Just wondering what the work-for-hire rates are for story development and a for a pitch book. Also, what is general amount of time to complete it both? I wouldn't be on a tight deadline. I have a general theme for my cartoon and a possible storyline, and no character models. I am also not a professional either, so I know my story may need a lot of work. I am looking to hire an animator to help develop my story for pitching to licensing agencies to hopefully have the licensing agency build a children's brand with merchandise based on the cartoon.
Since you requested work-for-hire, you want to buy-out any stake the artist(s) might have in the design process, which ups the rate.
You'd probably be looking about anywhere from $750-$2000 per character, and if you have any storyboards done, a rate of about $600 per minute ( animation) or about 30 2-panel pages.
Any location concepts would probably be about $800-$1500 per design.
These are because your aims are to license the designs into other merchandise, outside of the cartoon itself, whereby the artist would not share in any profits gained from the use of their designs.
Obviously, its advisable to get the story refined to as close to broadcast standard as possible before bringing someone on to design, even though changes are inevitable in the process of selling the concept.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
What's the turn around for this type of development?
Depends on the workload--probably anywhere from 2 weeks for just a few characters and a couple of locations, to about 2 months if the refinement process is fussy.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)
Does that include developing the story, atleast enough for it to be pitchable?
My assumption ( based on what you have written) was that you would be the one handling the story.
If you want someone else to come along in and help develop that, add thousands more and a couple of weeks (at least) to the time-line.
Also, bear in mind that if you do get someone else contributing to the story, you are opening up a HUGE potential can of worms.
Work-for-hire will probably not suffice as a working arrangement simply because you will, in essence, have outside talent contributing to your base concept.......in effect, they will be a co-creator, not just a hired wrist.
IF the property takes off, they would likely be in a position to legally wrangle interests away from you, because some of the concept is their intellectual property--even with a work-for-hire arrangement.
You'd have to have a one-two combination of writing up a pretty harsh work agreement, where they do most of the work and get no credit outside of their pay, and finding a talent stupid enough to sign such a thing.
If you are unable to supply a pitch ready concept ( re: story), you need to step out of the game until you can produce that kind of work, or set up a cooperative venture where both sides have a stake and both take a risk.
The latter is even harder to find talent for because its far more involved than a work-for-hire arrangement, and why should a talent take a risk on someone else's project when they can do the very same thing on one of their own.
I'll step out onto a limb here and assume that you do not know much about pitching at all. My advice is to do more research--and there's a lot of info around if you dig for it--on the process of pitching and pitch-bibles. I know there are video samples of pitches on DVD ( hence some should be on-line) and press kit samples ( print) of pitches as well.
"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)