Questions to Ask Before Hiring An Animation Studio Or Freelancer

10 min readFeb 16, 2024

Animation is hard and expensive. On average, 1 minute of animation can cost thousands of dollars. It’s even harder if you don’t have a background in animation yourself. I set out to produce my award-winning animated short script, I SEE YOU. The story is about a young girl who struggles to take care of her brother in the midst of a dysfunctional home. After what felt like eons of searching for an animation studio, I found and hired a small studio to produce the first 1–2 pages of my script. However, the project ultimately fell through. While disappointing (and expensive), I still walked away from the project with valuable lessons that I want to share. Here’s what we’ll cover:

Your Budget
Your Timeline
Your Standards and Scope
Experience
Animation Process
Revision and Approval Process
Contract
Investment

To clarify, the advice that I am giving comes from my former experience as a freelancer, my experience as a UX/UI designer, my experience with working in corporate, and my knowledge of the animation industry through research and networking. This article is more about working with small freelance studios and individual freelancers in the animation industry. This is not about the finances and intense decision-making conversations involved with the nationally and internationally known studios or the studios that work with those big studios. While this is written from the perspective of the client, if you are a freelancer, this article can still be helpful in establishing a healthy relationship with your clients.

Your Budget

Before talking to anyone, you as the creator and producer need to determine your budget and scope of this project. Do research on crowdsourcing websites (ex: Kickstarter, Seed&Spark) to see how much money was needed to create projects similar to yours. Another simple baseline is to start with the good, fast, and cheap triangle. The triangle can be simplified as such:

Cheap + Fast = Lower quality work
Fast + Good = Expensive
Good + Cheap = Rare or may take a long time (especially when working with newer/less experienced freelancers)

Not only should you limit your expectations to your definitive budget, you should look out for studios and freelancers overselling their capabilities. If it sounds too good to be true that they are promising award-winning level work at a fraction of the cost and time, that is a red flag that it probably is too good to be true.

Your Timeline

There may be a lot of factors that set a timeline like marketing and crowdsourcing goals, other production goals, competition deadlines, etc. The availability of the studio might also impact the timeline. Regardless of who establishes the timeline, due dates should be clearly written with a clear plan or procedure if there are delays. This should be stated in the contract as well.

Your Standards and Project Scope

Do your research for works similar to yours. For my story, I SEE YOU, similar works include Hair Love (2019), Siblings (2022) and Pixar’s Twenty-Something (2021). If you are also someone who is looking for professional and award-winning level quality, that needs to be shared in writing with the freelancers and studios you work with so that they know the standard of quality that you are looking for. This also helps them provide an accurate budget estimate and timeline for the project.

You want to be clear about the scope of this project and the story overall. Are you hiring them to do the first act of your script or the whole story? You want to make sure that if this project is only a segment of a larger piece, the freelancer or studio has a holistic mindset when working on this project. It is a red flag for a studio or freelancer to be unwilling or unable to to take the full story, including its characters and its environments, into account.

Experience

A website or online portfolio is not enough to determine the quality of work that a studio will provide. Even reviews are not sufficient because what one client considers great work might not be up to your standards. You need to dig a little deeper on the work and the team. Here are some questions to ask:

Does the freelancer have formal education in animation or are they self taught? Note: Self-taught is not inherently a red flag, but it does put more emphasis on them showing previous work.
For studio, how many members are on the team and what are the members’ experience with working with projects similar to yours? Note: You may be able to find this information on the studio’s website, but you still may want to confirm.
How much experience have they had specifically with clients?
Have they worked with clients on projects similar to yours that they can show?
Of the projects in their portfolio, which were personal projects vs. class projects vs. client projects?
What was their involvement in their portfolio projects (character design only, full animation, etc.? If this isn’t already stated for each project, that is a red flag.
Are there former clients that you can reach out to in order to get their experiences?

Animation Process

While most, if not all, animation studios follow some sort of pre-production, production and post-production process, the steps that fall under each of these stages may vary from freelancer to freelancer and studio to studio. Knowing which steps fall under which stage is important, especially if payment for the project is divided into milestone payments rather than an hourly pay structure. Here are some questions to ask the studio or freelancer:

How is pre-production, production and post production defined?
Which steps (ex: character rigging) fall under which stage in animation?

I would recommend doing your own research on the basic stages of animation. If you notice that the studio or freelancer skips steps, especially in the pre-production stage, that may be a red flag of a disorganized process that you may end up paying for later in the project. Here are some articles that I found helpful in understanding the animation process.

Revision and Approval Process

There is nothing wrong with a freelancer or studio having revision limits. In fact, it is a great way for them to protect themselves from potential scope creep. However, it is a huge red flag if a studio or freelancer has a one-and-done revision limit or something close to it. This indicates a likely overestimation of talent and a lack of value of client input in the project. Even the most talented people in the creative space need multiple rounds of revisions in order to make sure their work is quality and in accordance with the vision and goals of the client.

Another possible red flag is the speed in which the freelancer or studio wants feedback. A general rule of thumb should be the sooner the studio or freelancer wants feedback from the client, the more revisions should be allowed. The good, fast, and cheap triangle sort of applies here. Feedback that is rushed is not going to be as comprehensive as it can and should be. Rushed feedback puts the quality of the project at risk further down the animation pipeline. Here are some questions to ask about revisions:

How many revisions am I allowed?
What does the revision process look like?
Is there an expected turnaround time for revisions and approvals needed in order to meet milestones or due dates?

