Fair price for Battle Animations?

[Dark Horseman]

Not something I've found talked about or offered: how much do people normally charge for battle animations? (both from scratch or tailored from existing RTP). I haven't really noticed any RPGMaker games that have bothered to add new animations whereas they've customized literally everything else; is there not really anyone offering services for this?

A from scratch animation is like the example below from Mr. Bubble's website. I think it has something like 20 frames. I understand this is quite a bit of work, but would something like $20 be on the extreme low end whereas $100+ is what's expected for this level of effort making it hard to justify the purchase?

I've also found a demo in the past that simply mixed a few existing battle animations in creative ways to create "new" spells; this is probably a lot easier and may cost much less, but I don't think anyone offers these either.

 

[Kes]

Making your own animations is actually very easy once you get the hang of it; I've managed to make custom ones for nearly all my skills now.  If you do a search for Timmah's animation sheets, you will find a substantial number of new animations which even if you did nothing else but substitute them for the default animations would give you a much 'fresher' appearance to your battle animations.  Someone was talking about putting up a tutorial on making animations, so do a search and you may find something.

I would be dumbfounded if someone charged anything remotely like $100 for doing something like that, even $20 seems quite high.

 

[Dark Horseman]

It's a lot of frames, so I was assuming it's takes quite a number of hours to do. And I've made a few frankenstein animations, but it takes a lot of time, and mine don't turn out quite that nice or different from existing animations. I'd really prefer to pay an artist, but can't find examples to avoid getting overcharged or scoffed at for not appreciating the amount of work that goes into these. I'd honestly would like to keep working on traditional drawing while paying someone to provide other graphics; just not enough free time in the day anymore to learn everything (to a point where it's worth using anyway).

 

[Sharm]

Are you talking about the artwork or the setup?  If you're talking artwork what kind of artwork are you looking at?  Particle effects rendered with a mathematical algorithm?  Hand drawn animation?  Pixel art?  Something else entirely?

Number of frames isn't always an indication of how much work something is.  Those frames could be filled with the exact same art just moved around a bit to create the effect, or each frame could be a unique drawing that flows smoothly, each would be a vastly different amount of work for the artist.

 

[Dark Horseman]

For custom-made animations, I can't even begin to imagine what type of artwork the RTP uses. Particle effects sound right? I was wondering the price for animations that are ideally indistinguishable from the RTP animations but entirely new; that's why I was estimating high.

"Ice All 3" for example looks ridiculously hard to make. Whereas something like "Sweep" might appear simple, but it looks deceptively hard to animate well and pull off.

 

[Sharm]

Well, I'm no expert, I've just started playing with animations myself.  Mostly what I see in the RTP looks like drawn images that are manipulated in Photoshop or something similar to modify them as needed.  Probably less complicated than it looks.  Doesn't look like particle effects though.  I'd say as long as you've got a skilled artist who has some familiarity with animation something like this wouldn't be too hard.

I'm not really surprised that the animations aren't changed often.  They look intimidating and to make something new it requires both a knowledge of animating something frame by frame and animating it flash style to get the timing and placement just right.  It's probably also a low priority compared to things like battlers where the change will be more obvious.

Why not ask the artists what they are charging and go from there?  You'll get a much better idea of what to expect and then you can research the artist to see what kind of reputation they have.  You'll be letting the expert tell you what to expect and don't have to be an expert yourself to know if you can trust them.

 

[Wavelength]

I truly feel that this is an untapped niche that talented artists could make good money by making big packages of animations that anyone could buy and use.  I'd gladly pay $15 for a pre-packaged set of 150 extra useful animations, or $2 each for sets of 10 that looked like they would fit my games.  And I'd be surprised if there weren't at least a thousand people out there who would do the same.  Add it up and it's good money!

As far as a completely custom animation built to your request, if I (as the buyer/game-designer) were making a commission request for an animation like the one above, I'd probably be willing to pay about $40.  People might be willing to do it for less; I'm not sure.  For a custom animation using RTP spritesets, $5 would be enough for most (and $10 for relatively complex ones).

 

[Kes]

If you go through past REStaff Resource releases you will find many free animation sheets by Timmah.  I know, I have them.  You will find them in

August, October, November and December 2012

January, February, March, May, June (which also has some by Elise) and July 2013

Altogether there are over 50 free animation sheets there.

 

[Wavelength]

If you go through past REStaff Resource releases you will find many free animation sheets by Timmah.  I know, I have them.  You will find them in

August, October, November and December 2012

January, February, March, May, June (which also has some by Elise) and July 2013

Altogether there are over 50 free animation sheets there.

I feel like this might be specifically a response to me, so just wanted to be clear that I do know about these and I have seen a few of them (your information on which months have them is very helpful, now I can see them all!); I think Timmah has done some nice work.  But there's still, I think, an untapped niche for new, fully plug-and-play, animations rather than just sheets.

