3D character animation
$95 / second
Quoted per finished second of screen time against a shot list, never against a running time. A dialogue shot and a walk cycle are different jobs.
Character animator · Athens, GA · Booking shot work from early next month.
You will see the worst version first.
A character animator in Athens. Blocking looks like a puppet having a seizure, splining looks like soup, and only polish looks like animation. Every animator knows that and almost no client does — so this page is about what a note may and may not be about, at each stage.
4 stages · 100% of the work
Every note is valid. Only some of them are valid yet.
The stage most clients panic at is splining, and they are right to — it genuinely looks worse than what came before it.
- Blocking · 30% of the shot
- Stepped keys with no inbetweens. The character snaps between poses like a slideshow, holds too long, and reads as a puppet having a seizure.
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Judge this now Staging, silhouette, acting choices, the order of the beats, whether the idea works at all. This is the cheapest moment in the whole shot to change any of them.
Not yet Smoothness, weight, overlap, timing between poses. All four are literally not present yet. A note about them here is a note about the next pass.
- Splining · 25% of the shot
- The computer has filled the gaps and everything floats. Limbs drift, contact points slide, the whole thing reads as soup. It is almost always worse than the blocking.
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Judge this now Whether a pose survived the transition, and any staging note you did not raise at blocking — grudgingly, and knowing it costs more now.
Not yet Floatiness, drift, sliding feet. Those are the definition of this stage and the entire purpose of the next one. This is the stage clients panic at.
- Polish · 30% of the shot
- Recognisably animation. Weight, overlap, offset and settle are in. It will look 90% finished, which is a dangerous number.
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Judge this now Timing, weight, personality, the read of every beat. This is the pass those notes were always for, and they land cleanly here.
Not yet Staging or acting choices. Changing what the character does at polish means throwing away polish, and the shot goes back three weeks.
- Final · 15% of the shot
- Finished. Contact points locked, arcs cleaned, the last 10% that takes as long as it sounds.
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Judge this now Errors. A foot through the floor, a pop, an intersection.
Not yet Anything else. At this point a change is a new shot with a discount, and it is more honest to call it that.
None of this is a rule about clients being wrong. The notes that arrive early are almost always accurate — the animation IS stiff at blocking, it IS floaty at spline. The problem is only that acting on an accurate note about a deliberately unfinished state means discarding the pass whose entire job was to fix it. Say the note anyway; I will tell you which stage it belongs to and we will both save a week.
Two real notes
Both accurate. One cost a week.
“At blocking: "I do not believe he decided to stand up — he just is standing up. Can the decision happen before the movement?" That is an acting note at the only stage where it is nearly free, and it made the shot.”
The most useful note I have ever received
“At spline: "This looks unfinished and floaty, can we get it looking polished before the next review?" Entirely accurate, and it moved the shot to polish a pass early. We lost a week putting the spline pass back.”
The most expensive note I have ever received
The one thing a still can show you
Same 13 drawings. Same distance.
One twelve-second hand-drawn scene
Twelve seconds is 5 weeks.
Worked one line at a time, because a number handed over is an assertion and a number arrived at is an argument.
- 12 seconds × 24 frames 288 frames The unit clients think in is seconds. The unit the work happens in is frames, and this is the last line where the two agree.
- Animated on twos 144 drawings One drawing held for two frames — standard for most character work, and it halves the count without anybody noticing.
- × 3 passes: rough, clean-up, colour 432 drawings Roughs decide the acting, clean-up decides the line, colour decides nothing and still has to be done 144 times.
- ÷ 18 finished drawings a day 24 days A realistic sustained rate for one animator on character work. Faster is possible in bursts and not for a month.
- Twelve seconds ≈ 5 weeks For one person, one scene. This is the number worth having before the first conversation about a deadline, and it is the number nobody puts on a portfolio.
Every one of those lines is negotiable and I will happily argue any of them with you — ones instead of twos, a limited palette, fewer passes, a smaller cast. What is not negotiable is that the arithmetic exists. A quote that skips it is a guess wearing a number.
Rates
Per finished second, against a shot list.
2D, on twos, full colour
$140 / second
See the arithmetic. The number is high because the drawing count is, and the drawing count is not an opinion.
Rough / animatic pass only
$40 / second
Frequently the right answer. A pitch does not need clean-up and paying for it is money spent on nothing.
Day rate, in a studio pipeline
$640
For teams who need somebody inside their own review structure rather than delivering shots.
Revisions
Per the matrix
Notes at the right stage are included, always and without counting. Notes that move a shot backwards are quoted, because that is what they cost.
Common questions
Starting with the obvious one.
Is this page telling me my notes are wrong?
The opposite. Early notes are usually correct — it really is stiff at blocking. The point is that acting on a correct note about a deliberately unfinished stage throws away the pass that was about to fix it. Send every note you have; part of my job is knowing which pass each one belongs to.
Can I see a reel?
Yes, in the first email. It will show you finished shots, which is the one state this whole page is arguing you should not judge the process by. Watch it, and then read the matrix — the second one tells you more about working together.
Why does animation cost so much per second?
Read the arithmetic section. Twelve seconds of hand-drawn work is 432 drawings and about five weeks for one person. Nothing about that is inflated, and every line of it is negotiable if you want a cheaper film — but the negotiation has to be about the lines, not about the total.
Do you work on twos or ones?
Twos for most character work, ones where something moves fast enough to strobe, and threes for slow holds. Mixing them within a shot is normal and is a craft decision rather than a budget one, though it does have budget consequences.
Can you match our existing style?
Usually, and I will ask for the rig or the model sheet before quoting rather than after. A style that looks simple frequently costs more, because simple lines show every error.
Do you take on very short jobs?
Yes — a single shot, a loop, a test. Short jobs are how most working relationships in this trade actually start, and I would rather do one shot well than take a whole sequence on trust.
Send a brief
How many seconds, and of what?
A shot list beats a running time, and one sentence about what the character is thinking beats both. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.