but the truth of the matter is, it is impossible to do the show now the way it was done then. The hand-drawn animation, the water colors, those don’t exist anymore. If they exist, they certainly don’t exist at a cost where you can do a TV show.
i.e. no desire to pay artists what the work is worth
No, it’s similar to how film is expensive now; the demand for the product decreased to near non-existence so the few people who still make it have to demand a high cost to be able to keep making it.
They’re still paying artists (presumably unionized too, from what I know of the industry, which isn’t much). They’re just not paying the cost it would take to get the ancient technology back into manufacturing, and train new artists to use the tech that no one is trained to use anymore. (It’s more than just watercolor. I’m sure the paint is special, as well as the material it’s painted on, and the tools that help them use it all.)
This might actually be a materials issue, outside of very few working artists still being trained on it. Animation cels aren’t used in the industry anymore, so it’s become a high priced specialty art item. $1/frame when animation is usually done with 8-12 frames per second adds up fast. That number is a guesstimate based on the bulk supplies I can find online, but even half that price would still be huge just for materials.
$14,400 per episode just for the celluloid sheets; not to draw anything on them, not to have extra to replace bad/damaged/revisions, not to scan/photograph them onto film or digital; not to clean them up, not to store them, categorize and organize them, and not considering that they’re usually drawn and photographed in layers of more than one.
Or you can license Toon Boom Harmony Premium for like $133/month per seat and it renders full quality straight to a file you can drop into your NLE.
My husband has also reminded me that rarely was any given frame of animation a single cel; characters, eyes, mouths, anything moving often got its own cel to make it easier to make changes to.
Math gets hard here because it really just depends on what’s going on for how many cels will be used at once, but let’s lowball it and multiply that figure by a 2.5 average for $36k/episode.
That would be if there was 1 frame per second. You need to multiply it by 8-12 per episode.
Also assuming perfect 1:1 cel production:finished product, which is highly optimistic.
I’m not saying the cel animated seasons or cel animation in general isn’t beautiful or worth doing, but as long as they’re making a commercial product at a big studio they’re going to be dealing with management having a stick up their ass about the fact that nobody else does this and it easily costs the same as a skilled storyboard team or several animators to pay just for cels.
Could the show make the kind of money it used to? The first seven seasons averaged over 8 million viewers an episode on broadcast television. The first episode of the new Hulu season only earned 4.4 million.
I don’t know if the economics will ever come back for hand animated television.
i.e. no desire to pay artists what the work is worth
No, it’s similar to how film is expensive now; the demand for the product decreased to near non-existence so the few people who still make it have to demand a high cost to be able to keep making it.
They’re still paying artists (presumably unionized too, from what I know of the industry, which isn’t much). They’re just not paying the cost it would take to get the ancient technology back into manufacturing, and train new artists to use the tech that no one is trained to use anymore. (It’s more than just watercolor. I’m sure the paint is special, as well as the material it’s painted on, and the tools that help them use it all.)
Right? Water colors no longer exist? Please.
This might actually be a materials issue, outside of very few working artists still being trained on it. Animation cels aren’t used in the industry anymore, so it’s become a high priced specialty art item. $1/frame when animation is usually done with 8-12 frames per second adds up fast. That number is a guesstimate based on the bulk supplies I can find online, but even half that price would still be huge just for materials.
That adds up to $1200 per episode
$14,400 per episode just for the celluloid sheets; not to draw anything on them, not to have extra to replace bad/damaged/revisions, not to scan/photograph them onto film or digital; not to clean them up, not to store them, categorize and organize them, and not considering that they’re usually drawn and photographed in layers of more than one.
Or you can license Toon Boom Harmony Premium for like $133/month per seat and it renders full quality straight to a file you can drop into your NLE.
My husband has also reminded me that rarely was any given frame of animation a single cel; characters, eyes, mouths, anything moving often got its own cel to make it easier to make changes to.
Math gets hard here because it really just depends on what’s going on for how many cels will be used at once, but let’s lowball it and multiply that figure by a 2.5 average for $36k/episode.
Math is hard and Blender is free
That would be if there was 1 frame per second. You need to multiply it by 8-12 per episode.
Also assuming perfect 1:1 cel production:finished product, which is highly optimistic.
I’m not saying the cel animated seasons or cel animation in general isn’t beautiful or worth doing, but as long as they’re making a commercial product at a big studio they’re going to be dealing with management having a stick up their ass about the fact that nobody else does this and it easily costs the same as a skilled storyboard team or several animators to pay just for cels.
Could the show make the kind of money it used to? The first seven seasons averaged over 8 million viewers an episode on broadcast television. The first episode of the new Hulu season only earned 4.4 million.
I don’t know if the economics will ever come back for hand animated television.
It probably got way more than that, a lot of us pirated it.
Also:
So it’s possible, they would just make less money if they remained faithful to the show they’re fucking rebooting.