Monetizing Animation

[Greenlaw]

I read a book a few years ago on this subject called Fans, Friends and Followers. It's not a 'how-to' book, rather it's a collection interviews with people who have met great success in producing their own content for the web. (The Chaps brothers of homestarrunner.com for example.) The interesting thing about the profiles is the diversity of content and approaches that have been taken by the artists. In some cases it was a matter of timing and luck, but in all cases it took a lot of hard work to grow their presence on the web and turn it into a sustainable business. It's a fairly thin book and some of the info may be a little dated by now but, IMO, it's definitely worth a read for ideas.

I'd never heard about Patreon before I read about it here. Will check it out tonight.

G.

[DK]

Hi Greenlaw,
I just had a quick look at Patreon and it sounds quite promising for creators. I do have a few questions on copyright I would like them to address and waiting to hear back. Competition looks fierce though.

Cheers
D.K

[3deeguy]

Your video reminded me of "JibJab" which did (or does) political satire. My first question would be how did they make money? The answer would benefit us all.

[Greenlaw]

Your video reminded me of "JibJab" which did (or does) political satire. My first question would be how did they make money? The answer would benefit us all.

The 'JibJab' guys are also profiled in the book I mentioned above. There's an excerpt from the book on Cartoon Brew which, coincidentally, features the section about them:

Excerpt From Friends, Fans and Followers

I don't want to plug the book here too much but since you asked...

G.

[neeters_guy]

...I was getting hundreds of hits per day and uploading one new animation a week. So my question is, how on earth would you monetize something like this? Any ideas?

On youtube, you'll have a hard making money on less than 10K views a day. That's just a cold hard reality. Check how your favorite youtube channels are doing on socialblade.com to see some interesting stats.

On a side note, Ricepirate makes some powerful comments about monetizing on youtube for animators: Animators and Youtube : No more complaints

Whatever you do, it needs to appeal to a certain amount of people before you can even think of marketing, let alone making money.

This is spot on. The question of how to monetize is less important that what to monetize: What is the message that resonates with an audience? Even if you go the Patreon route, you still need to know how to please your fans.

I read a book a few years ago on this subject called Fans, Friends and Followers.

Thanks for that, it sounds really interesting.

[3deeguy]

neeters_guy, ricepirate is amazing. I just subscribed.
Greenlaw, the experience of JibJab is instructive. Apparently, not even advertising will always pay the bills. Advertising kept Richard Williams afloat so I would always consider it.
I'm convinced marketing is a separate skill.
I love animating. I also like Twitter because I like the dialogue. Animating is an additional tool in having that dialogue. I think there will always be a demand for quality work but maybe we have to team up with people that are good at marketing. Just an opinion.

[lwaxana]

Neeters--when you say that you need 10K views a day to make money on youtube, do you mean in order for them to ever send you any money or to be able to support yourself? The thing that interests me about youtube is that if your videos have lasting relevance and are something that people will actively search for, it could become passive income in the future.

--

DK--I wonder if stronger branding would help your cartoons? They do seem similar to jibjab, but jibjab had that really catchy opening bumper to brand their work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Q-sRdV7SY It brands with both audio and video so you really remember it. Without that kind of branding, your cartoons might appear to be one offs rather than a set from a single creator (I don't think the end credits are catchy enough for people to remember and recognize the brand). I also think it's useful to have your videos on youtube because of the audience there. Most people are not going to bother to check in with individual websites on a regular basis. And if your viewers are using RSS feeds, they won't add to your page views to increase ad revenue, (unless you're using some kind of rss ad). Admittedly these kinds of changes may not be enough to turn $150 of revenue into enough to support oneself, if that's the goal.

--

Greenlaw--I'm reading that book now. Thanks for the recommendation!

[DK]

Wow....what a reality check from ricepirate!!!! Brilliant stuff and he is spot on! You are right too lwaxana, stronger branding would help but I also think that I/we may need to adjust the way we animate if we are looking at a Youtube model. My old animations took 2-3 days to make and the rigs were cut down to basics. Might have to look at a new approach to the whole thing at the animation level???

