Per frame
$1.50 per frame
Rotoscoping and keying priced by the frame, for shots an auto key cannot hold.
24–96 hours
- Hair and motion blur held
- Spill suppression
- Alpha channel delivery
- Shot-by-shot quoting
Published, not on request
Animation & Motion Graphics pricing
Animation & motion graphics is priced per finished minute, or per project once the shooting ratio is known. Everything below is either a published rate of ours or a US market range — not one of them is a number invented to fill a gap.
What we charge
Most chosen
Per minute
$45.00 per minute
Cut, cleanup, grade and delivery for finished runtime.
48–96 hours
- Color correction and grade
- Audio cleanup and leveling
- Captions and thumbnails
- Every ratio the campaign needs
Dedicated editor
$9.00 per hour
An editor in your NLE, your project structure, your conventions.
Start within 48 hours
- Your project templates
- Daily rushes turnaround
- Delivery to your spec sheet
- Monthly invoicing
What this costs across the US market
These are typical American market ranges, not our quote for your job — we have not seen your files. They are here so you can tell a reasonable number from an unreasonable one, including when the unreasonable one is ours.
| Type of work | Typical range | What that buys |
|---|---|---|
| Social and short-form | $300 – $2,000 per finished piece | Short runtime, modest footage, template graphics, a handful of aspect ratios. |
| Corporate and branded | $2,000 – $15,000 | Multi-camera, custom graphics, proper sound and color, several deliverable versions. |
| Campaign and broadcast | $15,000+ | Long-form or broadcast-bound work with full post, licensed music and delivery to spec. |
What actually moves the price
- Ratio of raw to finished
- Twenty hours of footage for a two-minute film is a research job with an edit attached. Shooting ratio drives the edit more than runtime does.
- Number of deliverables
- One 16:9 master plus vertical, square, a cutdown and six social clips is ten separate edits, not one.
- Graphics and motion
- Lower thirds from a template are quick. Custom animated sequences are a separate discipline with a separate schedule.
- Sound work
- A clean two-camera interview is straightforward. Salvaging dialogue recorded next to an air conditioner is not.
- Revision rounds
- The single biggest variable. Structural changes after the fine cut can mean redoing sound and color.
- Licensing
- Music, stock footage and fonts all have license tiers, and the right tier depends on where it runs and for how long.
How long it takes
| Phase | Usual duration |
|---|---|
| Intake and sync | 1–2 days |
| Rough cut | 3–7 days depending on footage volume |
| Fine cut | 2–5 days |
| Sound and color | 2–4 days |
| Deliverables and captions | 1–3 days |
Priced separately inside Animation & Motion Graphics
Before you ask
The questions that come up on most animation & motion graphics inquiries.
- How much footage do you need from me?
- Send a few minutes of representative material rather than everything. What matters more is the story you want and the length you need, because those decide the edit. For a quote, the number to tell us is the shooting ratio — how many hours were shot for the finished runtime. That predicts the edit budget better than runtime does.
- Can you deliver every aspect ratio we need?
- Yes, and it is much cheaper agreed at the start than added afterward. A 16:9 master, a 9:16 vertical, a square, a 30-second cutdown and six social clips is ten separate edits, not one export. Give us the deliverables matrix in the brief and it is planned as a single job.
- What loudness do you master to?
- Whatever the destination actually uses. US broadcast is ATSC A/85 at −24 LKFS under the CALM Act; European delivery is EBU R 128 at −23 LUFS; streaming platforms normalize to their own targets. They are not interchangeable, and mastering to the wrong one is a rejection. Tell us where it is going and it is mastered to that.
- Are captions included?
- Corrected captions are quoted as a line rather than assumed, because raw auto-generated ones are not worth shipping — every product name comes back spelled phonetically. Most social video is watched with the sound off, so captions are a reach decision as much as an accessibility one. FCC rules also require them on most video that has aired on US television.
- Who owns the project files?
- You do, including the edit project and the source media, and it is assigned to you in writing rather than assumed. Under US copyright law work by an outside contractor does not transfer automatically without a written assignment, so this is worth confirming with any supplier.
- Is the free trial really free?
- Yes. What the trial covers differs by discipline — two images, a 30-second cut of your own footage, one mastered episode, a technical review of a page you already own — and each service page says which one applies. No card, no invoice, no subscription that starts quietly afterward. It is done by the same people who would do the paid job, to the same standard, because a trial that flatters the work is useless to both of us.
- How fast can you turn work around?
- Most image work comes back in 6 to 24 hours. Video and 3D depend on the shot and the length, and we tell you the turnaround in the quote rather than after you have committed. If you have a deadline that cannot move, say so in the brief. We will tell you honestly whether we can hit it.
- How do you price the work?
- By what the job actually involves, not an average. A clipping path around a box and one around a bicycle are different amounts of work, and so are a two-minute explainer and a two-minute product film. The unit differs by discipline: per image, per finished minute, per episode, per product, per project, or monthly for retained work. Every service has a pricing page with our published rates and the US market ranges beside them, so you can sanity-check any quote including ours.
Want the real number rather than a range?
Send the brief and a couple of sample files. You will get a fixed price rather than an estimate, usually within one business day, and nothing starts until you say yes.