Forum - View topicAnswerman - Does An Anime's Budget Affect Its Quality?
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rizuchan
 Posts: 975 Location: Kansas |
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If all animation studios are charging roughly the same rate these days, then why would a production company intentionally choose an animation studio with a poor reputation, if not for budget? Scheduling - okay, but when it's that expensive to create anime, it seems like most would be better off waiting a season or two instead of getting bottom-of-the-barrel production values for the same price as good ones.
The specific one that comes to mind is Rewrite. When it was announced that 8bit was doing the production and animation for Rewrite, there was a lot of clamor among visual novel fans that it was going to turn out terrible "like Grisaia" (which I haven't seen so can't comment on), especially considering 8 bit hasn't done a lot of main production otherwise. I was the first one to come in and say "it's about the staff as a whole, not the studio..." as usual... but they were so, so right. And KEY (and visual novel publishers in general) *are* going to want to cut corners, because VNs are a niche medium and anime adaptations really don't do much to boost sales for them. That's why it only makes sense that it would be about the money. That said, I could see it being about how the budget is distributed. Gravitation had piss-poor animation but got Daisuke Asakura to do all of the music, and that couldn't have come cheap. |
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Pierrot.
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Ronie Peter
Posts: 120 |
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I read an article in the Sakuga Blog about former Fuji TV producer Koji Yamamoto in which they mentioned the fact that he had said that his recent creation, Twin Engine, would be a kind of auxiliary network for studios with production problems and that with this the studios could let the artists focus on the creative part, without worrying about the scarce time, as well as resources.
They say that a studio does not only depend on resources, but on the director who knows the contacts. The industry itself is much more than resources, it is also contacts. Small studios can not do high quality animation because they are usually studios that can at most survive on the market doing outsourced work. I want to believe that the artists and directors just do not direct series on them because they are not called, because the studios are aware that such directors will call very upbeat entertainers to maintain a consistency above their capabilities. I still think it's a miracle that the anime industry stands, because if we look at it, the following things are part of the industry: Low salary for animators; Poor budget; Highly risky business model [because sales of DVDs and Blu-ray are a joke]; And little adherence or qualification to the job. All of this is happening in the industry today, yet there are contests between producers and animators about what makes a good anime: the budget, or the artists? |
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rizuchan
Posts: 975 Location: Kansas |
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Which is actually what I was trying to get at - if Grisaia did poorly, what made Key think that studio and director would do a good job with Rewrite? The only answer that makes sense is, "They did a good enough job, and they're cheap". That's why I'm having a hard time believing that budget doesn't have a strong influence on anime quality anymore. If that were the case, there wouldn't be any reason to risk all that money on staff with poor/no reputation. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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^I think you are underestimating what connections do in this industry.
Scheduling and connections are the primary reasons. You may be surprised, but waiting a few seasons is NOT a better solution to many Production Committees. They want work done quickly, and whoever the producer has contact with and whoever is available is going to get the work. There is of course still some variation in budget, as noted in Justin's answer, so that is sometimes a deciding factor, and studios that consistently put out poor work do fail because they put out poor work, so it's not like production companies are really choosing the worst of the worst. Another issue is that what is perceived as a bad studio by fandom is not necessarily viewed that way by people within the industry who have a better understanding of the details. That's why you may often see Studios that fandom thinks are bad getting work. It's usually because they know the people they need to know. And when you noted that "it's about the staff" you were right, don't suddenly switch to the other side because of a few coincidental examples. The people who say something is going to suck because of the studio usually do not know what they are talking about. |
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Wrangler
 Posts: 1346 |
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Staff will work harder, if they know their getting a good paycheck vs nothing for nothing.
