Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Do Anime Budgets Compare to American Animation Budgets?
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Marzan
 Posts: 515 |
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Wow. I knew wages for staff in an anime production in Japan were low, but not that low.
Millenium Actress is officialy the best bag for your buck in anime. I cannot believe they made that film with a million bucks. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5315 |
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The wages for American animators, isn't that why animation is mostly done in Korea, because they pay them lower wages than Americans?
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1034 |
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I should think Unions are the biggest difference. The anime industry would probably collapse if it had to deal with organized labor.
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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Animators in Japan can't feed a family much less themselves with their pay but the US ones can, it's time these studios in Japan pay them properly, it's a great injustice and a human rights violation and no wonder why we have a lot of off model animation in televised anime, I'd do terrible work too if I was paid less than a livable wage for something that actually deserves a middle class wage.
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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I do not think this is true at all. I have no doubt that voice actors, story writers, musicians, background, cgi, music & video editors earn a fine salary in the USA animation industry. But I do not think animators (key animators and inbetweeners, those that do what we recognize as traditional animation and would normally represent most of the production cost) really live on the USA. Avatar the last airbender was animated by Dr Movie. The Simpsons is also animated in Korea. Zim the Invader and The Fairly OddParents are suspect since they do not name even one key animator or inbetweener. If my memory is correct, Batman the animated series was done in china. So it is quite misguided to say that poor asian animators do not have the salaries of non existent american animators. It would be more correct to say that thanks to asian animation sweatshops, salaries can be higher this side of the pond for the rest of the production team. Of course, I would be glad to be wrong, maybe ANN can interview some of those american key animators that work on american tv series and make those nice salaries. *poof* |
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TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1870 Location: USA (mid-south) |
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Don't forget the other side of the equation, which is that that extra money has to come from somewhere. Would buyers in Japan be willing to pay 10-20% extra (or more) for their BD/DVD volumes, and even if they did, would they simply compensate by purchasing less (which means less work for animators)? |
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AnimeAddict2014
 Posts: 925 |
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Americans.. outrageous price for everything.. well.. it's a standard of living so i guess they expect more.. $15/hr for flipping burgers.. really  take it to another country where people are paid $5-$6 a day instead... i think they also want Paid Vacation
and that's why "made in china or somewhere else" is the norm... |
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ly000001
 Posts: 73 |
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Anybody know what the budget was for Astro Boy (2003)? I recall it looking much better than the average TV anime, but a quick Google search turned up nothing about how much the show cost to make.
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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I wonder how much, if at all, the production budget of a late night anime could go up before the people holding the purse strings decide its no longer cost effective to produce what amounts to a 12 episode advert? After all, while there's more anime than ever, it doesn't seem the amount of money being put up for each of them has changed in years, suggesting that $1-2million per cour/film is the maximum anyone is willing to cough up per show.
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Gasero
 Posts: 939 Location: USA |
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I am interested in knowing how cost has scaled with volume. During the time when there were about as many cartoons in the US as there were in Japan...was the cost similar per episode?
Japan has a very large quantity of animated shows compared to what is being offered in the USA so I assume that is a significant factor for the difference in cost. |
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Blatch
 Thread Killer Posts: 348 Location: Northeast U.S. |
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I recently found out that, apparently, an average episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force only cost $60,000 to make. So there's your absolute bottom of the barrel benchmark right there. That particular subset of adult animation is probably the one place in the western industry where you'll find shows that are as cheap as anime is.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yeah. As mangamuscle said, American cartoons (even huge ones, like The Simpsons) outsource their animation to South Korea to save on costs. It seems like for American productions, most of their impressive budgets goes on voice talent. |
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SaitoHajime101
 Posts: 281 |
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Aqua Teen proves that with a low budget they can still produce something that can hit a popularity ride with the demographic they are working with. Doesn't take high-end animation to do it, just the right mixture of several things to make the best juice.
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Ushio
Posts: 630 |
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Most anime lose money even with the low wages if the wages where higher it would all then be outsourced to China or Korea and they wouldn't have any job at all. There's also the old supply and demand issue there are far fewer new animated programs on US TV than in Japan for instance only 28 new US animated programs started in 2014 compared to what 80 in Japan?. |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2025 |
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Batman: The Animated Series was outsourced to several Asian animation production companies in Japan, China, and Korea, some of which worked on anime, like TMS and Sunrise. The same applies to 80s Sunbow Productions cartoons from Hasbro like JEM & the Holograms, The Transformers, G.I. Joe, My Little Pony, etc, where they worked with Toei. Some of the last cel-anmated Hanna-Barbera titles were also done in Japan, like Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. The Simpsons, Dexter's Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls, King of the Kill, Ren & Stimpy, Family Guy, Ben 10, and dozens and dozens of others were all outsourced to Rough Draft Studios in South Korea. They're probably the busiest animation studio in Korea if I'm not mistaken. I believe some more expensive anime productions were also outsourced to Korea (I know Rough Draft has done CGI for lots of anime), but that's been industry standard in the US since about the late 70s. Last edited by PurpleWarrior13 on Tue Sep 08, 2015 4:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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