Note: Once you get into production, don’t be afraid to ask “What should I be paying attention to?” throughout the revision process so that you are fully aware of what you are approving. It’s a red flag if the freelancer or studio is reluctant about explaining their work.

Methods of Communication

This includes but may not be limited to how clarifying questions are addressed, how feedback is received and tracked, and how changes in contracts and invoices are tracked and updated. It is a red flag if, for example, all communication is via text as information is guaranteed to get lost in replies or deleted. Here are some questions to ask:

What is your method of communication for giving feedback?
How does collaboration work?
Who is responsible for keeping track of client feedback and making sure that feedback is implemented?
What are your (freelancer) business hours for communication? Note: This is a good time to establish any communication boundaries that you may have (ex: Don’t call before or after certain hours).

Contract

I am not a lawyer, and this is in no way shape or form a comprehensive list of everything that should be included in a contract with a freelancer or studio. If you are looking for legal advice over specific legal documents, this is not the article for that. However, I am happy to share my personal experience with writing and receiving freelance-related contracts.

Some of what we’ve already talked about should be included in the contract including:

The breakdown of steps in the animation process if that is what will be referenced for payment
The revision process
Deliverable deadlines and procedures if those deadlines are not met

Here are some other things to check for:

Deliverables and Ownership:

Animation has many steps and many deliverables from character designs to composed music. Often, if a project is completed all the way through with no problems, the client gets ownership of the final project, but what about some of those individual deliverables that can be used in future projects? Here are some things to check for:

Will I have ownership to the deliverables that are part of the final animation (ex: character designs, background layout designs, animatics)? Note: You may want to break these deliverables into separate contracts and projects.
What happens to any work that I share as part of this project (scripts, character sheets, etc.)? Note: That work should be returned to you since it was yours, and they cannot claim that work as their own creations.
In what format will EACH of these deliverables be handed to me (JPEG, 4K video, etc.)? Note: For video format, make sure it fits whatever platform(s) you intend to use to show the animation.
Am I able to share work throughout the process on social media?

Payment

This should be straight forward, but you want to make sure certain things are defined. Here are some things to check for.

Is payment hourly or based on milestones?
If hourly, what documentation will be provided to track time spent?
If milestone payments, what is the start and end deliverable for each payment? For example: Does the deposit only cover the deliverables in pre-production? If so, what deliverables fall under pre-production? Note: Some stages in the animation process are larger than others. Therefore, it may be better to break some milestone payments into smaller milestones. You may want to break them into separate projects and contracts.
What is the payment method? A red flag is if cash is the only method in these times.

Termination and Breach of Contract Clauses

It’s kind of like a prenup, where you don’t want to expect the worst in the start of a marriage, but in this case you want to protect yourself. So here are some things that need to be clearly written in our metaphorical prenup.

What are the financial and legal consequences if the client breaches the contract?
What are the financial and legal consequences if the freelancer or studio breaches the contract?
What are the financial and legal consequences if the client terminates the contract early but there is no breach of contract?
What are the financial and legal consequences if the freelancer or studio terminates the contract early but there is no breach of contract?
What are the financial and legal consequences if the client and freelancer or studio can’t come to an agreement on creative decisions?
What happens to ownership of the work in all of the previously mentioned scenarios of termination of contract?
What happens in “Acts of God” that prevents completion of the project?

If these questions are not clearly answered in the contract, invoice or other legal documents, don’t be afraid to ask the freelancer or studio to revise the contract to include those things. It is a huge red flag if a freelancer or studio is unwilling to answer these questions.

Other red flags regarding legal documents include having legally unenforceable statements in the documents and having inconsistent statements across legal documents (ex: the milestone payment amounts and/or due dates differ in the contract and invoice).

Investment

Finally, a question to ask the freelancer or studio is:

What is their investment in this project?

Let’s use the hopeful but hypothetical scenario that your work is picked up or bought by a large studio. If your project makes it to production with the large studio, that studio is invested in your project for reasons like increasing viewership or movie ticket sales. Therefore, in this scenario, the larger studio is invested, or should be invested, in producing a quality end result.

This level of investment likely does not apply when working with a freelancer or small freelance studio. However, you still want to work with an entity that is dedicated to producing quality work. Whether they are invested in improving their portfolio, have a personal connection to your goal or want to maintain an existing reputation of quality work, you want to get an idea of the motivations for this project. While money as a motivation is not inherently a red flag because we all have bills to pay, if the only goal is to hit deadlines as quickly as possible, it will show in the quality of work.

Done!

This was a lot. I know. Hopefully this is a valuable checklist to make sure everyone is on the same page before the start of an animation project. There may be other questions to ask before working with a freelancer or studio, but this is a great start to making sure your vision and goals are protected early into the project.

If you find a studio, congrats. Don’t be afraid to ask questions throughout the project. A freelancer or studio with good communication, should be asking you questions to validate your vision along the way as well. If you are still on the search for someone to bring your idea to screen, don’t get discouraged if you find yourself running into a lot of red flag studios and freelancers or getting no responses to queries. If you are passionate about your vision, someone will join you in that passion.