So. We’ve all seen the massive success indie animation’s been having as of late, right? Shows are even being picked up for streaming because their pilots blew up online.
To me, this feels a bit reminiscent of the indie game boom of the early 2010s, and since that was kind of a bubble that ended up bursting… here are 15 reasons why you SHOULDN’T start your own indie animated series, and 10 why you should, from an indie animator’s point of view.
A little about me: I’m the creator of “Swift Spark and the Defense Five”, a project I’ve been working on since 2016. I did the pilot on my own and I’m working on episodes 2-5 right now, and any help is appreciated. If you enjoy teen drama and superhero action, consider becoming a member of our Patreon to get access to sneak previews and fun stuff.
SO – what reasons do I have that I think should make you reconsider running your own indie animated project?
1. You’re going to build a team and expect everyone to work on that team… for free.
Now I’m not against volunteer work. I’ve done volunteer work on indie shows myself and still am! However, I’m picky and vet the project and people involved for red flags.
Red flag number one is usually spending money on merch before the damn thing is out. As someone who has spent thousands on merch for his own project, I know what merchandise costs to produce – and that money isn’t going to the right place if a volunteer project is spending money on the production of merch.
I was actually approached by the owner of a now shut-down indie “studio” to help them create their merch line, find manufacturers, et cetera – they had a Patreon, too… but all their employees were volunteers. Some of them even minors.
The first thing they showed me were enamel pins. Chain pins, where a piece hangs off the main pin by a chain. I’ve never made enamel pins myself, but from friends’ experience, I know that minimum order quantities usually start at 100 per pin, each mold costs $50 to $100, and a 4cm pin costs about $4. They wanted to make 4 pins. Add on shipping, estimated $500 from China to the US…
They were going to spend over $2000 on merch for a show that didn’t have a single episode out, and all employees were getting nothing.
That’s where I draw a hard line and refuse to work with you. Focus on the production, and put everything you can towards that. If you insist on making merch, try websites like Fourthwall, that create print on demand products. The profit margin may be lower, but you have no inventory or production costs to worry about.
If we want indie animation to be successful, we’ll have to make it a paying industry. Artists can’t live off exposure, and the way things are now, we use our day jobs to fund our projects… meaning 2 jobs.
2. You have unrealistic expectations for your budget.
This is another issue I see with inexperienced creators, and so my 2nd red flag are deadlines. Sorry, but didn’t I just mention “2 jobs”? If you insist on taking up an artist’s free time with your project, you can’t demand anything from them unless you pay them. Why would they work for you, unpaid, if they could be working for themselves? If you’re bad to work with, that choice is easily made. When I see a project that has a showrunner ruling their volunteers with an iron fist as though it were a studio job (that barely pays enough nowadays anyway), I refuse to work with them.
Art is a job. Treat it like one. And treat your volunteers with respect.
My 3rd red flag hangs under this umbrella as well – expecting professional work for free or for pennies. You can’t expect this from 1. Volunteers, who again are working for you in their free time, or 2. For pennies.
I don’t think indie animation needs to follow industry standards. Especially not when a project’s creator isn’t an industry pro themselves. There’s a handful of projects out there that are on par with TV animation, but those also have a budget with five to six zeroes per episode.
Swift Spark may not be TV quality, but I think it’s still decently animated. For how much, you say? $5500, give or take.
Why? Because I did the animation myself. The writing, character designs, backgrounds, storyboards… I spent money on the things I couldn’t do myself.
Another now shut-down “indie studio” tried to hire me to do their storyboards. Until I heard they wanted to offer me $160 per episode.
I charge a flat rate per page for most indie projects, because that’s easier on their budget management (charging by the hour can rake up if your artist takes more time than you expected them to; so charging a flat rate is “safer” in terms of knowing what to expect when you’re dealing with a craft you’re nor familiar with). Back in 2021, that rate was $150 per page.
Yeah. They wanted me to work my page rate for a whole episode. And then they told me I was being greedy when I politely declined. Rest in piss, indie studio!
If you can pay, even if it’s little, then pay. But don’t expect professional board artists to come running for $30-50 per page. Work with students, hobbyists, friends. Learn how to storyboard yourself – Aaron Blaise has a great course you can get for $10. YouTube has tons of free resources.
