Our first superhero animated video, which we made around 10 years ago (now dated, so we don’t use it to promote ourselves anymore), was created to showcase how high-quality 2D animation can be produced relatively inexpensively. This was made by us in the first year of our operations. We were working on very low budgets and wanted to find out what could be done on a minuscule budget.
We sought to create something that looked good, was completely original, could be made on an extremely modest budget, and would showcase our animation team’s skills.
The script was actually longer than the finished video when we made it, but we cut it down, especially as there were bits of explanation that simply weren’t needed at the end of the day.
The main point of the video was to convey that we can deliver quality at an affordable price without making false promises or lying to our customers.
We felt that so many animation companies in the market are promising the earth just to win your business, but they often fail to deliver.
Having worked with external providers before setting up our own shop in Bangkok, we have also been at the receiving end of promises that somehow failed to materialise.
Think about it: how can one expect a freelance animator working from their home on their own to be a great scriptwriter, a skilled animator, character designer, background artist, visual stylist/director, great at sound effects, writing and creating music, and an all-round production expert? Is this asking too much? Go to a studio that employs experts in the field; how can one seriously expect them to produce high quality at such a ridiculously low price?
Take a USD1,500 budget and strip it apart; there’s not much left to go into writing, storyboard, character production, animation and backgrounds, and the post with music and voice-over. If you’re getting a good quality animated video for USD1,500, you’re probably very lucky to get this, as you’ve either found someone who is hotly talented and can afford to live on a much lower income in a lower wage country and deal directly with end customers via the internet to make a reasonable living, or you are being provided a service well below the actual asking price (and probably not sustainable over a period of time). Our budgets tend to be around USD5,000-10,000 for a short 1 to 1.5 minute video, and we still believe that this is inexpensive. Find top talent and put a crack creative team on it, and you’ll find USD20,000 is still a pretty reasonable price for creating something that’s impressive.
We’d like to think we can provide great quality at a reasonable price, but we’ll be the first ones to tell you that what you’re asking for is unreasonable at the price if your expectations are too high. As our studio also focuses on broadcast animation, we know that economies of scale in achieving volume are a better bet than creating many low-cost animations that yield little. However, we also want to make our services affordable for all kinds of businesses, so we work hard to keep costs down and deliver exceptionally high-quality work.
Although the production quality of this video no longer meets our standards, we’ve kept it so you can see what even then could be achieved in 2D animation inexpensively.
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