Lucas Ridley

Animer une vidéo explicative dans Adobe After Effects CC avec Motion Graphics

Where is it? I dont see any animation just a still image....

Read the full story.
Here it is
<a target="_blank" rel="noopener external nofollow" href="https://vimeo.com/179428481">vimeo.com/179428481</a>

Holy Cow!!!! That was great Renata! Very well done, seriously, that was great. I hope you start to charge more for doing that!!!!!!! Great use of all the elements taught in the course and it all flowed really well together!

Yea, this is a very good question. When I started out, I undervalued my work and my time and I literally worked myself out of business when I was freelance. If you're not charging enough then working on these projects are unsustainable.
Starting out, a good way to figure this out is start with your expenses, health insurance costs, rent, etc. For you to exist as a freelance person, and not be working at a company, that existence value is worth something and it costs you something.
Websites like Fivr are great for people getting started but overall lowers the perceived value of this kind of work and cannot be lived on.
With all that said, I would say you couldn't do something like this and make any money for less than $500. BUT you also have to keep in mind you're going to be paying taxes on your income! So you've got to deduct about 30%. So you're only making $350 for the job. Just to use the software to make this kind of video is $50/month! So you can see how your expenses start eating into what you've actually made to where you're left with potentially less than minimum wage! That's not sustainable, if you do that for a year or more, you'll be out of business because you can't afford the expenses to make these videos and you'll have to spend your time making better money somewhere else just to live and survive. So if you take a small amount of money you're literally driving yourself out of business. Sorry for the lengthy response, but I've lived this and did this to myself when I was starting out. So you have more numbers, I've worked on projects with budgets between $1,500-$10,000, it all depends on what the client is trying to achieve, the complexity of the animation, time spent, expertise required, etc. There's no set in stone rate and I know of budgets many times what I've listed. I would start with what it takes you to live and re-enginner what your prices have to be so you don't run yourself out of business and hurt the perceived value of this work for the community of artists making good work like this. Hope this helps! :)

Do NOT be sad!!!!! You should be stoked!!!!!! And you're not totally off, you're starting out, have only been doing this for 6 months and essentially getting paid to learn at this stage! That's great! My comments are more for longer term considerations because you seem serious about this and those rates aren't sustainable unless you're working another day job and do this work at night. There are a lot of outlets for this kind of work, but it's pretty competitive these days and like most freelance it's usually on or off, which is why I work at studios now. Last year I had 4 freelance projects going on at once! This year, I haven't gotten a single freelance job, but I've also not really been looking because I'm busy at the studios. I cannot afford to work freelance full time, because the projects are so far apart usually, or all at once, it's a bit of a roller coaster, everyone is different, and like you said have different costs of living etc. So check out Upwork, Wooshii, Mofilm, Tongal, Zooppa, and there's several more sites it's hard to keep up with all of them.
My best advice is to really watch a ton of motion graphics and animated shorts, the technical skills usually come quicker than developing your 'eye.' Once you inundate yourself with a ton of work, you can deconstruct how you think they did it, spin off your own ideas on things you've seen, etc. It's a constant learning process. As far as getting work, that's tough no matter how you slice it. Create an online presence, if you don't have a portfolio of work, make personal projects to fill out your portfolio or take lower paying gigs and knock them out of the park so you can spring board off those projects to hopefully justify higher paying gigs, etc.

Hi Suraj, How much time does it take to learn After Effects or animation? AE can be learned fairly quickly, animation takes longer. The course you're commenting on is 2 hours long.

Thanks, Lucas! I wanted to ask you something: how much would you charge for something like that? 

Lucas, that was very helpful. I like the long response. 

I am a newbie. I've been animating for just about 6 months, maybe. And I started out on Fiverr because I wanted to make a change. I used to work as a freelance writer and I am pretty much burnt out with that. So, I started learning this by myself. 

I do think that Fiverr is bad for a lot of creatives. People there look for something less expensive. However, a few months ago I wasn't very good with the animations, but people still bought my work. And, I also lived in Venezuela. Making like $1000 a month there is A LOT of money. Now I moved to Spain, life is much more expensive and I am learning new stuff that takes more time (and makes the results way better). So, I think I need to charge more. 

The other problem is that I really don't know where else to go to get clients and still work online. I want to keep working from my home, in my own hours. Sometimes working as a freelance is hard, but I prefer it that way. 

I wanted to know your thoughts on this because I am changing my rates on Fiverr, to try out and see how things go with higher prices. If it slows down my sales, I am going to be forced to move onto another platform. 

For this video I charged only $175. After Fiverr's commission, I got $140. Now, with what you're saying, I am sad. I changed my prices and for something like this I am only charging $300. I guess I am totally off. 

As I am a "half full glass" kinda gal, at least I am learning a lot doing these videos. A lot of first times. 

Yes! You're right. I shouldn't be sad. I am going to up my prices a bit to see how things go and start building a portfolio. I wanted to do that . I already have my own domain name and everything. 

I always do that. Right now I am expending a lot of time on Dribble and also Behance. There are so many talented people there. I have a few animations there that I want to try out. I don't know how I am going to do it, but I will. 

Lucas, I am happy you have that job. That's great! :) 

And thanks for taking the time to respond all of this. :D 

Lucas please upload more such explainer videos creation for a mobile based app explanation

Hi Lucas!
I'm already working doing explainers on Fiver using After Effects. I felt a bit stuck and I really wanted to learn a bit more, even just to manage my time better when animating, or to be more organized. So I went searching for something to learn on the Internet and decided to come back to Skillshare, which I left months ago, and found your course.
As I said in my review, it was very helpful for me and yesterday I finished up a new video where I used your techniques. More specifically I used the "null objects" (which I have never used), the color coding of the layer and a few of the drawing skills as well. I also used a bit of masks but I feel a need to practice more with this to not find it so... I don't know, complicated maybe.
I wanted you to see the explainer, so it's attached below. I really liked the result but I know it can be better!
Let me know your thoughts. Thanks.
PD: The intro animation of the logo was not made by me. This was provided from the client. Also, some of the graphics are from explainers libraries. I do not do everything from scratch to be able to charge less as that is what people are looking for on Fiverr.
Video is here: <a href="https://vimeo.com/179428481" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/179428481</a>&nbsp;(it's not attaching)

Video explainer for a client

Entreprise

Communauté

Enseigner

Mobile

English

English