← The slate
Every second you watch is twelve to twenty-four frames, each made by a person. Here's how a show gets made and where the money goes, from Studio Smokescreen, the studio behind ShowSparks. We've produced for major corporate animation studios around Burbank, and these are the numbers we budget our own shows with.
BACK A SHOW · START A SHOWSHOWSPARKS.COMEvery show is made in the same three phases, in order. A 90-second teaser can take about four to five months start to finish (depending on experience and team size); a 24-minute episode, closer to a year.
Script, storyboards, character and world design, and an animatic: the whole film in rough. None of it is on screen yet, but it's where the mistakes are cheap to fix.
Animators draw every shot, then it's cleaned up, colored and composited. A 90-second teaser is over two thousand meticulously crafted frames of animation, and a good animator finishes a few seconds a week. That's why it's the biggest line.
Voices, score, sound design and the final mix. It's what makes drawings feel like a show.
An independent crew makes broadcast-quality 2D for about $10,000 to $15,000 per finished minute (depending on the style of animation). Studio series cost several times that.
Most campaigns set a goal they think they can raise, not what the thing costs. A $10,000 "feature film" goal buys less than a minute of finished animation, and backers end up disappointed.
On ShowSparks, every stage names one deliverable and is budgeted for that alone, starting with the ShowSpark Package.
Animation is expensive, and we'd rather you know that going in. Every stage here is priced for what it actually produces. Back one, watch it get made, then decide if you're in for the next.
Some of it. Tools speed up parts of production, and some shows will use them. None of it replaces the director, the design, the acting or the sound, which is where most of the money goes. A show that uses AI tools specifies where on its budget page, so backers know exactly what they're funding.
Merch is a second business with its own costs, and on most animation campaigns it eats the money meant for the show. Every dollar pledged on ShowSparks goes to the show, and anything pledged past a stage's goal counts toward its next stage.
Animation often does. The creator posts progress, the deliverable is still owed, and the next stage can't open until this one ships. You'll see the finished work before anyone asks for more.