Outsourcing Animation & CGI Work

[Graeme]

I have a couple film concepts that are being evaluated for production, and a few could would benefit from some Animation (2D) and potentially CGI work, however the question has come up if we could outsource the animation to a company operating in say China or India? Otherwise the concepts will most likely be dropped due to cost.

So I pose this question to you, do you know how one would go about contacting and getting a quote from such a company which is reputable enough not to take your money and run, or can produce some decent work (again for an indie budget so I know quality will not be top notch).

 

[Anim8]

Just speaking as an animator and CG guy, I hate to hear anyone outsourcing to India or china. Canada has some great CG houses and with the current economy you may want to at least explore the CA and US companies.....

I have a network of people I work with, I'd be happy to give you a quote and or recommendations.

 

[Graeme]

I get where your coming from, however we just don't have the cash available for US/CAN as we are volunteer on projects (more a long the lines of I'll scratch your back you scratch mine kind of idea) and mainly hobbyists (we all have day jobs unrelated to video).

Example of our most recent endeavour - Three Guys and 5 hours of shooting + 45minutes on an another day to clean up a few wholes.
http://pulsefilms.ca/8. Boxing/Boxing.html

 

[danosongs]

I hired a guy in Russia to do some simple special effects for my sci fi short. I even had to pay him via wire which was a learning experience!

He had done a lot of very basic video work for me via a freelancer site. So I said hey, do you think you could do this and he sent me a sample of pretty much exactly what I needed.

Just search CGI or animation and there are lots of folks with ratings on elance:

https://www.elance.com/r/contractors/q-cgi/
https://www.elance.com/r/contractors/q-animation/

What you want to do is create an account, post a job and invite the freelancers that look good. You will also get proposals from all over the world - no need to limit to China or India.

There are some great people on there without ratings or previous jobs too - just look carefully at their resume and experience and you can find some gems.

Also, @Anim8 has a point that you don't have to exclude US & CA - there are lots of inexpensive folks on elance outside of Hollywood but in North America.