I get that the sheets are the harder part of the whole thing, but actually constructing the animations still requires a fair bit of skill and a lot of time.  And the precedent for the approach of "pay for a 'resource' project and then copy-and-paste things out of it" has already been set by the Luna Engine pack, so it wouldn't be a drastically different product than things that are already in the store.

 

[Kes]

Actually it was a response to Dark Horseman's post #5, insofar as I think it sounds like he doesn't know about these.

I agree with you, making animations takes a lot of time (at least, it takes me a lot of time) and I would love to be able to get my hands on some nice, new, ready made ones.  I assume they would have to be packaged into a demo, as the buyer would need to be able to copy/paste the whole thing straight from the editor.

 

[cosmickitty]

I think this is borderline necroposting... but I don't think it's quite there...  sorry if I'm wrong

I'm pretty sure Timmah uses Particle Illusion for his particles... or at least I think I remember reading that.  If so they really don't take long at all to make, I think I've done them for like 5 bucks in the past... guess I undercharged

http://www.wondertouch.com/index_2.asp

 

[bgillisp]

@cosmickitty: Do  you know if it is easy to import animations from particle illusions to RPG Maker? I'm asking as I see it is $389 to buy the program, but it comes with many prebuilt animations. If they import over easily it might be worth it to buy it (for me) as I could easily pay an animator as much (if not more) to make me some new animations.

 

[Dark Horseman]

Well, I'm still following the topic, so I appreciate the response. If it's something as easy as "copy prebuilt wondertouch animations to RPG Maker", I'm a little hesitant if that's considered stolen content whereas an animation using wondertouch from scratch would be worth commissioning. I'm also wondering how many hours it takes to make these things; if it takes 5 hours to put together something presentable in-game, it's pretty unfair to only pay $5 unless the level of effort is closer to half-an-hour.

Is there any chance you still make animations or have a shop page by the way?

 

[bgillisp]

Here are the terms, per their FAQ:

http://www.wondertouch.com/index_2.asp

Sounds like you can distribute the animations royalty free, but not the emitters. No idea what the emitters are, anyone know?

 

[cosmickitty]

I think there's a trial of the program but idk

Maybe there's an easier way but I export the animation into pngs and paste together, I also usually cut down on frames while I'm at it

Just like any program there's a bit of learning involved, it's a different program, but it makes some nice things. There may be some free equivolants, but I really haven't looked into it

 

[sabao]

Sounds like you can distribute the animations royalty free, but not the emitters. No idea what the emitters are, anyone know?

Emitters are objects that generate particles for particle systems in real time. These emitters also dictate how particles behave (size, trajectory, color, etc) over its lifetime based on user configuration, making it so creating effects require little to no traditional animation (Drawing stuff frame by frame). I don't believe there's really a way to use the software's emitters in RM anyway so I doubt that part of the ToS matters. What I believe is done in this case is the effect is made and animated on the software and then exported as individual frames for export into RPG Maker.

As with everything, value depends highly on quality. This one for example, I imagine would cost upwards of 70 USD on a per commission basis (Resource packs are sold cheaper of course because these are sold to multiple consumers for an indefinite period of time). Particle effects might get away much cheaper because you can produce



with very little experience and a single repeated texture, but fancy stuff like


could set you back for a bit more.
As Wavelength has said, FX animation is very fertile ground for animators looking for a career. As far as I've looked in the professional field, they seem to be constantly in demand despite the very little attention their work seems to garner.

 

[bgillisp]

Thanks for the info. I decided to download the trial, though now it looks like time for me to follow a few tutorials to figure out what in the world I'm doing. This will, one way or the other, result in something interesting (now whether that is interesting and good, we will see).

 

[BCj]

If you go through past REStaff Resource releases you will find many free animation sheets by Timmah.  I know, I have them.  You will find them in


August, October, November and December 2012


January, February, March, May, June (which also has some by Elise) and July 2013


Altogether there are over 50 free animation sheets there.

I don't think Timmah allows commercial though, I've pmed him in the past but never received a response about it..

 

[Kes]

Yes he does.  See the first post in this thread which states it explicitly.   It says

Authors who allow their work to be used commercially:

- Remember to credit the authors for their hard work!
- If it's a collaboration and all the authors involved are on the list below, that means their work is allowed for commercial use.

• Scinaya
• Archeia (unless stated in the ToS of that pack)
• Thalzon
• Fomar0153
• EvilEagles
• Timmah
• Sharm

 Of course, if you find any animation sheets by him not in REStaff Resources then it might be different, but I only referred to resources there.

 

[Archeia]

The animations are low poly 3d materials but you can achieve the same effect with handdrawn effects and using a particle engine. You can also apply some 3d and 2d animation techniques that modular animations usually use.