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How much does animation cost - the question we get asked more than any other

How much does animation cost?

an animated character working out how much the animation costs

It’s a tricky question to answer as it depends on a lot of factors – but we’ll try our best to do it here, to save us doing it again and again in emails!

Tricky question

Tricky question

It’s a tricky question to answer as it depends on a lot of factors – but we’ll try our best to do it here, to save us doing it again and again in emails!

So we are going to stick our neck out and give some ballpark costs. These costs are based on producing a 90-120 second animation including a design process, scriptwriting, storyboarding, voiceover, music and sound effects. Two minutes is considered to be a good maximum length for an online explainer animation to keep people engaged. However we appreciate some people will have different uses, formats and audiences for their animation in mind.

Lower down we have provided some examples in different price brackets to try to illustrate the different levels in terms of styles and complexity of animation.

Let's drill into it

Here are some of the factors we need to consider when we are pricing up an animation project.

How long is the animation?

In general the longer it is, the more it will cost. However, for the same budget we can create a shorter animation with more detail, or a longer one with less detail. It all depends on styles and complexity.

How quickly is it needed?

We generally say eight weeks is a good time frame to deliver a standard explainer. This allows sensible time for thinking and feedback. We can work much faster if we need to but this may bump the price up.

The style of the animation

Is it a bespoke design or using one of our house styles? We need to assess how many illustrated elements we will need to create and how much moving stuff there is.

How many are needed?

If we can make a few in the same style there can be economies of scale.

Voiceover artist and music

We can suggest cost effective simple solutions but these are external costs that are dependent on the artist and music that is chosen.

£5-£6K + VAT

£5-6K + VAT

This is our base level and for our simpler animation styles.

Generally there is less stuff going on perhaps in a more motion graphic style. We can still explain complex ideas but there is a simpler visual approach. Most of our House Style animations fall in this bracket and are often around £5K + VAT for repeat work in a known style and £6K + VAT for new clients or styles.

£7-10K + VAT

£7-10K + VAT

This is our higher level in which we introduce character animation, and more involved design styles.

The complexity of the animation steps up as does the time spent in the development of the styles and the creation of the assets.

 

Bespoke animation

Bespoke animation £10K +

This is our catch all for the more involved animation styles, for example frame by frame animation.

This will always need a discussion but these styles may be possible for a smaller budget in different formats, for example a short sting for social.

Online / web explainers

Online / Web explainers

We can make animated videos to explain how a web tool, web app or a piece of software works.

Following the user flows and illustrating the various options and features. These can range from a screen capture experience at one end of the scale to a stylised recreated version at the other.

 

House Style

House style

This is our house animation style that we call Explainer Cloud.

We developed this style to be our allrounder that we could use to explain almost anything. We have built up a library of assets so we can produce this animation style quite efficiently.

We still need to weigh up lots of the factors above, but these animations will usually fall in the less expensive cost bracket. We produce a lot of these animations for around £5K + VAT.

Clear as mud

Get in touch

Hopefully this helps you to understand what we charge for our animation work and provides some points of reference we can discuss.

 

Get in touch