Animation rates?
polycounter lvl 9
First of all sorry if this is the wrong section for these questions, I figured the talented animators here could be useful.
I will try to keep this as short as possible but it will probably be still pretty long so I cover all bases. So I am currently apart of a team which is going through some tender business transitions, with a steam greenlight as well as a kickstarter campaign on the horizon. I originally was brought onto the project knowing compensation for my time investment would come later which I happily agreed with because I am very much still a junior and take any chance to better myself, my portfolio and to add to my very limited experience. Now that the things mentioned above are fast approaching it has now become apparent I need to value my current contribution so if funding is successful I can be compensated.
My issue at the moment is I have no previous experience with contracting/freelancing so have little clue on what to value myself at. I will try to be as detailed as possible in the hope that the professionals here could give me a rough guide on where to start. I have googled prior to this however many of the numbers are years old and are aimed at "Professional" rates. As mentioned I do consider myself a junior, no industry experience and so on however want to make sure I do not undervalue myself & my animation.
So far I have worked 3 months for this team, this has not been full time because as stated I knew it would be unpaid, I would say on average I have done 20-25 hours (been generous with the hours here going for the lowest average) in the evenings not including any hours put towards meetings on skype. In this time I have rigged, skinned, animated sets as well as imported into unity and set up basic motion graphs. This has been done so far for one main character, a generic enemy as well as a boss character.
A basic set consists of:
Now I am thinking up until now I should charge "Per set" meaning charge for the entire process on a character. That way I can value up the time it will take per character (Will it need a new rig? Can I reuse animations on different characters? that kinda thing). The issue I see with this is if I charge a flat rate per set this doesn't account for any feedback changes. The other option would be to take my current average contribution hours wise and figure out a per hour amount. The issue I see with this one is I cannot be 100% in backdating those hours, some weeks I have done above the average others I have gone below depending on my regular part time works hours.
As stated the level of quality I have achieved in the time I have put in so far is definitely better than previous work I have done and believe my valuations should reflect this, yes it needs to be refined however currently I am on Hiatus until the business side of the project is figured out.
So I think that should be enough information to receive some very general advice or ballpark figures, how should I go around valuing this?
Thank you if you have taken the time to read through this!
Here is a link to my site so you check out a couple of WIP shots of the stuff I have been working on! (Far more refined now but cannot show more until these business issues are ironed out)
http://www.animationadventures.co.uk/projects/5831856
I will try to keep this as short as possible but it will probably be still pretty long so I cover all bases. So I am currently apart of a team which is going through some tender business transitions, with a steam greenlight as well as a kickstarter campaign on the horizon. I originally was brought onto the project knowing compensation for my time investment would come later which I happily agreed with because I am very much still a junior and take any chance to better myself, my portfolio and to add to my very limited experience. Now that the things mentioned above are fast approaching it has now become apparent I need to value my current contribution so if funding is successful I can be compensated.
My issue at the moment is I have no previous experience with contracting/freelancing so have little clue on what to value myself at. I will try to be as detailed as possible in the hope that the professionals here could give me a rough guide on where to start. I have googled prior to this however many of the numbers are years old and are aimed at "Professional" rates. As mentioned I do consider myself a junior, no industry experience and so on however want to make sure I do not undervalue myself & my animation.
So far I have worked 3 months for this team, this has not been full time because as stated I knew it would be unpaid, I would say on average I have done 20-25 hours (been generous with the hours here going for the lowest average) in the evenings not including any hours put towards meetings on skype. In this time I have rigged, skinned, animated sets as well as imported into unity and set up basic motion graphs. This has been done so far for one main character, a generic enemy as well as a boss character.
A basic set consists of:
- Couple of idles.
- An attack
- a special attack
- walk/run cycles
- defense stance/defense idle
- Hit animations
- Idle break
Now I am thinking up until now I should charge "Per set" meaning charge for the entire process on a character. That way I can value up the time it will take per character (Will it need a new rig? Can I reuse animations on different characters? that kinda thing). The issue I see with this is if I charge a flat rate per set this doesn't account for any feedback changes. The other option would be to take my current average contribution hours wise and figure out a per hour amount. The issue I see with this one is I cannot be 100% in backdating those hours, some weeks I have done above the average others I have gone below depending on my regular part time works hours.
As stated the level of quality I have achieved in the time I have put in so far is definitely better than previous work I have done and believe my valuations should reflect this, yes it needs to be refined however currently I am on Hiatus until the business side of the project is figured out.
So I think that should be enough information to receive some very general advice or ballpark figures, how should I go around valuing this?
Thank you if you have taken the time to read through this!
Here is a link to my site so you check out a couple of WIP shots of the stuff I have been working on! (Far more refined now but cannot show more until these business issues are ironed out)
http://www.animationadventures.co.uk/projects/5831856
Replies
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Freelance#Freelance_Rates
I would advise you to decide on two rates, so you can present them as options. A day rate, and a piece rate.
A big part of providing fee estimates to employers is knowing how much time it takes you to make things. To that end, it helps me to keep a private timesheet, listing how much time it took to do each task. Google sheets is great for this. Over time, I've built up a history of times to do certain things. Which then helps me guestimate costs for clients.
More stuff like this in those links.