You want something done for free, do it yourself! It’ll help you feel accomplished in the end, too.
3. You aren’t willing to compromise on anything.
Hi! This is me. My toxic trait. Swift Spark is my baby and it’s my way or the highway when it comes to a lot of things…
…but not everything anymore.
I threw a lot of good advice to the wind; my former manager at Frederator suggested turning Swift Spark into shorts, which I refused because I wanted a “real” action-mystery plot that wouldn’t be done justice with shorts.
I didn’t compromise on getting James / the Swift Spark his dream voice.
I insisted on moving ahead with a paid team.
This made things many times more complicated and expensive than it had to be. But these things were necessary for my vision to come to life.
What am I compromising on?
Doing it with whatever I can scrape together working means we don’t have a massive budget to work with. I’m compromising on speed and quality by doing most of the work myself and being gracious with deadlines for any artists I do end up hiring.
I am compromising on aspects such as action scene complexity and number of characters; less characters to voice means less work and less money needed. Less characters also means simpler plots, shorter runtimes and less animation.
Simpler or limited action shots also means less animation. Reusing backgrounds means less drawing.
I’m making this show within the confines of my skills, only reaching out to others for what I can’t do myself. As the budget grows, I van reach out more often. But J’m careful not to overreach.
If you insist on making a 30-minute pilot with 12 characters, intricate designs, songs numbers, busy backgrounds and a long, somehow still rushed and confusing plot that should be 2 episodes, then you better come with the budget to back that up. If you don’t have several hundred thousand dollars, or at the very least tens of thousands and are prepared to do more than half the work on your own, then kill your darling and KISS. Keep It Stupid Simple.
4. You aren’t planning on doing most of the work yourself. Either because you “can’t”, or you won’t.
Oh, so you’re a writer? Great. You’ve got about 10% of the whole production covered. Who’s going to animate your script? Voice it? Storyboards? Sound design? Score? Compositing? Storyboatds? Backgrounds? Visual development? Cleanup? Colouring???
Re: point 1. You can work with volunteers, but do not underestimate how much work an animated episode is.
I’ll use my non-professional self as an example, because when we’re talking volunteers… you know how I feel about that.
My pilot’s mostly standing / sitting and talking with limited action shots. It’s traditionally animated and a lot of animation’s reused in different ways. This still ended up taking roughly 2000 hours to animate and clean up. When converted to 8-hour work days, that’s 250. I did my whole pilot (sans the writing, so boards-to-finish) in about 330 days, because I was still learning to storyboard and working on the side – but this number comes with 14-hour days and other nonsense that you will not be able to demand from volunteers – even studios shouldn’t be allowed to, but they do.
US federal minimum wage is $7.25, right? I’m not American, so correct me if I’m wrong. This is a wage that sounds impossible to survive on for me, and I’m glad at least some states have a higher minwage.
But imagine you were to pay your animators $7.25 and they are pretty quick, or the animation’s super simple like it was for my pilot.
For $14,500, you’d have your animation done – not coloured, no backgrounds, and… no storyboards beforehand, so make sure you did those yourself.
Now imagine if you actually paid a living wage, or even union mandated rates. You get my point.
I saved tens of thousands of dollars by buckling down and doing the work myself. That’s also how Long Gone Gulch was made at such a small budget – Zach and Tara did most of the work themselves. But more on that later.
“But I can’t animate” – but can you draw? Then you can learn to animate.
“But I can’t draw” – but you can learn how to draw.
“But that takes forever” – it takes 10,000 hours on average to become a professional at something. Every craft takes time and skill to learn – I’ve been at it since 2011.
“But animation/art programs are expensive” – Industry standard is expensive. You can learn how to draw for $10 with dollar store art supplies. I didn’t go to art school and neither did many of my peers.
Art tablets are available for less than $100. $50 can be expensive to someone with little money, but… look at the numbers I just mentioned and ask yourself if this is the right path for you if you’re not willing to learn how to animate yourself, because:
Almost every single creator of every show in history is an artist themselves and most of them work on their own shows in different departments. This isn’t new.
