Forum - View topicINTEREST: Visual Art's/Key President Reveals Cost to Turn Visual Novels Into Anime
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2444 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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I'm always pleasantly surprised by Baba's easy-going honesty and directness… just dropping financial info like this is completely in character. Back at Anime Central 2015, they did a lengthy Q&A as part of the Key/Visual Art's panel, and someone asked "hey, could you bring out the Angel Beats! 1st Beat visual novel in English" and Baba was like "oh yeah, we're actually already working on it, it's about half done" No formal announcement, no slide in the PowerPoint/Keynote deck… just off the cuff. (sadly, we've not heard another word about 1st Beat since then)
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5527 |
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"Latchkey Kids." Lol? I'm a huge KEY fanboy and part of many large KEY fan communities and have never seen/heard that term used ever. Japan thing only maybe? Whatever though. It's disgusting gross how much prices to make anime have gone up over the last decade or so. What is the cause? Nothing really looks a lot better than it did back then, except resolution. Is it just inflation? Of course inflation is gross worldwide while pays remain low.
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switchgear1131
Posts: 219 |
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I would love to say that animators and the like are getting paid more, but we know that is not true. |
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AholePony
 Posts: 330 Location: Arizona |
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He says that a 1cour series would cost about $4,000,000? Some of the most expensive anime that we know of cost close to $600,000 per episode over 10 years ago. That's $7.2million for a cour. I'd say it sounds like prices haven't changed too much considering some inflation and seemingly high demand (for new productions) with low supply (of animators and studios) these days.
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Thespacemaster
Posts: 1108 |
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I am more inclined to wonder just where the heck does all the money go to, when the main source of the animation process comes from animators and yet they are the ones who get the least amount of income. i feel like the production commitie is taking to much money for themselves, they either lower it, or give it to the actual people who work on the Anime project instead of hogging it for themselves. |
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Ojamajo LimePie
 Posts: 766 |
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"Kagikko." |
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BlueAlf
 Posts: 1502 |
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...I wonder if it has something to do with streaming and airing rights?
Anyway, I wonder how this fares compared to the recently similarly crowdfunded Dies Irae animation project. I think that number alone gives some insight about a couple of things though. |
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Via_01
 Posts: 551 |
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As you said, that figure is for some of the most expensive shows from over 10 years ago. I believe you're confusing the bottom line with the top one: Baba's figures probably refer to a "normal" adaptation nowadays. It's still kinda high though, considering that many shows can have a budget as long as $2,000,000 from what I understand. Also, while there's high demand, there's also exceeding supply in terms of shows being made, with not a lot of staff to go around.
I think you're confusing a budget with earnings? The amount of money used to produce a show certainly goes to pay for everything production related. Studios are usually paid up-front, meaning that what budget there is goes to their "pockets", if you want to put it that way. However, if the studio didn't invest in the show, then whatever earnings they get from how well it does are going to be minimum. It's not as simple as saying "the production committee" is taking money, as they are the ones paying for the show in the first place. That is NOT to defend the horrible rates at which animators get paid, but to show that it's not as simple as it seems and not just about "greed". |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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It's actually disgusting gross how cheap animation is. And it hasn't changed significantly over the last decade. Though there are some studios trying to make it more sustainable for their employees, which costs money.
I'm not sure what anime you're referring to specifically, but the only anime to have budgets around that ranger are things like Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell, so yeah, only the most expensive stuff. Most anime over the last decade cost roughly between $1.5 million to $3 million USD per cour. This new figure is actually about $3.5 million, as noted in the article here, not $4 million, but that either represents an increase over the last couple of years, Baba was looking to have a pretty lavish production, or he was just generally over-estimating to be on the safe side. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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Anime production costs have gone up substantially. I guess that is reflected in the higher quality visuals of current anime compared to stuff from over a decade ago. For example, EVA cost about 7.5 million yen per episode so one cour was only 100 million yen. Today a typical cour costs 400 million yen or 4 times more. Although I imagine they include additional costs besides per episode cost multiplied by 13 to produce that figure. But it's true that average quality of visuals and animation increased substantially (although they are using more advanced technology as well) over the past 20 years. Series from the 90s look abysmally crude to current standards. I advise to not use exchange rate converted figures. First because they change a lot: the dollar was 80 yen in 2012, then it rose to 120 yen and now is around 110 yen. Also Japan doesn't have inflation while the US does so it's better to use yen figures since their real value has been roughly constant over the past 30 years while 1 dollar from 1987 brought stuff equivalent to 2 dollars today. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13553 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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I remember the Dies Irae anime had a lot of crowd-funded. The show's official website had the DVD/BD listings for 6 3-epi. volumes. So, crowd-funding helped fund a 1.5 cours.
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grooven
Posts: 1424 Location: Canada |
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It was at the AX dinner that they told us this too about AB. Baba is really awesome, he allowed us to ask literally anything at the dinner. I wouldn't be surprised if they they are near done or done already. I feel like they are waiting to tie in something to this release as well. Right now they are concentrating efforts on Little Busters now, they also have Rewrite on their list of games and Kud Wafter. I'm sure they are spacing them out as much as possible to gain the most coverage to each release. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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o we have aproxiamte figures of how many animators work on a given project ? like if we go by shirobako it's 5 key artists per series at 2.5k usd permonth makes it 70k usd (6 months, oen coeur) just in keyartists, if we assuem 1 inbetweener per kyartist, it's another 30, but then we have to add all the production people (2-4 low key , 2 high key) teh director and his assistants, etc.. etc... so
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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It's actually quite a bit more than that. You just need to take a look at the ED for any show you're following to get a "mostly" accurate idea of how many people work on a given episode(the number is usually about 10%-20% higher than the number of names in the credits because sometimes studios are credited as a whole, rather than individual artists). Here are a few charts that Sakugablog made for a couple of seasons earlier this year detailing animator specific numbers. Generally you are looking at an average of 30 key animators per episode, 15+ 2nd key animators, a couple dozen in-betweeners, 3+ production assistants, 3+ Animation Directors, a dozen background artists, a dozen on the paint and compositing team, 1 script-writer, 1-2 storyboarders, and 1 episode director. Overall, you need about 90-120 people for a single episode, and your average one cour TV series can fall between 200-300 people a lot of the time. |
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Polycell
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