[kiramuro]

Originally Posted by Eidolon Sniper

@ kiramuro

Yes, there is that, and if you have read Peter Chung and other people who have discussed American and Japanese animation studios in the link 4Tran provided, there is also the availability of a lot of compartmentalized jobs for American cartoon animators (like there are the animators, sub animators, sub sub animators, sub sub sub animators...and so on and so forth) and the fact that they also PAY A LOT to their Korean and Chinese sub contractors (and some in the Philippines...I know for a fact that Toei has an office here, as well as Hanna Barbera) more than their Japanese animation studios, and that Japanese animation studios comprise only of a few people and their work mostly cut out for them by the sakkan. Also, Japanese animators are paid for by the panel. So if they send their best work to the director for final approval, if the sakkan himself thinks that there is something wrong or that the director sees something wrong with it, the sakkan would change the drawings and the timing that would satisfy the director, which led me to think that either only their best drawings get paid and those not edited by the sakkan, or they still get paid in spite of the crappy work as they know sakkan will probably edit it...I will read the thread again perhaps later to confirm it as I am currently working on an assignment from work, LOL. anyway, that is one of the many major reasons why, as 4Tran said, Japanese will go at a 3 million dollar per episode show.

But that said, I still believe that budget is an issue here, as was already proven by some of the recent anime shows that make us wonder, where the budget went, as I have already stated above. And given the many differences that both American and Japanese animation studios both have, it would still prove to be very hard to merge both takes on the work that is animation, but there already was one anime/cartoon I think that was mentioned by the people in the link 4Tran provided that tried merging American and Japanese studio techniques...Mighty Orbots. But they ended up thinking that the other side didn't know what they were doing or something, LOL. as long as Japanese wouldn't want their creative expression to suffer from the same kind of cut and paste and cloned process that is American animation, I highly doubt that there would be a new kind of instant animation revolution to take place.

Of course animated shows shouldn't cost that much (Simpsons is only around $1 mil nowdays?). I picked $3 mil mark only as an example. I just think with the popularity of the CE gundam it shouldn't be so crippled (relatively speaking) so much in the budget department. How many Seed/Destiny DVDs have been sold far world-wide? Hell consider its popularity it should at least have a similar budget as that of the Simpsons. From what you just described though it seems that anime shows will always have small budgets unless the medium finally gains a sizable audience in North America so at that point our TV industry will pick it up and of course completely ruins anime as we know it.

Originally Posted by kaito-kid

There IS a 3 million $ per episode show!?

Not any animated show but then again I picked the average budget of equally popular live action shows here in the US compared with that of CE Gundam shows.

A lot of our current prime time TV shows actually exceeds the $3 million mark per. I have no idea what 24 is costing now days but you can bet it's a lot more that $3 mil. I remember the 2-hour Lost pilot costing something like $13 million. The average probably fluctuates around $3 mil to $4 mil.

Even niche shows would have more than $1 million per episode. I remember Star Trek TNG costing something like $1.5 millino per episode and this was back in the late 80s.