5. You’re starting from scratch.
Hold it right there, cowboy. You see those big indie shows out there that get millions of views per episode, and crowdfund the same numbers?
That’s neither you nor me. And I’ve been working on Swift Spark for 8+ years… and the characters themselves turned 11 a few weeks ago.
What I’m saying is… building an audience takes time. You need to invest time, effort, and quite possibly, money into marketing yourself as a creator to build an audience. Unless you’re already making good money and have a fuckton of expendable income, you’ll rely mostly on crowdfunding to get your show going, and the harsh reality is most people only care about what’s popular.
Swift Spark’s pilot is four years underway now, and about a year after releasing Part One, I’m finally reaching a thousand followers online.
Now I’m not the best at marketing and superhero fatigue due to two certain companies completely flooding the space with increasingly worse movies, turns most people away without giving me a shot. So… I have a lot against me to start with.
What I’m saying is, don’t start with a pilot. Start with a comic, shorts (as in, the YT shorts kind), aaanything that’s not as much as a time and money sink as a full-fledged animated production.
Build interest first. Then go for the big league. Unless you’re an idiot like me and are willing to spend a year or seven slaving away at it yourself.
6. You don’t know the animation pipeline.
If you want to be able to lead on this project of yours, you’ll need to know all the ins and outs of animation. What departments are there? How do they communicate with each other? What needs to be done first, what has priority? What are the slow processes, and what can be done quickly?
On Twitter recently, people went completely nuts over a leaked Discord message from an indie studio stating they were paying $35-$60 per second of cleanup. $35 on one show, $60 on another. People went nuts, as I said, talking about how this studio was exploiting its workers, stating “they’re paying $35 per drawing.” Mmm, no. They’re not, and you’d know that if you knew the animation pipeline.
Cleanup is the final stage of “animation”, at least before the colouring process. In short: another animator (or more) has done the rough animation, or the “sketch”. A cleanup animator cleans up the sketch lines by tracing over them, or “lineart”.
Another artist will colour. Another artist will composite. And so on.
If you don’t know these things, you’ll end up overworking your artists.
Or… end up with unfinished and delayed work. Trust me, you don’t want to have to learn these things as you go when you’re supposed to be leading a team.
7. Your story can be told through another medium (with a lower enry-to-market).
Trust me, as much as I love animation, comics or novels are way easier. It also helps you build that source material / audience! You can always change things later for the animated adaptation (re: Seift Spark is getting a major plot refresh).
For reference, Swift Spark’s comic has close to 800 pages. I worked on the main story of 720 pages from 2016 to 2023.
The pilot, aka Episode One, has a runtime of just under 22 minutes. I worked on that from 2020 to 2023.
Now granted I started both projects in the summer and I took lengrthy breaks with both. For the comic, I think I took 3 months off in 2018, and I redrew some chapters multiple times.
For the pilot, I worked on it on and off for summer 2020-2021. I redid the animation for the teaser trailer twice, too.
Regardless, even with the re-dos and breaks, I told an entire 700-page story* in the span of 7 years, and only got a fraction of that atory out in animation in half that time.
*The webcomic pretty much skips the first two seasons of The Animated Series, due to a time-skip. I did this intentionally to get the “main story” out and because I wanted to start a spin-off comic titled “The Adventures Continue” later.
For the comic, I didn’t need any help. Just supplies, time, and a platform to post it on. For the pilot, I needed a sound designer, voice actors, a composer… and $5k.
Which one sounds easier to achieve to you? If you can, go for it. Writing takes even less; just your phone/PC/laptop and a document processor – and OpenOffice is free. Between ages 11 and 19 I wrote about 400k words worth of original writing, and this doesn’t include the fanfiction I wrote during that time as well.
Hell, you can even go the audio drama route. The Edge of Sleep is an Emmy-nominee. Just – find out if this expensive-as-shit medium really is the best path for you to start on.
And besides, if you can’t plan out and finish a comic, your series is a waste of money, because you’ll never be able to finish even a single episode considering the amount of planning and follow through that requires.
