Want to start animation company..is this fastlane thinking?

[fierce86]

(My backstory is I studied biology for 4 years and got AA. Then philosophy at UCLA for 2 years and got a BA. I'm 24. Just realized how much I love art and movies)
So before I read the book my plan was:

take a years worth of art classes and a couple animation classes at college, then transfer to a good animation school then intern for an animation studio, work for them for a few years, and start my business.

After reading the millionaire fastlane :

Start the business now. I'm already very talented at art, and as long as I know a couple animation programs ( I'm self learning) I can produce movies. Also I will be hiring interns ( students out of college) to do most of the work for me for free since they will be interns. I'll pay them once we make money I got this idea from the book when it said that fastlaners HIRE people with MBAs, they don't get one themselves.

My company will create animated movies, we will sell them online. This will allow us to sell globally and impact millions to make millions. It could become mainly passive too once the movies are on the site because people could pay on the site and download from their computer. Once we make enough money to show we are a successful company venture capitalists will invest in us and we will expand to have an actual headquarters so I can hire a bigger team and make more money. I wont be doing too much work other than coming up with the stories, general storyboards, and running the company. If it gets to be too much I can always sell it and retire.

Doing it this way would take me 5 to 6 years if since i'm passionate and my parents support me and I can dedicate all my time to it. DOing it the previous way would take me like 20 years I would estimate I wouldn't make any millions till I'm like 55 or 60. The barrier to entry isn't too low since not many people can animate, i can impact millions and make a lot.

I know I would be trading time for money but I don't think I would do too much work once I have an actual company running with staff and I wouldn't care because I would enjoy doing it anyway as opposed to being retired.

eventually I would want to open a theme park one day =) like disneyland

I just don't care about MLM enough to do it that way it's too boring. I've thought of making the animation company website have a blog and affiliate links to make money with affiliating as well ( blog about art) but I don't want to do both affiliating and animation because it would be too much work and I would end up failing in both.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Carson Yim]

Hi, I'm a CG Generalist and here's what I think.

1. Art is subjective, some might enjoy what you have produced while others might think otherwise. It's always tricky to stand out, there are gazillions of good designs and artworks every second flooding the net. (abundance of marketable artistic resources.) Usually when one of your work catches on, the audience will want more. If you are the creator, you will get more busy with producing more episodes, merchandising, getting involved with marketing = less free time.

2. You mentioned you are good with art, this also means that you might be very interested in getting your hands dirty in animating. You might end up doing a lot of the work. If you can find an artist who can translate your visions onto paper, and he/she has a good working chemistry with you then it's awesome! Otherwise, figuring out how to string together great talent with a great product would be a better choice. Furthermore you save time from actually getting into creating the animation, let the people who are obsessed with animating do it while you figure out how to evolve your idea and impact even more people. It's more valuable that way. (You become the mastermind that pieces together a machine that will benefit more people.)

3. One way to repeat the sales of your work might be to actually solve an emotional need using art as a medium. Perhaps making the presentation more entertaining and captivating using a more visually appealing approach? Something timeless would be nice, think something like basic anxiety solutions for dummies presented using animation. Using humor to engage perhaps.

4. Lastly, I believe in the 'platform' philosophy, where you are not concerned about becoming the talent that stands on the platform performing. You create the platform where others can perform and entertain, and you solve the need of the performers and the audience.

Imagine if you were to create a platform where even Disney Pixar and Dreamworks can benefit from, it would be pretty interesting now wouldn't it?

Just my thoughts, hope you can find something of value there.

 

[fierce86]

ya

1. Hey, ya it would lead to less free time initially, but then eventually I wouldn't be doing any animation, I would be directing other people who would be doing it. Ya part of my goal is that I will obtain fame which is technically a slow lane approach which will yield fast lane yield, so it is a bit of a gamble.
2. Ya I would let other people do it and string together talent, but I need to have some basic understanding of it first and know how to do it to understand what's going on so I'm going to be studying it for a few months and doing some of the animation myself.
3. Ya I will definitely have to do something different like solve an emotional need. I was thinking the animation would be so breathtaking, emotional, intense, funny, and compelling that it would take care of itself though. I have no idea coming up with story ideas.
4. this last one sounds like the idea " in a goldrush sell shovels." Hmmm that's interesting...but it sounds more like marketing where I would help disney market on the internet platform or something to millions of people. I like how you think though it's very outside the box and different. I will try to look at it from different angles like this.

thanks for not disuading me. I like forums like this because people are positive and like minded, whereas if I were to tell an ordinary person off the street they would look at me funny probably.lol. I'll keep your suggestions in mind. =)