Here's an interesting topic:
Animators Youtube survival tips.

Answer:
Realtime puppet animation tool?

Cheers
D.K

[synthsin75]

I think new content about twice a week is on par with most successful YouTube channels. But animators can do better by partnering with others, like Machinima does. If you can do a non-exclusive deal with some conglomerate channel then you can leverage their exposure for your own site/channel. But that depends on finding such an outlet appropriate for your work.

I know US politics has quite a few such conglomerate outlets specializing in one partisan view or another.

[Greenlaw]

...Realtime puppet animation tool?

That's another subject that interests me as well. Here's my experience:

When I was Senior Digital Artist with The Box at Rhythm & Hues, we first started using motion capture technology for our two Call of Duty commercials back in 2005. Prior to that, many of the artists I worked with (myself included) were resistant to the idea of using motion capture in our work--one of us even called it 'the Devil's rotoscope.' But the Box's crew was pretty small (usually around 5 artists,) and we were suddenly faced with creating two commercial spots featuring highly detailed and historically accurate environments, costumes and props, realistically animating many dozens of human solders, vehicles and weaponry, and creating tons of visual effects. COD was also our first HD production, so we also had to develop a new pipeline for the department. Oh, and did I mention we had maybe 10 weeks to do it? That was a tall order for our tiny group--but taking on tall orders was our specialty. We considered every option within our reach and, suddenly, motion capture tech was looking pretty good to us.

That experience was incredibly educational. There may have been no other way for our crew (I think we grew to about 10 on that job) to complete the COD productions without motion capture but what we learned from the experience was that the technology was just a useful means to a fairly specific end. Certainly motion capture helped us get a ton of work done on a tight deadline, but the process also introduced a fair amount of complexity and limitations that we never had to deal with before. We no longer felt threatened by motion capture as a replacement for the work we normally did as animators but rather it was a good tool to have at our disposal when we needed it. For years after that, we easily switched between 'hand-keyframed' jobs like Banjo Kazooie and Crash Bandicoot, and motion capture for jobs like Fable: The Journey, DmC (Devil May Cry), and other COD game trailers.

My personal interest in digital puppetry came in 2008, when I started drawing a personal webcomic called 'Brudders'. The strip was kind of a hobby to keep me creatively active outside of commercials. Once I really got into writing and drawing the comic, I got the idea that it might be fun to produce a regularly scheduled animated version of the strip but I also knew that my long work hours and crazy schedule was going to make it difficult, if not impossible. At around the same time, I stumbled upon a project by a couple of talented programmers in Russia who were developing a low-cost system called iPi Desktop Motion Capture, which used an off-the-shelf laptop and a single webcam. The single webcam system was a crude beginning but to me the impossible suddenly looked very possible.

I got in touch with the programmers and applied to beta test their system. It was all very experimental and figuring out how to make it work for small budget cartoons wound up taking years of R&D. Then in 2011 my wife and I made Happy Box, which was created in about six weeks. We used an experimental version of iPi Mocap Studio that introduced the world's first dual-Kinect capture system, and I more or less 'puppeted' the entire cartoon in our living room myself. Today, we're still experimenting with the iPi system and now we're using a triple-Kinect configuration to animate our first 'Brudders' music video. You can see a brief excerpt from the project here: Excerpt from 'Brudders 2' (A work in progress)

This is still a far cry from the regular release schedule I entertained 6 or 7 years ago, but we're getting there. I still don't really think of the motion capture process as 'animation' though...it's really closer to a form of puppetry. But there's nothing wrong with that--to me motion capture tech is just a another way to tell stories, no less valid than live action, traditional animation, or comics.

G.

[neeters_guy]

Neeters--when you say that you need 10K views a day to make money on youtube, do you mean in order for them to ever send you any money or to be able to support yourself?

