Hiring an AI animation studio: what to ask before you sign

Three quotes arrive for the same thirty second film. One is a few hundred, one is a few thousand, one is considerably more. They are not quoting for the same thing, and the difference is almost never explained in the quote.

These are the questions that make the difference visible. None of them is hostile, and a supplier who is comfortable with what they do will answer all eight in a sentence each.

1. Who or what makes the film?

The spectrum runs from animators using AI for the dull parts, through a small team driving generation tools, to a system that builds the film with a person checking the result. All three are legitimate. What matters is that you know, because it decides everything below: how revisions work, what the ceiling is, and what the second film costs.

2. Who owns it when it is done?

Ask for it plainly: do I own the finished film, and do I own the source. Two different answers, and the second is the one people forget. A film you own as a video but not as a project is a film you cannot change next year without paying to have it made again.

Ask also what happens to what you send them. Whether your brand material, your script and your footage are used to train anything is a fair question and it should have a written answer.

3. What does the second film cost?

The most useful number in the conversation, and nobody asks for it. If the second film costs the same as the first, you are buying films one at a time forever. If it costs a fraction, they have built something reusable out of your first one, and you are buying a capability.

For anyone who needs films regularly rather than once, this question matters more than the first quote does.

4. What happens when I do not like it?

Ask how many rounds are included, what counts as a round, and what a change costs after those run out. Then ask the sharper version: what if it is just wrong? Not a colour, not a word. Wrong. A supplier with a real process has an answer. One without will tell you it does not happen.

5. Who checks it before I see it?

Somebody should be looking at the film with fresh eyes before it reaches you, against something written down. Ask what that standard is and who applies it. «We review everything internally» is not an answer; it is what everyone says. Ask what the standard says.

6. What do I get, as files?

Get the list before you sign. A video file for the web, a version with no background if it goes over other footage, the shapes you need for the places it will run. «An MP4» is one file, and you will discover what else you needed the week after delivery, when it costs extra.

7. How long, and what makes it late?

Every supplier gives you a number. The useful follow up is what typically makes a job overrun, because it is almost never the animation. It is a script that was not finished, brand assets that could not be found, or an approval chain nobody mapped. A supplier who has delivered work will name one of those immediately.

8. Can I see something that is not a showreel?

Showreels are cut from the best three seconds of a hundred films. Ask for one complete film, start to end, made for a brief like yours. The interesting part of any film is the middle, and the middle is the thing a reel is built to hide.

What the price differences usually mean

• The cheapest quote is usually generation with light supervision. Fast, and genuinely fine for something disposable. Revisions tend to mean rolling again rather than changing what exists.
• The middle is usually a system with a person on top. Predictable, repeatable, gets much cheaper per film after the first. This is where recurring brand work sits.
• The highest is usually people, hours, and craft. It buys the thing the other two cannot: something nobody has seen before. Worth it when the film has to be remarkable rather than correct.

None of these is the right answer in general. They are right for different jobs, and the failure people describe as «the studio was bad» is usually a job from one row bought from another.

The one question underneath all of them

What is the film for? A supplier who asks you that before quoting is telling you something about how they work. A supplier who quotes without asking is pricing a length, not a job, and a length is not what you need.

Where we sit, said plainly

Nine is the middle row: a system that reads your brand from your own material and builds the film in it, with a standard applied before anything is delivered. Your brand is read once, so the next film starts from it rather than from a new brief. It is not the row to choose if you want something nobody has seen before.

The quickest way to find out whether the look suits you is to give your address to Nine's free page and watch Nine's own films take your colours. That is free and needs no account. A film of your own comes with a plan.