your priorities lie user. Fluid animation or detailed artwork.

>cg animators get payed more than traditional animators

putting aside the medium cg in anime is such shit

>Family guy and post movie simpsons
>Drawing

Ha ha

OMG, the animation on that one is so inconsistent, at first is like weird 60s cartoon animation, and then the rest seems liek it was traced by Chuck Jones.

>Tweening
>Drawings
You're funny, user.

>$9400 per year

Why would anyone even be an animator with that pay?

Why are voice actors payed that much? I assume it's one of the easiest parts of the production.

if i could get a job at all to do something with art i'd take it

you're paying for the voice actor themselves
it could take forever for the director to find a voice that fits the part
and well known voice actors do attract

Classic simpsons episodes had dozens of different locations used in single episodes

Yeah. Next time you're watching a golden age episode check out how many new locations, characters, and animation setups they use.

For example the Hank Scorpio episode had dozens of new designs and assets they never used again.

> movie literally swapped out hank scorpio for in a desperate attempt at more mainstream appeal

Never forget the crimes that movie committed.

Exactly. Thats why there are shows with such bad animation because the animators are either not talented or stretched too thin.

The do draw though. It's too expensive not to. It's just very standardized to look consistent.

>hand drawn animation
>family guy

Welp that guy clearly doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

Interns is my guess.

You have to pay your interns in most countries if they're doing any meaningful work.

Total bullshit. Animation is incredibly cheap since animators started making cels on computers. They spend less time on the art and pocketing the money they used to pay for painting.

IIRC Japan has a sort of VA system where VAs have agents, and with every successive job the cost of hiring the VA goes up to the point that the VA may actually begin to have trouble finding work due to the absurd cost of hiring them. I'm probably getting it completely wrong but tl;dr Japanese animators are really worked hard, and for very little.

youtube.com/watch?v=XWo5aUzJ4_c

>chief animator earns more then the director

The real problem:

Artists are overpaid schmucks!

i cant imagine the limb rebuilding or whatever it was in that iron man movie was cheap

i remember the list of cg artists in the credits was fucking huge

It's all because of unions.
Unions have killed American animation. This is what happens when you give power to communism.
Capitalism worked, the smart and talented could reach the top and then use their talents and resources to help and direct the other animators time to create all the golden age greats, the hand drawn masterpieces of Warner Bros and old Disney.
Now with unions and bringing down the capitalism, all the animators of US can produce is the new PPG and CGI.
If unions were disbanded, and the pampered and spoiled lazy masses were shown their place and direction, America could be made great again.

On a show like Family Guy they're a lot of the same people.

hey unions worked they just dident know when they had already won

Capitalism worked better.

I think you can't make a proper cartoon with less than 500k per ep.

Sadly the animation is the only good thing about it.
Jokes/characters/plot are all generic and boring.

Look at this and tell me that's a better system.

>.05 shekels has been added to your account

Meanwhile internet animators can make show entirely for free

It must suck being on DisneyXD, getting millions of dollars poured into making a show and having almost no one watching it

No it's the unions that are run by the Marxism shekels.

>3 minutes
>shit animation
>shit VA
>only need 6 months to make

And then they die out.

Or make a let's play show because the YouTube scrap bucks are bigger and better.

Other sources in the past have put the cost between $500,000 and $2,000,000:
lineboil.com/how-much-does-an-animated-tv-episode-cost/

The average episode cost for TV anime around the same time wast estimated to be $150,000:
crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2011/10/30-1/how-much-does-one-episode-of-anime-cost-to-make

Some sources have put the number as high as $300,000.

At the time they could have doubled that entire $150,000 budget or quadrupled the animation budget and would have only been able to afford one lead voice actor from The Simpsons. And they would have still used less money than even the cheapest production cited in that story.

Do most people involved in anime production get paid little? Yes, but on the other hand American productions piss away money with wild abandon and very rarely have anything to show for it. And to add insult to injury, the animation staff aren't even American.

This is what $2,000,000 gets you in America:
youtube.com/watch?v=4GNPgAQ4SuA

This is what $150,000 - $300,000 gets you in Japan:
youtube.com/watch?v=92cesUa9ORc

>flawless
The character designs and camera work are extremely simple and there's either no shading or very simple shading. The movements themselves are not complicated.

Anime OPs and EDs have been standardized into one and a half minutes, and have rarely been longer than that.

Flashbacks are usually used when they are appropriate (Japanese TV dramas like to use them too). Recycling animation is a very old technique and probably hasn't been really used since the early 70s or so. There are exceptions like transformation sequences.

Camera work can be used to reduce the amount of animation required, but it also serves the same purpose it does in cinema, and anime is made as if it were cinema.