Doing it for nothing would be stupid unless this was personal project for love or showing your skills. Also, bum rushing things you get sloppy work. If they take their time, even with small staff it would either be extra good or look bad because they ran out of gas doing it. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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A lot, of the projects that you see ending up beautiful are "personal projects for love" and "showing your skills" is also a very prominent factor. Rarely is anyone working entirely for free, but I think you are severely under-estimating how much animators love animating and competing with their friends. This industry is largely built on love, and when you have something like Mob Psycho or Flip Flappers or Made in Abyss come around, the result is due to having the freedom and time to express themselves and the passionate competition that comes from working with friends. Not because they are getting paid more. Even in a production with a higher budget, individual artists are rarely getting paid more than they would on a different project(there are some exceptions for artists who are so elite that they are able to charge higher fees, but this is quite rare), and most highlights are thanks to super talented individual artists, not simply have more animators. |
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1747 |
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The more junior animators are doing it to move up the ladder. It's not so much the current paycheck that motivates them, but rather showing enough talent to move up to key animator, animation director, character designer, etc. as quickly as possible. The beginning animators that I've met at Animazement thanks to Animator Dormitory project have all said that the first few years are incredibly difficult, but if you're able to make it to key animator, life really improves. That's why they're willing to put in an absurd amount of time at work. I wonder if the budget affected animation during the cel days. There were certain studios, like Madhouse, who were notorious for making different versions of a sequence. There were several instances, such as during the Light/Dark card episode (ep 42), where a character was either colored or positioned differently and these cels did not make it to the final cut. I can only think of one instance from Toei Animation's Sailor Moon where a sequence was redone from episode 200. It would be interesting to see if that was because of the difference in budget or simply because the Madhouse animators wanted a higher quality product. |
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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The wait for something like, for example A-1, is about 2-3 years, based on rumors. The reality is that access to animation production pipelines is a privilege or opportunity. If you don't take on it, someone else will, and there's no guarantee you can just wait half a year to find another opportunity. The industry isn't idle with no projects to work on. Studio also have a say on what they want to work on, so it's not like money solves all problems anyway. Well, that's kind of the point, the system is something that does not always prioritize who pays the most. That's partly why the cost is kind of standardized. Studios can and do prioritize relationships and projects over pay. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5317 |
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More money is good, but I dislike the reaction of a show "suddenly running out of money" whenever a show drops in quality. As if money is some sort of magic that if you shove a ton of it into a show it will automatically be better animated.
And Anime has been working on a shoelace budget since the 60s, and bad working condition since the 70s. While that is not good. It is not a sign of an industry on the bring of collapse. They have developed ways of working with limited animation and making the best out of their budget. |
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Ajc228
Posts: 264 |
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From what I’ve read, I understand that time is a major factor. Things are constantly coming down to the wire even hours before it airs. The amount of passion the staff has about any given project is also important. This is not to say that when a show doesn’t look great it’s the result of laziness; rather I believe creators are more personally invested in some projects more than others. The staff as mentioned above is very important as well. Mob Psycho and One Punch both had a bunch of very talented animators that contributed to the respective projects.
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#861208
Posts: 423 |
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What is this number, though? Is it the budget for the animation, or total budget for the episode - animation, writing, music, voice acting, and everything else? Because that makes a difference. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Knowing how to distribute the budget across the episodes is a key talent for good directors though.
I believe it includes all the things you mentioned and maybe more. Because anime is produced by committees, it might be hard to track down where costs are realized. Advertising and promotion might be distributed between the anime and its parent manga. Music costs may depend on whether the music company on the committee is trying to promote an artist or song via the anime. It would be good to know if that $320,000 figure represents only what is paid to the studios, or if it includes the total cost borne by the production committee on a per-episode basis. |
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Crext
 Posts: 211 |
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Kind of makes you wonder why no entity just doesn't come in and swoop the best industry talent up with just a little more money and thus end up dominating the industry for years. It's almost as if there's a monopoly controlling things and wants things to remain the same.
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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What I'd heard was that the most key factor in animation quality is how well the studio plans things and sticks to the plan.
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