On contracting animators

I just made a forum post responding to someone that was asking about basic rates for animation. I mentioned that more details needed to be provided, and I listed a few that may be helpful for if you’re considering outsourcing animation.

• How will you be paying? (Paid per day, per hour, or per sequence?)
• If per sequence, are revisions included in the flat rate or are they priced differently? Is there a maximum number of iterations?
• What’s the animation framerate? (30?)
• What’s the style of animation? (realistic, cartoony, cartoony realism?)
• What type of sequences are there? (Run, walk, jump, attack, pain)
• What’s the average length of each sequence? (2 secs, 5 secs, 10 secs)
• Is the animator creating the skeleton himself?
• Is rigging involved?
• How much initial direction is there? (i.e., everything is predefined animation length, ideas set in stone and clearly communicated, OR leave it up to the animator to figure out)
• Who’s on implementation? (Are you going to handle all the game’s implementation inhouse or will he? Depending on how important accurate and perfect animation is to the game, it may be easier to set up your animator or animators with a copy of the game and the ability to export to the game and test)
• Remote or on-site?


• How fast do you want it?

Thanks to Scott for the last two!

Might I have left anything else out? (discounting the obvious like which animation package, or the highly variable like if it’s a biped or a quadruped, etc)

I hope this’ll be helpful to people. If so, let me know!