Market Rate

[aggiechase37]

Did a video for a friend who owns a manufacturing company. Now trying to figure out what to charge. Here's the video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5l9Ay ... sp=sharing

Used C4D, X-particles, After Effects, Octane Render, and Standard Renderer for some of the XP volumetrics, and Premiere. Been working off and on since early January on this.

I've figured it up two ways:

1) $16,300 cost considered per element. 3D assets, modeling, compositing, simulations, editing, sound, color matching, color grade, redesign

2) $16,790 for 23/h which is industry average for less than 3 years cg experience. I calculated 730 total hours worked.

Wanted to see what some of you guys thought. Maybe I should charge per rendered second?

Thanks for any feedback!

[ristoraven]

Cool video.

But generally pricing is not a public thing and artists are really not too keen on talking about it.

However, I watched one Dragons Den episode (british) and there was one lady who had taken 40 000 pounds loan to make one animation and wanted to do another one. I don't know did that include also the broadcasting fees.. Also, one time I ended up seeing figures that if bigger company wants to have a cheap animation, they should contact Indias "sweat shops" and they could get one with 20 000 USD per minute. Something to figure out. In Finland all the companies, big or small, wants to have a Hollywood quality animation and it should cost exatly one thousand euros.

I personaly don't like this marxist idea of "pay for time". You know, it was Karl Marx who said that value of work is related to how much time it takes to make the work..
I am just thinking that it's no wonder why the workers mostly stood idle with a shovel in their hands in the soviet union. That idle part was the profit.. Currently, people charge by the hour or by the minute trough out the whole world. I think it's BS. Work should be worth exatly what the agreement says it is and that is figured out in the negotiations before the work is started..

Where we come to the point that you didn't negotiate about the price before you started to work.. I really have no clue how to handle that situation.

[ristoraven]

I would like to add that if pricing is "by the time" and render speeds goes faster and faster, wouldn't that mean that artist would loose money directly proportionally to the increasing render speed?

Why on earth artists would wanna do that?

Also if clients wants to have a stunning render done by tomorrow and you know it takes at least a week to render - artist should have balls to say that it is impossible with the desired quality (maximum of course). Even though 3D renders looks like a photo from real world, it really isn't like taking a photo in a real world. Most clients really have a hard time in understanding that difference. They won't get it either if artist doesn't explain it every time.

[aggiechase37]

Hey thanks for the reply.

Let me add a couple details, to more thoroughly explain why I'm posting about.

I usually do cg animations for this company, but usually they are fairly simple and I can hammer them out in a week or two and give them a good price of a few thousand dollars and everyone is happy.

This particular animation was much more complex, AND the client had me redo the video 3 different times. So rather than spending a week or two, I've literally been going at this one for around 7 months. So I'm trying to be fair to both of us in terms of price since this has taken me much longer than usual.

Also, I think it's important for us as artists to bounce pricing around to each other and make sure we're all keeping up with industry standards from time to time.

Thanks for any more feedback!

[aggiechase37]

I would like to add that if pricing is "by the time" and render speeds goes faster and faster, wouldn't that mean that artist would loose money directly proportionally to the increasing render speed?

Why on earth artists would wanna do that?

Also if clients wants to have a stunning render done by tomorrow and you know it takes at least a week to render - artist should have balls to say that it is impossible with the desired quality (maximum of course). Even though 3D renders looks like a photo from real world, it really isn't like taking a photo in a real world. Most clients really have a hard time in understanding that difference. They won't get it either if artist doesn't explain it every time.

Also, I'm generally with you on not billing for time, as I usually work pretty fast. My typical thing would be to have a dialogue about what we're wanting and I'll give a contract of what I think it'll take to make it. In this particular case obviously we ran way over the amount of time and effort that I usually put in, so that's why for this project in particular I feel like I had to consider time a bit more.

[aggiechase37]

I guess what I'm generally asking, is if given the video here, are the prices I figured up outrageous for either myself or the client in anyone's opinion?

[ristoraven]

I'd say that you should just sit down with the client, have a full pot of coffee and get to an agreement. You have a base there with previous jobs. After all, the client wants to sell their product and if your video helps making the job.. what it's worth? If they are expecting to sell in millions, is there really a debate in a few extra thousand dollars?

It all depends and it is impossible to figure out the correct price here. It's between you and the client.

[Terryvfx]

I've always been pretty bad with pricing myself so how did you come up with the 16k-ish price itself? for all the time I've been doing 3D I've never know the "standard" price of things.

[ristoraven]

But in my opinion, 16k is not even close to "outrageous". That video, if ordered from a bigger studio, would be around 100k. But as I said, it all depends.

[ristoraven]

Secret, as I was told by one old school marketing veteran, is that you have a feng shui fountain and lots of marble in your studio. Then the clients are willing to go with 100k+ work and such clients starts to come at your door.

Then it doesn't matter if there is only one, you or one of your workers, trough the whole project - 100k work is just fine. Impression what the client gets when he/she walks to your studio matters a lot.