Sorry, I missed this. I meant somewhat both. Youtube pays out when the previous month's total is at least $100, which translate to something like 3K new views a day for a month. Receiving 10K views a day could yield $1000 per month. It's not really supportable income exactly, but it seems to be a good indicator that there's a potential fan base that can be nurtured and catered to.

[sceech]

Hi D.K.

I see you've gotten a lot of replies, but you don't seem satisfied. In order to monetize anything, you need a product.
Identifying your product is important. The good news is that there is more opportunity than ever out there, the down size is finding a niche with so many roads can be tough. All media, worldwide, is STARVED for content, which is why people are stealing, or "regifting" your content...

What are you selling, what is your strength? Your ideas or animating skills? Quality content is writing and delivery, whether serious or humorous, the same in animation, if the writing is good and the delivery is good (animation executed well enough that its flaws don't distract the viewer), then you are on the way.

Are you a writer or writer/animator? In TV, you'd be picking one of the two, either as a creative (ideas and writing), or technical (artist or animating), unless you're hired to executive produce or direct.

As for monetizing, money flows in the greatest quantity as follows:

-Network TV shows
-Ads for broadcast on TV
-Theatrical release films
-Internet ad revenue

There are exceptions, but the rule is go where the money is. There's almost NO money in internet comedy sites, people go there to laugh, not shop. Break gets 16 million hits per month, making $2600./day from their ad revenue.
If you want to monetize making quick shorts, you need a reel of your best shorts. Instead of trying to monetize on the internet, make a demo reel of your best ideas, to show your concept, then pitch the concept to a buyer. Make a reel of your 10 best shorts, some current events and topical, but some non topical so they don't become quickly dated.
There's work in TV, where the money is, that's where to monetize. If you're a writer, your reel is used to get you an agent, who gets you work. The WGA (Writer's Guild of America) has a lot of useful information on their site on how to get into the biz. There's more, but I don't know exactly what your goal is, but I'll try to look at your link.
All the best,
Dave

[DK]

I should have renamed this thread "Monetizing Animation On The Internet".
If you hold to the idea that Youtube is the working business model for monetizing video content neeters_guy's post from ricepirate has been the most confronting if not alarming reply I have read. For those who have not watched the link, ricepirate actually challenges the idea that Youtube is not made for animators. Youtube is made to work for people who can produce video quickly and constantly upload it to meet the demand. This being the case as animators we need to look at ways of producing content far more quickly to get this model to work for us. I would love to hear anyone's thoughts on how they would use AS to do this? Just one rig using smartbones takes me almost an entire day to complete let alone animating it, doing backgrounds, audio, etc etc....
I run a production studio here in Australia and make/write animated TV commercials and series. It's nothing for a small 10 second animation insert to take 3 days to produce. Doing it in 1 or 2 hours would make it an inferior product and unacceptable to TV viewers. Youtube does not seem to have those viewing barriers? Two dots and a smiley mouth on my index finger seems like appropriate Youtube content

DK

[synthsin75]

Ideally you'd have "seasons" which are complete before you start meting them out one a week or so. Partnering with others can help stretch your content to one every two or three weeks (with theirs running the alternate weeks), allowing you time to work on the next "season".

Of course the problem with current news related content is that you can't have a six-month delay and still be relevant. But you might consider another format entirely. I mean if someone thought your content worked fine on the radio, then the actual animation may be extraneous to making money. It would be faster to make skits or even just a sort of animatic/motion-comic.

If whatever you end up doing takes off, then you can hire enough animators to have a fast enough turn around.

[slowtiger]

I think it's close to impossible to make a living from animation on the net as long as you're doing it on your own. You are not able to single-handedly create enough new output in such a close time frame, or at least not in sufficient quality.

It's different if you have a small team and someone who covers the cost for an initial run, so you can take your time to design and rig your characters good enough for a series production. Of course this means you have to share the profit.

But even the successfull creators cut corners everywhere. Most of their stuff relies on dialogue, and the real animation is cut down to a bare minimum. Do you really want to create on this low level?