Google Drive

For me:

1. I need much more space than 100GB - I'd ideally like a TB+ on the cloud.

2. The price has to be more acceptable. Say the cost of a TB hard drive on an annual basis. I'm not even going to talk about the likely $1000+ bill for a TB of space at the current price point.

3. I have to admit that Dropbox is pretty cool when it comes to a smooth, painless experience.

Once the agency brings the concept to an animation studio to pitch, you'll have:

• Design phase. The requires usually 1-4 designers creating styleframes, which bring the agency's concept to life. The agency will be presented with generally 3 or 4 design directions. The agency will approve a direction so we can get started.

• Immediately after the agency chooses a direction, animators will start a short previz stage, where we take the timing for the spot (say, a 30sec commercial) and spec everything out in terms of pacing, timing, layout, camera moves, etc. Simultaneously, R&D will be done regarding any technological challenges executing the designs. In a commercial like this one for Google, this R&D phase wouldn't really exist, as it's very straightforward in terms of execution. This step lasts only a day or two. The agency will approve the timing of the previz so we can lock down the edit as much as we can.

• Then we move into production. For a big client, this is usually is a team of 2-4 animators and compositors, hiring niche skillsets as needed (character animators, cloth/fur/particles, 3d modelers, etc.) This Google spot is probably 2-4 generalists, people who can both work in 3D and do the compositing. This step moves in review/approval phases, usually presenting to the agency once or twice a week, and the end client maybe once per week or less. Because of the good previz and the multiple steps of approvals, we power through these steps pretty hard.

Most commercial jobs are anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months. Designers cost anywhere from $350-$700/day, mid-level animators cost from $300-$500/day, senior animators cost anywhere from $450-$750/day. Usually one producer on a job, costing about $250-$350/day. Include studio overhead, margin markup, etc, maybe another 15-20%.

For an agency job outsourcing to a quality animation/production studio, $50k is on the low-mid. I've been on $15k jobs and $4 million dollar (commercial) jobs.

Can you hire a one-man band and tell him "make me a cool video" and pay him 5k? Sure. But buyer beware. You can pay a developer $10/hour and maybe you'll get garbage, maybe you'll get Digg.

If anyone has any questions about video production or animation, feel free to email me at chris@mographstock.com. I've been in the industry for 10 years and am happy to share what I know with anyone who is curious.

I'm trying to solve that "buyer-beware" step for small-mid sized companies. I believe there is a whole untapped market for top quality animation to be brought to small-mid sized companies and young startups. With increased bandwidth and the improved tools for remote working and rendering tools I've developed, I think we're poised to bring great stuff to the masses for much less than it costs now.

Not yet. There is no broad based Linux support yet (it supports Android, which is technically Linux, but no Linux Desktop distro is supported) and iOS support is still in the works.

[1] That is, Dropbox's philosophy is to create something dead simple that an idiot can use, whereas I suspect Google's product will be laden with options and knobs. I don't knock on Dropbox - I'm constantly recommending it to people that aren't tech-savvy (and it's one of the few things they understand and start using quickly), but I personally like those knobs and levers. Am I the only one here that doesn't think they're direct competition with each other? They're in the same space and all but I think they're meant for different niches.