$100 per minute? Are you nuts? Have you any conception of how animation works?
I sincerely hope noone answers to this call, this is preposterous.

Oh boy ! $100 could probably get you a couple of seconds of animation at the max. You need to do your research right. You might want to elaborate on the quality of animation you are aiming for by showing an example of a different clip/movie/show that you have seen.

$9000 budget for a feature film?

Slice Studios wrote:

I don't wish to offend anyone. This is the budget I have to work with, I'm not forcing you to help out.

Anyone who would like to gain experience on a fun project, at home, while being paid a few bucks would be perfect a perfect fit.

I would've loved for someone to throw me a bone like this when I was starting out.

For you vets, I understand you have bigger fish to fry. This posting was not geared toward you, next time I'll make that clear. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks

Yes, you didn't force anyone to work for you. And us 'vets', we realized that this is not geared toward us, but if people (even freshmen) start taking jobs at that low pay, this will ruin the market and the money us 'vets' earn gets lower and lower until we cannot live on that job anymore.

Slice Studios wrote:

We're not Pixar and times are tough. However, we are a small group of artists working together on a common goal. We are making a film where artists have more freedom to create great art, without the worry out business getting in the way. This is a passion project, the kind that usually asks for volunteers. We're trying to do better than that and pay artists what we can afford. I don't see why everyone is getting all bent out of shape.
...

To me, that's just what everybody says who wants artists to work for them for low/no pay. If artists want to create great art without business getting in their way, they can do it themselves.

If you cannot afford to hire people at a reasonable pay for a feature film, well, you might want to rethink if doing a feature is a good idea at this moment. Either get people to work for free because its such a beautiful and artsy project, or pay them full.
But if you want to engage people to work for you for free, you should do a bit more than just post "hey i need animators who are good but don't need to pay any bills" here. Take a look at how much effort Michael Cawood put in his presentation just to attract talent for his short film. I couldn't even find a website for your project or even just your studio.

I joined this just to say how much I agree with this being a bad idea for anyone to take. Practically speaking $100 a minute of used animation wouldn't even cover the power costs of the render not to mention the modelling time and how about food or light.

Ethically this is very poor practice and leads me to the old pay peanuts get monkeys saying, if you really are struggling on a budget how about you offer a cut of the profit should the film make any, sounds fairer.

Everyone don't complain about long hours for low pay when you are willing to entertain offers like this, I'd rather sweep streets for a couple of bucks an hour than create 3D art work for the same fee.

Good luck in your search though, I am sure there still people able to survive on peanuts.

Budget can affect production but not in the way that you cut artists. rather than that you need so see: ok we don't have money for CG zombies and VFX, let's hire good makeup and go with that instead.
Work around limitations of the budget, not trying to push something into movie that can't be covered.
Even if you find some poor kid that will work for that, animation done for that budget can just ruin whole look of the movie.
Work within limitations, cheat a bit with couple actors and some makeup and that is it.
Better not to have any CG than to have bad Cg. Same apply to everything else as well.

naeemahmed wrote:

you right that We're not Pixar and times are tough but you have start with short film or tv series 90 mins film that's big and need lot of experience so i think you have to take small stapes dn't take me wrong

Thanks for the concern...but we're doing just fine. The animators that have joined the team are awesome and I can't thank them enough for their efforts.

It would be illegal in any contracted job to offer that much money in an MEDC; minimum wage gets its name for a reason.

Make a smaller, higher quality short term project and see if that pulls any weight. When you get into the ethics of money $9000 is not going to get you a high quality feature film worth showing to anyone, a short film of around 5 minutes for proof of concept is much more sensible and has realistic/plausible returns.

Last edited by Patrick Colquhoun (05-25-2012 1:14 am)

And how much time do the animators have to create one minute of feature film animation?

Not to discourage anyone here but in my honest opinion this project is doomed to fail. On the other hand, I'd be very excited and impressed if this turns out decent.

Will have my eyes on this..

Also I would just have to add to Kenny's words that anyone that got any experience in this line of work must feel obligated to warn less experienced animators about things like that.
This can easily kill complete career and will for animation for any young aspiring animator.
Once your dreams and plans are crashed before even beginning to grasp how animations and animation industry works not many can recover from that. That is why we respond in this matter and would appreciate if all similar underpaid and offensive offers like this that can bring anything good to animators stay away from animation sites.
And as someone that had to deal with similar offers before and that has bin through a lot bad work situations I also can't just stay and not warn people about this.
Even then I tried to do it in non offensive way suggesting different approach as couple other guys did, but wihtouth any success.
Thank you.

Kenny to the rescue! >.<

I'm sorry you guy's feel this way. I in no way tried to insult you. I have a film to make. I openly and honestly posted a request for what I needed in order to make this film happen. I could have been shady about it and not posted the money offered, wasting your time. But I did not do that, lesson learned.

I did not attack you! You attacked me, go back and reread this thread.

I am giving an opportunity to animators that can't get a job yet, for whatever reason. I work with their short comings and they with mine.

This will be my last post...so no need to respond to it.

One last note....I have worked in the studio animation world. It's not all peaches. They treat animators like cattle, bringing in waves every year for low pay and and 80 hour weeks. All of the new online schools are making it easier for studios to abuse animators by overloading the market with unemployed graduates. Pay scales are negotiated in secret and you better not tell anyone what you make, or else. I was a manager, I had to use tactics like this daily or lose my job, and it made me sick. So I stopped working at studios and went freelance. The world isn't fair and the sooner you realize it the better off you are.

Sorry we couldn't be friends.