 

[Gonzosan]

I'd say good luck, I'm going down a similar path but with games. I'm learning the programming side of things and currently trying to learn how to use a game engine to get going. I think it's a great idea, but remember this field is quite saturated (hell the one I'm in is as well), so you need to show people what makes you stand out. Personally I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket. I would start off with movies, and help others make money from their movies as well. I always tend to look at things by saying "well if I like it, many others are probably thinking the same, how can I profit from them as well?". Think of it this way, if you were building a website to promote your music and selling it online. It would be great, but how many thousands if not millions of people are making their own music as well? Cater to these people and help them sell their music online as well, keep a small percentage of the profit they make and you both win. Just something to think about. Good luck! One of my dreams was to own or even work for an Anime company in Japan, so I hope you have the dedication to it, and remember that there are multiple paths to make money from this stuff. You can teach others to do this stuff (once you become well respected in this field) as well through online tutorials and even online schooling. Good luck.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[fierce86]

cool

I hear animators in japan make less than staff at mcdonalds:nono:. Slave labor basically. Ya I was thinking maybe making movies in general instead of just animation. It's just that when you start thinking big, it seems like such a menial activity to do any of the animation yourself because it amounts to a lot of busy work. I wonder if you feel that way when you're making games. Even though it's fun it's very time consuming and leaves little time to do the other stuff like the business aspects. So even though it's saturated market I would be focused on where it counts, making the business work, instead of the animation. I feel like I'm selling out tho because the whole point of getting into animation was my love of art and movies, but I gotta make money too, while I'm young. :smug2:

I hate the idea of putting your eggs in multiple baskets because it implies that you are willing to give up if it doesn't work and go with another basket. It's do or die for me. But I do like your idea of thinking for alternative ways to make money doing this like creating an online school someday. Good point...

I'm so glad I read this ebook instead of going to college for the rest of my life. You go to class, learn a few things, lot of bs and critiques goes on, You don't learn that much, then your friends wanna smoke pot during breaks and take it easy like retards and work at their 8 bucks and hour jobs and you get sucked into that take it easy mentality and small mindedness.

 

[fierce86]

not sure anymore

So I was gung ho on starting an animation company but when I went to do the planning it seems I might have to take like 1-2 years worth of schooling. This isn't a pizza shop. For me even direct other animators to do the work I have to understand fundamental concepts of animation myself. I've tried self learning with videos but it's too hard. Also I went to animation forums and Almost everyone says it's a very long term investment because clients take months to years to sign contracts and you need really experienced people working with you. I read failure stories from people who have 13 -20 years experience in the industry
Starting an animation studio - AWN Forums

Fashions another one I would like but again it's just as competitive if not more and would have similar issues


I don't mind the hard work since it's something I love but it doesn't seem fastlane to me anymore. And before I read the book I always believed I should do what I love but maybe mj is right when he says in a village if 50 out of 100 people have 1 type of job don't do that job unless you are exceptional or different. I could help other studios get their word out or the other suggestions I heard but that's so far from the same type of enjoyment that I might as well do something else.
I even started my animation website but I might shut it down now:
Iravani Studios

I had some other ideas like
1) have a service that brings gas to people's homes for their cars
2) allow people to decide what music they want to be on the radio and get their word out to the producers
3) a service to pack people's clothes ( saw it on mj's video lol)

none of these sound too fun but I guess I might have to find reasons to be passionate like he talks about.

 

[domular]

For myself I've always looked markets where I know there is already a demand and people are spending money. I don't know if there is anyone to model with this business model. Without the leverage of a major cable network I would think it would be very difficult to build an audience of millions and even harder to get them to pay you for it directly. I also hardly think that building this business on the back of interns that you don't pay could scale very well.

If the goal is to get rich doing animations look where there are already successful people in the animation biz and figure out a way to do what they do but even better. Just my $0.02

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[fierce86]

Animation or any art related field seems really hard to make it fastlane because in addition to marketing and selling the product it takes years to get good at art/computer animation/ fashion etc anyway and it's highly competitive. I'm thinking I'll just do some affiliate marketing and launch come kind of product and do the animation on the side for fun then one day start the animation company in the future as I get better at it. It's crazy before I read the ebook I always thought I could just do what I love and make a lot of money and while it is true it's not always fastlane and may take up to 10 or 15 years in this case. I'm 25 soon and I can't live with the parents that long. lol. Dam MJ, no one's ever been able to change my mind this drastically about anything before but you make a lot of sense.lol Anyone else sturggling with changing their beliefs after reading the book and realizing they have to change the way they looked at things?