8. You’re under 18 (and want to run or work in a team).
I don’t mean this as a way to say “haha kids can’t do shit”. I was 14 when I started on Swift Spark. I was a few days away from 19 when I first pitched it to Frederator. It’s fine to start young!
However, don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Don’t involve others (adults) with your project. You are not legally able to sign contracts, within the US and most of Europe at least. I know that you can get an affidavit from a parent or legal guardian at age 17 in The Netherlands, but… that will require you to involve your parents, and good luck getting rid of them once they hear how much money you plan to invest into this.
Don’t use your parents’ credit card to buy things. Ever. Again, if you’re under 18, do what I did and start with a novel, short story, comic…
Get your feet wet, study the animation pipeline in your own time and build a small audience first. Then come back when you’re… probably over 20, actually. I thought I was ready at 19, too. I wasn’t.
9. Working with others / communication is difficult for you, and you can’t push past it. (Which is okay!)
I’m autistic, too, so I totally get it. Communications can be tough. But you can’ t leave people waiting, guessing, and avoid difficult conversations. You need to be able to put your foot down, be strict, and clearly communicate your expectations with your team.
So jf you’re willing to learn and grow as a person, start small. Do some shorts with 1-2 people first. Then grow bigger.
If you want to push all responsibility to others and just… sorta hover above it all pretending it’ll all magically sort itself out, I suggest you go work for someone else. And not in a leadership role.
10. You can’t take criticism – and can’t handle trolling.
Trolls are everywhere. You will not be able to avoid them. If you feel the need to defend everything you say or do and think it’s smart to “clap back” at people online, don’t seek a career as an online content creator. Before you know it, you’ll be clinging to it because you can’t get a job. Countless others before you have fallen into this trap.
The best way to deal with hate is to ignore it, and the best way to deal with criticism is to not take it to heart. Online, everyone’s an expert, so the usefulness of the criticism you’ll receive will vary greatly.
11. You don’t have a pitch.
And by that, I don’t mean a pitch ready to send to studios, because we’re going indie, after all. But the general concept of what a pitch entails… a short packet of information about your show, its characters, world, story, audience, the works. You can also go in-depth and make a full bible. But what I’m trying to say is, you need to know what your show is about before you begin (pre)production.
The development phase is incredibly important. Have a clear-cut story, characters, and setting in mind before you begin on that pilot.
After the pilot’s done, see if there’s anything you’d like or need to change. That’s what pilots are for.
Just don’t go into it blind – your team won’t like it if you change directions six times during production and have to scrap their work over and over.
12. You think like a Hollywood executive…
…and think an awful story or bad pitch can be “covered up” by Popular Actor Of The Week. I made my SAG-AFTRA video to help indie creators discover the world of union production, but I didn’t mean to say “hire famous actor X or Y and everything will fall into place”.
I’ve been seeing indie shows announce voice actors before even announcing a story, show off any art, etc… and instead of announcing the voice actor with character art, or a description of the character, it’s…
“Popular Actress X will be playing [Irrelevant Character Name]! She played [Popular Character Name] in [Popular Show]!”
And then they’re surprised no one cares about their show. We don’t even know what your show is about. Stop Christ Pratting your show to death before we even know what the story is.
Don’t cast before you’re ready to go into production. Don’t even think about reaching out before you have a pitch! WITH art!
Otherwise, you’ll be signing contracts that you may not be able to filfil – and that’s gonna cost ya. Both money and reputation-wise.
13. Your whole pilot stands or falls with Kickstarter.
I have tried crowdfunding Swift Spark several times and have failed. I have a pilot. I have the “popular actors”. I have a plan for more episodes. I have a small following. And I still can’t raise more than $1000. Chances are, you won’t either. So don’t go hiring a team if your only plan is “Kickstarter. ??? Profit!” – Crowdfunding is way harder than it seems.
14. You are impatient.
I’ve seen people get mad that the big indie shows are only big because of their “pre-existing audience”. How do you think they get big?? The one with the cats has a successful webcomic of 10+ years, and the hell one has a creator behind it that’s been working her ass off to get popular for years, too.
