Chapter 162: Budget Balance Outweighing Risks

As the storyboarding and scriptwriting process was undergoing, the considerations of the budget hovered above the production team.

They are in charge of making sure that everything would flow from start to finish after all and keeping with the restrictions and feasibilities brought about by the production cost is their job.

Since they were making an episodic show, the set budget per episode is what they were considering the most.

A low budget is considered crappy with all the limiting factors such as frames-per-second, color schemes, celluloid usage, and the troublesome factor called a talent's enthusiasm. It may not be quite evident but people truly aren't that much enthusiastic when big rewards and essentiality aren't at the table.

Although Creed Animations are quite generous with their preliminary accommodations and work environment, most of their salaries are still dependent on the budget allocated to the respective projects they are working on.

They aren't full-blown employees with regular salaries yet, as they are still on their probationary and training period after all.

As such, the matters of the budget were of utmost importance. Fortunately, they were given their answers before everything had begun.

It was a 500,000 dollar budget per 20-minute episode. Considering that the planned series has 24 episodes each, a 12 million dollar budget was guaranteed.

Going by the minute, 25,000 dollars per animation minute was already chock filled with possibilities. What effect could that achieve given that the frame-per-second can be increased? How shocking would the color pallette be with many colors being viable? How many celluloid planes could they play with and how amazing could that be?

Considering the 117-minute film like Mr. Miyazaki's Nausicaa was made with just a budget of 1 million dollars, the budget for the Creed projects is already a spoiling splurge.

The Creed Animators, who were on the fence didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

They were happy that they had much leeway and money to showcase their talent and sad that a single minute of showtime was spoiled on more than them. However conflicting their thoughts might be, their enthusiasm was at a great high with all those possibilities and the Creeds could practically be at ease.

-----

"Alex-san, you guys sure are generous when it comes to budget?" Miyazaki had to get tips from his translator to say that. He had to make sure that it was real, after all.

"It should be." Alexander nodded with certainty. "We aren't working with bloated Disney talent fees or using inflated Hollywood actors to dub our works. Our script-making and storyboarding expenses are practically halved with my entire comic book stories as an easy adaptation medium. Me and grandpa are pretty sure that that much should be enough."

"Unless..." The boy contemplated. "There are other big-spending factors we haven't considered. Is that what you want to warn us about Mr. Miyazaki?"

Of course, the translator dutifully helped out Seasoned Hayao in understanding, so the seasoned veteran hurriedly shook his hands. "No, no. I don't see any problem, Alex-san. It's just that I'm used to below 10 million dollar film productions, that such big spending on anime... animation series is quite surprising."

Alexander had no refute to that. The Eastern animation culture being led by Japan has always been a prime example for thriftiness and production cost-efficiency but keeping to great quality.

Western Animation is much grander in stuff that 11-minute cartoons practically cost more than animes. It did have its advantages but it is mostly on appeasing their animators.

American studios have better employee welfare while Japanese studios are borderline exploitative in Alexander's opinion. While the former has unions and privileges, the latter is all about "hobbies" and "passion".

In any case, the difference in ideologies is just a learning experience for Creed Animations. They just need to emulate the best of both animation cultures by keeping Eastern cost-efficiency, high-quality, and the Western optimizingly paid "passion-hobby" strategy.

They just need to find a balance once again from the different animation cultures and tweak all that to form their own unique animation ideologies.

It may take some time but at least vestiges of it can already be seen in the projects they are doing.

-----

Anyways, Seasoned Hayao's budget acclimatizing and the Creed employee's appeasing aside, Alexander put quite a lot of deliberation when it came to proper budgeting.

Although a lot of anime and cartoon budgets are vague, he could still gauge on the publicized 1987 DuckTales episode budget which is around 300,000 dollars, and the anime episode average which is around

100,000-300,000 dollars.

Given that it is still 1985, the 500,000 dollars per episode budget can potentially be overkill. There was no hesitation in that though as 500,000 dollars can easily fluctuate with regards to specific episodes or particular scenes.

The conversations, inner monologues, and background work would have much leeway and attention but a fraction of the 500,000 dollars is enough for that wonder to happen.

What Alexander fixated most of his budget generosity on was the action-heavy scenes that he'd hope would be much more impressive and grandstanding than what it could have been.

If anything, Yutaka Nakamura's level of action details is what he was aiming for. Even a fraction of that staple legend in the action scenes is acceptable for Alexander.

There should also be limitations to everything but it was best that Creed Animations aim for the Heroman anime balance. Just like a balance of acceptable action and aesthetic, it also happens to be a balance of Western legend Stan Lee and another Eastern staple Studio "Bones".

Heroman was quite of a 'meh' anime in itself but it did stand out in terms of balancing in Alexander's opinion.

If all would go well in a flipped manner, then having an animation director with an Eastern animating mindset with an appeased semi-Westernized mix of employees, the same type of balance should potentially be achieved.

-----

Without doubt, animation is a craft that splurges resources and time. While their peers and employees were reeling at the implications, there was also no doubt to the Creeds about what they were going into.

All the paper, pencil, and coloring materials spent is something that should be earned back.

The manpower and the days being spent are also other expenses to be considered. Talents need to be paid for and it was best that their money's worth would translate into their finished product.

The entire animation production in itself is nearly the same as the budget of the back-to-back filming of Back to the Future.

Of course, it could be offset given that more than half of that near 50 million dollar budget is the entire animation building, the equipments, renovations, and talent fees.

Since they were only doing a Dragonball and TMNT animation series with 24 episodes each, 12 million dollars for each series project should be a great enough start.

With such a big budget leeway, the quality can be guaranteed and everyone's animation curiosities can be fully explored to their fullest.

Alexander wasn't aiming for big returns in the first wave of animation projects though as the true monetary beneficiary of the Dragonball and TMNT series is the other Creed companies.

Animation projects are implicit advertisements and the Creeds weren't too worried about their hefty spending on it.

At least, Creed Comics and Creed Toys would have another boon in its market performance by the time that the shows would be able to perform as intended.

There was no doubt that the 500,000-per-episode budget was risky, however, the effect it would have on the final product and overall expansive benefits is enough to outweigh such risks.