Animation for your company

This 1-minute anime episode costs roughly $6000- $10000 to produce.

This might actually be more interesting than whatever you were reading before.

Hi, I’m Bhavya. I was working with a client and we wanted to produce animation for an ad, so I went down a rabbit hole to understand what animation really costs.

First, I looked at mid-tier anime production.

A typical episode budget of a anime is roughly $150k–$300k (and can go higher), which works out to around $5k–$10k per finished minute.

So when we needed more than a single 1‑minute spot, going “full traditional animation” was basically out of the question.

But we did find a better way in the end, so keep watching.

Here’s what most people don’t realize:

Animation isn’t one skill.

It’s a full pipeline.

It takes writing + storyboards + design + backgrounds + animation (key + in-between) + compositing + editing + sound — and multiple specialists touching every minute of footage.

So then I asked the obvious question:

Can AI do this?

Short answer: it can help.

AI can generate great characters, shots, and concepts.

But AI still struggles with complex scenes, multiple characters, and most importantly consistent motion from shot to shot.

So the solution we’re using lands right in the middle:

CG (3D) for structure + AI for speed and iteration.

That’s how you keep consistency and cut down time.

When this project is out, I’ll share the exact breakdown of what we did and what tools we used.

Follow me so you don’t miss it.