They are credited as "animation directors," and their job is to check the animation drawings for errors and consistency, and send them back to the animator with corrections or correct them themselves. They are also often the character designers (i.e. they adapt the original designs for animation and create a blueprint for the animators). So they have a lot of responsibility and it's apparently a very demanding position.

celebrity cameos were a mistake

>unions are the problem

except it's literally the opposite

cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/rick-and-morty-co-creator-justin-roiland-fuck-the-union-103723.html

>Roiland’s claim that they didn’t have time to negotiate doesn’t hold up for other reasons, too. For example, the studio called a meeting with artists to give them the classic “unions are scary” talk. They told artists, among other things, that the Animation Guild offered a poor health plan. Of course, their own company offered no health plan, which was one of the reasons that artists wanted to organize. Regardless of what they told the artists, the anti-union meeting hosted by Rick and Morty LLC’s bosses suggests that they were well aware of the artists’ organizing efforts and didn’t have to wait until the last moment to strike a deal.

>But the artists working on the show were the ones who approached the union for help. Guild rep Hulett writes, “The crew, unhappy about their treatment (they were on 60-hour weeks which made their 40-hour weekly wages still well below TAG minimums) approached us early in the summer and we held multiple meetings prior to a vote for any job action.”

If you don't support unions you are probably a criminal.

Roiland and Harmon sound like fucking faggots. I'm glad I never wanted to watch their shitty show

It's mostly because it's a specialism in Japan. We're talking the post prod effects such as lighting, particle effects and whatnot. Those are manhour-intensive and require a lot of coding knowledge.

In most economies the abundance of a worker dictates his salary. Traditional animators in Japan are a diamond dozen so they get paid a lot less.

Except unions are the reason you aren't right now completely abused as a human commodity. Just because some unions have become corrupt as fuck doesn't mean they aren't a good thing in general

It's "a dime a dozen."

(you)

>post prod effects such as lighting, particle effects... require a lot of coding knowledge

They do no such thing, especially not in a production environment. You haven't had to write your own shaders and shit in decades unless you need something ridiculously specific like Pixar's hair.

If you don't believe me then look it up.

>some unions have become corrupt as fuck

There is not one union in the entire country that is more corrupt than the industry they are protecting the workers of.

Union corruption is a libertrard scare tactic

Depends on the needs of the studio. Sometimes bespoke programs have to be written as and when, such as when the base effects might not meet the director's vision.
I don't disagree with your fist point, but you're a fucking retard if you don't think that unions can become corrupt. Research shit on the Teamsters Union and the Mafia for just one example. Everything created by humans is liable to be exploited by humans, even things that are created with altruism in mind, such as Unions.

Don't think that I am against unions just because there are bad ones. I think they're great.

Why do you think the Teamsters were allied with the mafia?

>arguing about animator unions
Almost all the animation jobs are in Korea now.

>Jimmy Hoffa

No-win situation, either accept long hours for terrible pay or have someone from another country accept it for you.

>Drawn Together
>$700,000 per episode
That's interesting.
I imagine a lot of that was paid to the A-List voice actors (Tara Strong, Cree Summer, James Arnold Taylor, etc)

Or don't pay the voice actors $300,000 per episode, spend the better part of a year working on a single episode, and insist on "smooth animation" even though it looks shit and doesn't contribute anything to the show.

The money and effort is not being channeled into the right places.

If only the government protected its own people instead of chasing globalization

The market is always a reflection of the consumer and their purchasing habits. What you are seeing right now is a result of that.
In some cases the only reason you can afford to eat is because borderline-slavery exists in poor countries.

>using weird expressions in public before understanding what they mean
Wow, sorry but that's like something a little kid does.

>newfags talking shit
Allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go.

Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like it’s a peach of cake.

...

Yes, and where do you think the diamond dozen thing came from?

>demotivational
What fucking year are you from? 2007?

>Family Guy & The Simpsons costs $2 Million/episode; is shit
>Cartoon Network spends $300k-$400k/episode; is still shit
>Little Witch Academia 2 costs $625k; GOAT anime
>Toei doesn't give a shit about DBS

youtu.be/4W87BtYDmAg?t=87

~2003ish, it's been a while..
My earliest memories of this shithole is from Donate Or Die.

Trigger already had the funds for a 20 minute episode, and they asked $150,000 (and received $625,000) to extend the length to 50 minutes. Even if we assume they spent a million dollars on it, it's still double the length of Family Guy for half the budget and with animation like this:

sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/17747/
sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/17740/

The worst part in all of this is that LWA is animated by novices looking to break into the industry. Trigger created it to help these people get their foot in the door. And fox only employs animators who have had years of experience and gained a degree from a prestigious school.

It's fucking hilarious.

And this is the level of fan animation in Japan:
youtube.com/watch?v=-ctujLIA8kU

Of course fan animations have shorter runtimes and no deadlines, but when you're giving professionals $2,000,000 and 9 months per episode the results should be, uh, slightly better.

its a commission based job, an actor can be out of work for years before landing a role, so they have to ask a lot of money for it to compensate.

also, the status quo. Once a community has taken a liking to a certain voice, it becomes very hard to replace them without upsetting that community.

Ch isn't inherently costly, depending on how its used, it could save more money than of it was made traditionally. I don't know how family guy uses cg, but for example a show like futurama uses cg only for situations where it would be to costly to draw so scenes with the spaceship buildings or certain creatures.