Estimates:

I have been putting together a budget for a project that may or may not fly and if it does I may or may not still be involved with by the time it comes to production. If it ever does? Business as usual.

One of the great unknown animation resources of the web is the Adobe Acrobat copy of the current union contract over at the Animation Guild Local 839. There laid out for all to see is the going union rates for every possible job in the animation industry.

Guild home page
Contract PDF file

One of the questions I always get from friends and students (not to say students can`t be friends, a lot of my friends started that way) is what should I charge? What should I charge? What should I charge?

When you are starting out you are going to be charging less than the union rate, just to get your foot in the door. Once you are established you should charge more than the union rate because, honey, they aren`t paying into your retirement fund.

And if you can get into the union, do so. The reason we are doing as well as we are has a lot to do with Babbitt, and Hubley, and Jones and Sigall and Melendez and Sito and the hundreds and hundreds of others that risked everything to make animation safe for animators in their day to day and in their older years.



That`s it for today. Not going to sing I Dreamed I saw Joe Hill Last Night, as liv` as you or me. But Joe you`re 10 years dead said I. I never died said he, I never died said he . . .