Pricing For Custom Animations?

Hullo Animators!

So I am slowly breaking into the business of doing custom animations for people that need such for item projects or for their homes and other builds.

My questions concern pricing. I want to be competative without undercutting the competition. Neither do I want to overprice and end up cutting myself out of possible business.

On average, how much do you folks charge for custom animations? Do you charge a different price for a one-off as opposed to an animation to be used in an item for sale? Do you charge more for different types of poses/animations (adult more/less than PG, etc) or is it a pose is a pose is a pose?

I look forward to hearing from y'all.

-Ghoti

Hi Ghoti,

I have roughly three tiers I use.

1. I charge the most for a detailed creation that the client want full copy and transfer for (because it is a large amount of time, demos, and reworks as the customer desires and a one time payment). This usually comes into play with one of a kind creations that I will remove from my SL inventory to guarentee they are the sole owner.

2. I charge somewhat less if it is a general creation they want (without too many specific details and precise movements) and they and it's no transfer (i.e. they aren't going to be selling it).

3. If it is something that really interests me and they are ok with me re-selling it then I give it to them at the cheapest price or free.

These are my very loose guidlines but it can also depend on how well I know and get along with the client or if they are a long time client. In the end, it's finding that balance of making them happy without giving away the farm...

~ Tao

i have the same philosophy

- higher price, custom and exclusive animations for the customer

- middle price, custom but not exclusive anim, i can re use it and resell it myself

- low price, the customs anims i make for the stuff i sell

for now, i very rarely made customs animations for a specific customer, so i have not defined a price, else, in my animations balls, i consider the value of one animation inside at around 45 LD

Thanks for the info, folks.

Yeah, I figured different tiers for different applications.

I guess what I was really getting at is fishing for specific $L amounts for these different tiers.

For example, maybe someone has a couch for which they want two interconnected poses (a cute hug or something). How much would you charge for those two poses, knowing that the person is then going to sell copies of the couch? In other words, how much do you get paid for providing anims that another person will attach to their item to sell endless copies and make $$$?)What about those same two poses, but given a no-copy version so the couch is one of a kind (i.e. if they sell it, there go the anims along with it)?

-Ghoti

Depends on the person...But why would most want to sell animations they are selling too..thats like making youself competition in a way.

For my general anims in the shop I charge around 0.5-1 L$ per anim frame which works out to be fairly reasonable...

Also going by that theory poses are cheap... they are 1 frame of custom work, and a 10$ upload or two....

custom work, there are a lot of variables, but for the most part Im too busy to do custom work so my prices are high to discourage the biz.... Custom work is a royal pain, everyone wants a corvette at yugo prices right?

here are the variables...
1 -can I resell it? (either it is so custom that general public wont want it, or the customer wants it as exclusively theirs)

2 - do I have some basic anim work for the project already done in my poser library. The less I have to do for it the less I will charge.

3 - are you an extremely picky, annoying, or demanding customer? I cant begin to tell you how many times difference of asthetic taste are lost in a text only form of communication...

so custom can cost anywhere between "just cover upload fees" all the way to 100 per frame of animation....

I dont do poses for general resale for the most part since enough people are already charging a lot for that one frame of animation, although I might....

on average for a custom job it's about 25L$ per frame since my animation library is growing so much now...

oh, and I dont do animations under 24 fps so usually a simple walk loop is between 60 and 120 frames to give you an idea, I like to add a lot of keyframe tweaking between the standard walk designer frames, but I would let the customer chose, frame rate etc if they want to cut cost, but also inform them of the quality difference... it's like the dif between a 256x256 resolution and a 1024 resolution image a lot of detail gets lost compressing framerates....

Good stuff! Thanks folks! I've adapted a similar flexible scale now.

Tipsy, I'm not selling poses/anims for others to resell, but rather hiring myself out to do anims/poses for other people's projects which they then might want to resell the whole project. Take a couch for example. I don't want to go through the whole nine yards right now to make both the couch and poses, then set up nice packaging, then set up a vendor (not currently having vendors in a maul or whatever. I'd rather just sell the anims for inclusion in another person's couch.

-Ghoti

This is a straightforward licensing issue, although SL IP protection code doesn't have any enforcement mechanisms to cover what you want (that I'm awaere of anyway). If you want a royalty deal or a partnership in the enterprise then you have to decide what level of trust you're going to extend. Otherwise you have to kick in some multiplier based on the number of copies you expect your client to sell ...

Yep, I am more apt to charge a single one time fee rather than try to work out royalties, which would be more of a hassle than I want to deal with.

-Ghoti