How Much Do Motion Graphics Cost?
Answers how much do motion graphics cost
The question arrives as "how much for a bit of animation", and the honest answer is that the number is set by something that is not in the question. Running time is the smallest factor. What costs money is whether the piece is a set of things that look consistent or a single thing that moves.
What actually drives the price
Whether it repeats. A lower third that appears once is a design job. A lower third that appears eleven times, at three widths of name, holding together at every length, is a system. The second is more work than the first by a wide margin, and the duration is identical.
Whether it has to be explained. Animating a logo is executing a decision. Animating an abstract idea, a process, a comparison or a number that means something, requires deciding what the animation says before making it say it. That thinking is most of the cost and it is invisible in the final file.
Whether the brand system exists. Given a typeface, a palette and a grid, the work is craft. Without them, the first day of the job is design, and it is the client's branding that is paying for it.
Whether it has to be revised by someone else. Project files that a third party can open, sensible layer names, no expressions that only work on one machine. Invisible on delivery, expensive in the moment.
Whether it is 3D. Not because 3D is better but because it is a different pipeline with its own render times. A camera move through an object is a day of lighting and a night of rendering.
Why twelve seconds can cost more than two minutes
A two-minute explainer with a consistent graphic language is a system applied repeatedly. The design decisions happen once, and the rest is execution.
Twelve seconds where every second is a different idea has twelve design decisions in it, and none of them sets up the next.
The relevant question is not "how long is it" but "how many different things are in it".
What to send when you ask
Five lines, same as any other job:
- what the piece is for, and where it is going
- how long, roughly, and how many versions
- whether there is a brand system to work inside, and where it is
- whether anything has to be legible without sound
- who approves it, and by when
An answer that names the system, the versions and the approvals can be quoted. A question that says "some animation" cannot, and any figure given on that basis will be wrong in one direction or the other.
What a quote should separate
Design. How the thing looks, decided once.
Build. Making it move and making it consistent.
Versions. Each new aspect ratio, each language, each edit to a name.
Renders and delivery. Frequently forgotten and occasionally many hours.
If a quote does not name these separately, the scope conversation has not happened yet, and it will happen later, at the worst possible moment.
If you have a piece in mind, describe the beats rather than the seconds and the answer will be about the system rather than the clock.