You won’t go from 0 to completed pilot in a few months. You won’t get there in a year, either. Even professional productions take years. The biggest indie show does 5-10 episodes a year. So getting to syndication (100 episodes, not reeeally a relevant term for internet shows haha) would take 10-20 years at that rate. An industry show could get that done in five.
If you don’t want to put in that work and want to be famous overnight, good luck with that. Most industry creators work in staff positions for years before they get invited to pitch by a studio.
There is no shortcut. No matter how you cut it.
15. You’re looking to get famous.
The people that kick their feet and cry in the above point… just leave. Art isn’t done for popularity. Unfortunately it is the only way for a professionally run indie show to survive, but not every indie show has to be one. If your dream is to “become an influencer”, please stay in school. Yes, you can make a career out of it and be super successful, but chances you end up getting there are still tiny and there’s always an expiry date. Some of my favourite YouTubers are hitting their early to mid thirties at this point and slowly quitting. And most of them have spent years on the side building something else to do after YouTube.
Don’t assume you’ll be succesful. Chase your dreams, but have a back up plan ready always. I beg you.
But… I believe in indie animation. And I do believe that with the right creators in charge, it can work and become a successful industry.
It will take years, and a lot of working long, late hours for our passions.
So… why do I think you should start an indie show?
1. You’re prepared to do most of the work yourself.
Like me. I wrote the pilot, I did the backgrounds, I did the boards, animation, character designs… I spent the tiny budget I had on fhe elements I couldn’t do myself. As I said… you can learn how to write, draw, animate, as long as you’re willing to put in the work.
I had 3 departments I couldn’t cover myself – all audio related. So I’d say if you’re in a similar position to me, go for it.
It’ll be a slow process, but remember what I said about patience.
It’s something I always say when thinking of Walt Disney’s comments regarding the animation strike at his studio. He said he was disappointed and that the studio “no longer felt like a family” because they went on strike for better wages. Considering how hard Walt fought to keep his workers from unionizing, it’s not unlikely that this particular comment came from malicious intent or greed. It could also be that Walt himself was so passionate (and a lil dense), that he couldn’t fathom that not everyone at his studio shared that “passion” he had when he was trying to bring his vision to life, when his employees were just trying to survive. I believe Walt literally worked himself to death trying to juggle being in absolute control of the construction several theme parks and several movie studios (animation and live-action), which is a capitalist ideal we really should stop seeing as admirable. That, and the line between passion and greed is very thin when you’re in a position of power.
Just because you’re willing to skip sleep, food and pay for your passion project, doesn’t mean others should be, too. Respect others that just want to be paid to do a job rather than ruin themselves for someone else’s dreams. Pay and treat your artists well, and they’ll do their jobs well. If you don’t believe in this, just do it yourself. The regular animation industry exploits its workers enough as it is. Disney is not the shining example of leadership everyone wants you to believe once you look behind the curtain. Don’t make your passion an obsession to the point you don’t even notice you’re abusing the people around you.
2. It’s one video/film/short.
Not a pilot? Not a prelude to a series? Of course you can always decide to turn your short film into a show or pilot for one (ex: (would have been) Pibby, Hair Love), but if it’s something completely standalone for now, that’s excellent. In high school, I did 2 shorts totalling about 5 minutes in length for my senior project. 2 months was absolutely too little time for decent shorts, but if you’re fast, you can easily finish a 3-minute short within six to seven months. It also works out better if you’d like to hire SAG actors; more flexible union rules.
3. You can pay for the work being done.
Perfect world scenario. But remember – if you can pay at all, do it. Pay for partials. Pay with low expectations and relaxed deadlines. People will prefer it to doing stuff for free.
4. You have low or reasonable expectations.
Low budget doesn’t have to mean low quality, but if you’re not gunning for a TV-quality pilot within 12 months for $10,000… I think you’re on the right track. Experiment with mediums, limited animation, teach yourself a trick or two and take your time.
5. You don’t plan on making a career out of this.
I feel super cynical advising youngsters against making a career online, or even in animation, but it is what it is. This space is more overcrowded and unreliable than ever. I cannot in good conscience recommend you put all of your eggs in this basket – for financial security, keep the art as a hobby until you have certainty you can support yourself with it. I chose the uncertainty, and it’s not always fun. I work for less than minimum wage most months. But as long as I can pay my bills, I don’t really care much. But I also haven’t bought any new clothes in over a year (including shoes), don’t go out, don’t go on vacation and don’t drink, smoke or drive.
