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Comment by saadalem | Hacker News Reader

i guess 3D animation costs 1 million per minute, while 2d animation costs about 15k a minute.

could AI help reduce the costs in the future ? imagine making a movie in a short time and also x0.1-0.001% costs

here's a good read too: http://web.archive.org/web/20201121143218/https://arr.am/202...

I don’t know where you get those numbers from, but obviously animation price for both 2D and 3D are dependent on level of detail.

Naive calculation says that princess and the frog (disneys last 2D) was 100mill for 97 minutes, while Up (released same year) was 175mill for 96 minutes.

I don’t think either movie had particularly bigger stars than the other, so i think the overall budget ratio gives an okay idea of how far your estimate is off for cinema animation.

3d movies require a lot more technical r&d, experimentation and tool development.

This was true for 2d in the past, but Princess and the Frog was made in more or less off the shelf 2d animation software.

The biggest challenge to doing 2d though is finding the talent and the justification. Take a look at what most art school are offering as far as animation goes...

At least we finally seem to be moving on from the CalArts style.

I’m not really sure what you are arguing for, but if an expensive 3D film is only 1.75 times more expensive than a cheap 2D film, then that’s a pretty strong argument that 3D isn’t much more expensive than 2D (OP was saying it was 1000 to 15 ratio)

> The biggest challenge to doing 2d though is finding the talent and the justification.

I disagree. There is a lot of great 2D cinema animation coming out of the East. It’s not just Ghibli that makes beautiful, well-told cartoons.

I missed that ratio part. I actually thought it they were saying 1.75x more expensive for 3d vs 2d. I wouldn't expect one art style to be thousands of times more expensive than the other. Good catch.

Also regarding 2d cinema animation, I'm speaking through a very American lens (considering the link points to Disney) so take what I say with a grain of salt.

As someone who recently began producing 2D animation, it seems like 2D has only gotten more rare and expensive as 3D/CG animation continues to proliferate.

But could be a "grass is always greener" thing.

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