Browsing through Youtube, I am watching old episodes of Batman from the 1990's and enjoying myself... and than I stumble upon a clip from The Brave and the Bold and want to smash a brick through my skull. Afterwards, I got to thinking... how nice would it be to one day be able to write stories for a new Batman cartoon when I am in my late twenties?

While I doubt that will ever happen, I am curious as to how much it would cost for me to make my own cartoon. I plan to start publshing books as soon as I get out of high school, and if by some amazing luck I manage to make a good fortune off of it, I would very much love to use the money gained as a means to make even more entertainment. That being said, I did a little google search before making this thread (that does work for a lot of things you know), and was appaled to see that an episode of The Simpsons costed a million dollars to make.

But than, a thought came to me.. The Simpsons is an extremely popular show. I imagine all of those that work on it expect some pretty beefy paychecks, especially the voice actors and writers. Surely it did not cost that much to produce when it first came about.

Therefore, I have a question to anyone that may know anything about this. In a medium-scenario, not worst case, not best, how much money and time would it take to make eight episodes of a brand new cartoon that is not some cheap remake of anything else? I would probably do most of, if not all the writing, so that cost would be covered for the most part already, but I have no idea regarding the rest.

Feedback is greatly appreciated.


P.S: I don't intend to do this soon for the record. The earliest would be around the age of 24 or 25, so nearly ten years from now.

C'mon, if that muffin thread can get a bunch of replies, this one has got to be able to get one.

The simpsons cost so much because, its fox, its not even decent art or animation, you have a whole lot of people doing cels, thats time intensive, then theres story writers, well their excuse for them anyways, then the actual shooting each cel, most costs are overblown, they get most of the work done overseas anyways korea i think, i actually do know a fair bit about this was going to go into animation but its a non existent industry here, although back in the day hanna-barbara cartoons were made here.

Best suggestion is go look in your local library or bookshop for books on animation, i have a whole section dedicated to animation, comic book art, illustration, anime art, computer game art and so on. You can do it yourself with a digital video camera, do your own cels, and edit it on a video editing suite on your pc.

This happened to me once, my skull still hasn't recovered.

The reason your cartoon thread is getting much less pvssyr than the cupcake/muffin thread is that pretty much everyone has had some experience with cupcakes/muffins but very few people know anything about the process of creating a cartoon.

I have some knowlage in this field, I used to do cartoons on my YouTube account but stopped cause people just stopped watching, of course they where mostly motionless but I'm only one man doing a job ment for a crew. All one really needs to do is have a damn good computer that can do digital graphics well, some decent paint software (I use Paint Shop Pro 8, it's old but it works), an animation program, a good photoshop program (ala Adobe Photoshop Elements 8) and a Windows Movie Maker like software in order to edit your animation (like sound effects and music). Just to let you guys know----doing all this by yourself is very, vary---VERY hard work! It can be done but it's tough.

The software alone would probably run you between 3 and 6 thousand dollars. Or free, depending on what you like to work with. Assuming you do the writing and animation yourself then the only other substantial costs would be sound, music and voice work. There are sources of sound and music out there that are free to use, even for commercial applications, but you'll have to hire some voice actors at some point. Those costs vary greatly, depending on the level of professionalism you're going for.

You could just hire some friends and from what I've seen that can be good enough as long as they have some level of talent. But you will probably need to invest in some good recording equipment or rent time in a recording studio. The equipment would run in the thousands, hard to say exactly how much.

Well, you can sidestep the cost of voice acting by not having voices (or only one, by having just a narrator or protagonist). But the impression I get is that what Blackhand has in mind would be difficult to mesh with that approach.

I have never seen an anamation software THAT expensive. My Paint Shop Pro 8 has both a drawing program and an animator program and it only cost me a hundred dollars. However finding this software now is dang near impossible now due to it being outdated.

Professional software is always excessively expensive. We're not just talking about the animation software but sound editing software, music authoring software, image editing software (often separate from animation software) and probably a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff that I can't think of right now. That's not to say you can't make professional quality stuff with cheaper or free software but if you're working with a team you need to make sure they're experienced in whatever you decide to use. If you're trying to make a professional product you'll want a professional team and they'll most likely be experienced in using professional software.

But there's other ways to go about it. You don't have to hire professionals and you don't have to use professional software. You'll just have to be more vigilant so you don't end up with something that comes off as amateur.

Hmm... the main issue seems to be money. How do most cartoons get funded? I'm assuming its from a company that takes a bunch of the profits for themselves? The only other option I see is to get a loan, and that seems like a terrible idea for so many different reasons.

I don't think voice acting would be that hard to find. If you have a team of people passionate enough about the project, than their is bound to be options all over the place to find the right voices. Heck, I can do a assortment of them myself, and I am fairly sure that isn't out of some talent. Voice acting would only be expensive I think if I were to go for a big name, like what Bethesda did with Oblivion.

Working with video making for some time, and studying how to make Machinima, I have learned that you honestly don't need the best video making software the world has to offer, just some patience and bits of experience. Give someone enough time and they can make a good quality film with Windows Movie Maker, so that problem is out of the way. As for the animation software, that does bring up a good point.

I see basic ones all the time at Best Buy that range from 80$ to 200$, but like you said Lemunde, a professional team will probably be alot more experienced with the best software if their schools were somewhat decent.

Anyways, what Trixy said about the cost of The Simpsons is a pretty good point. I'll see if I can find anything more on the internet, as the local library is rather... terrible.

I know Blender, which is totally free, is capable of making (mostly 3D, but apparently even 2D) cartoons. There is plenty of other free software out there for these purposes. Just go to google, wikipedia, artists' forums, behance, etc. and look around and ask questions. The Beth forums are probably not the best place to get answers.