6. You know the pipeline.
As I said, you need to know what the pieces of the puzzle are and where they go before you can build your own.
7. You’re a professional artist with a pitch, but scared to feed it to a studio void.
…And you have enough free time in-between your three jobs to work on this project. Again, animation’s rough and more animators than ever are out of work. So much gets pitched, sold, and tossed. I get you don’t want to be the next in line to have that happen. Indie is an alternative, but relies on a lot of self-perseverance. I do think that the pros and their pitches have the best shot at succeeding.
8. You have source material to work with, e.g. a book or webcomic.
If you’ve already been working on something for the past few years and are looking into taking it animated… hell yeah! I’m sure your established audience will be excited for it, and pre-established content will get newcomers excited, too. It helps build hype.
9. You’ve made a short film before.
If you’ve made a short film, the next step to a pilot is smaller than from 0. Still it depends on how long the short was of course, as stretching 2 minutes to 11 is still 5x as long.
However, you either have a team you’ve worked with before or have a good workflow established for yourself, and you can expand that into more runtime with more ease than someone without this experience.
10. You don’t think Kickstarter is a golden ticket.
Kickstarter is tough. You need to promote it 24-7 – the reason my Indiegogo failed this summer is because I unexpectedly ended up moving right after starting it and I didn’t have time to promote it at all. I might give it another go in the fall – we’ll see.
But you also need a pre-established audience. Proof of concept. Build confidence in the audience you’re not a scammer…
…and just so happen to have a pitch and rewards that interest people.
Not to mention, you need to make and ship those rewards should you choose for physical rewards, and that can get out of hand fast.
I know this all is very negative, but if you compare indie animation to indie gaming ten hears ago – floods of failed Kickstarter games, even by industry professionals… campaign owners that straight up ran away with millions, asset flips… it makes you cry like an anime fan on prom night.
Since then, indie gaming’s kind of calmed down, with the occasional… interesting… situation or scandal. But it’s permanently damaged the reputation of Kickstarter and Indiegogo projects like this, and the more animated projects that overpromise and never deliver, the more we’ll see this problem, too.
We’re already faced with the problem of most people only donating to the Already Popular. That’s why we should be motivated twice as hard as creators to work on our own projects and prove we’re worthy of the people’s time, attention and funding, too.
But at the same time, that means we shouldn’t exploit others’ free time and willingness to help out. We shouldn’t expect others to put in more work for our passion projects than we do. A certain anime game developer’s attitude towards volunteers in the past has made me want to grab his scrawny little incel neck and shake him around a few times before, and I don’t want people like that in indie animation.
As for the youngsters, animation’s a huge process and you’ll run yourselves lost. I’m not calling you guys greedy or selfish, but personally I’ve noticed a massive difference in my animation speed and quality since I started properly following the timeline.
“Star Wars in 99 Seconds Animated”, during which I was not following the pipeline and just doing whatever in 2019, took me 3 months to make. That was 99 seconds of footage (duh). Swift Spark’s first 60 seconds (the 2022 version at least) was my first time following the pipeline, which meant quite a bit of trial and error. Likewise, that first bit took 2,5 months. Slower indeed.
But… after I figured out the timeline… I did the other 20,5 minutes in a short span of just 12 months. At the speed of “99 seconds”, it would have taken at least 37 months to get it done.
Ergo, since learning to properly animate, I became three times as fast.
So I’m not trying to sound like a bully. Just trying to give my own perspective for those aspiring to become “professional indie animators” – it’s a tough path, and will take a lot of energy from you.
It might burn you out and completely take all joy out if what’s your biggest passion right now. Consider if doing it differently may be a better choice for you.
There’s no such thing as “just going indie”. But I do believe we can go indie… with a lot of time, hard work, and… free labour done by us. The creators.
Might try to chop this up into a video, but it’s so massive right now, I’m releasing this as a blog post.
Will post an update regarding Swift Spark soon!