Request [Poll] You are a screenwriter, pitch me an anime concept (Free Nuffies!)

Giving away $2000 free nuffies to the winner!

Welcome to Fruitable Studios! I'm the producer for a new 13-episode original anime that our studio is planning on creating and airing on television.

We have a $10 million dollar budget (USD) and you are one of the director/screenwriters that we are considering to hire from NUF. The anticipated production time is 9 months.

Since it is an original anime, the subject matter can be virtually anything as long as the producer (@lychee) likes it. The producer's only requirement is that it must be good.

Pitch me a synopsis of the anime you want to direct.

The producer (@lychee) will choose her favorite and award a prize of $2000 nuffies. The winner will be chosen 48 hours after this thread is posted.
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1. Optional Question: What is your 13 episode outline? What is the main theme of your anime? What is the targeted demographic and genres?

2. Optional Question: Would you make a proposal based something you like? Or would you try to be "meta" and guess what the producer (@lychee) likes?

3. Optional Question: Fruitable Studios doesn't have its own in-house animation team. Instead, we use our boatload of money to subcontract the animation work to other animation studies. Which animation studios / animators would you want us to subcontract the work to? Do you have an idea for voice actors and soundtrack/music?

4. Optional Question: What factors are important for making a good television anime?

5. Optional Question: Why do you think your anime will be a successful hit?

 

I was pretty generous with the stated budget, but I think most TV anime in Japan run on a $3 million USD budget... but then again the animation industry in japan is severely underpaid and super stingy.

Based on this quora link: How many people are on a team to make anime? The number they pull out is around ~250 people involved in making one anime (~150 if you exclude voice cast)

If you split $1 million USD / 250 => that comes out as $4000 per person...

Which is incidentally the salary you need to pay them for 6-7 months at least. It's basically peanuts no matter how you try to cut it.

 

Can we do no game no life season 2? Just because I want to watch it too

 

Alright, here's my pitch. Give me 10 million dollars, and I'll do literally everything.

Here's the story.
13 episodes of why lychee is the greatest ever.

Our target audience is lychee, and the entire world. Everyone should know why lychee is the greatest.

Here's my initial animation. We can finish this anime in a few days if you want. It could even go to 1000 episodes if necessary. I just need some time to "animate" other fruit to praise lychee.

Did I win yet?

edit: New plan, let's make the entire anime in google slides. That's clearly more efficient than the "regular animation".

 

That is brilliant

 

13 ep scooby doo anime but hella gay
the main theme? same as the 1969 scooby animated show, dismantling the capitalist society ruled by old white men
target audience? all ages, everyone likes scoob and the mystery gang, especially the gays
genre? whatever the fuck the 1969 animated series genre was
We hiring kadokawa, that's toptier anime line up or maybe J.C., and MAPPA def KyoAni (they pay their artists fairly)
We don't pander to the home of phobia we pander to the home of sexual = success, also happy endings and good character development
It's gonna be successful because its hella gay and appealing to the gays circa 90s character designs (e.g. Shego)

lol

 

As for an idea, right now I can't think of anything good
1. Optional Question: What is your 13 episode outline? What is the main theme of your anime? What is the targeted demographic and genres?
Well, if I am to make an anime I would like it to be for all ages but maybe with some adult supervision advised (something like that)
2. Optional Question: Would you make a proposal based something you like? Or would you try to be "meta" and guess what the producer (@lychee) likes?
Unless the producer comes to me and asks for my help, I would propose something I like most probably
3. Optional Question: Fruitable Studios doesn't have its own in-house animation team. Instead, we use our boatload of money to subcontract the animation work to other animation studies. Which animation studios / animators would you want us to subcontract the work to? Do you have an idea for voice actors and soundtrack/music?
I like many animation studios but for this poll, let us go with studio madhouse I guess
4. Optional Question: What factors are important for making a good television anime?
I said it in other threads and will say it again, it is plot
5. Optional Question: Why do you think your anime will be a successful hit?
Because @lychee is the producer

 

I think with indie games (and indie software), you're probably underestimating the amount of unpaid work that goes into the development of the game.

I minored in CS during undergrad and most of my friends were software engineers, and... well... the amount of time and energy that goes to indie development of almost anything is overwhelming. It's seriously exhausting and un-rewarding work. For many indie developers, the GoFundMe fundraisers go towards funding other aspects of the developing the game -- and not paying themselves.

If you start adding the necessity of paying staff -- especially if you have "minimum wage" requirements -- then the production costs balloon rapidly depending on the size of your team. And team productivity varies by the team, because well... every team is different... and has different experiences... and usually an indie developer/artist/programmer clearly wasn't good enough to be hired by Google or Disney... so the standards can be quite low too.

The link I posted sourced their information straight from the credits list of an anime. I think a majority of voice actors are extras -- and probably a majority of the staff isn't full time.

You can do a calculation on the number of full-time staff you can have based on a $1 million budget.

Based on a $15,080 US minimum wage, you can hire 88 minimum wage workers full time.

As for the breakdown of animation staff, there are a lot of people involved in production that aren't just pure "animators"

I found another quora link of the number of people it takes to produce an episode of animation -- and they cite 25 to 60 people on the animation side per episode (including directors / producers) -- not including voice actors.

If my memory recalls from watching shirobako, in Japanese anime the turnaround time is tight because they animate while the TV show is already airing -- so they have multiple teams working on different episodes simultaneously. I guess this must inflate the number too.

It has to be an original! Slightly Morbid Fruityable Studios is unable to obtain the copyright rights

A ripoff is probably fine if it's distinct enough to avoid getting sued for plagiarism

Creative but I'm not sold!

 

1. Optional Question: What is your 13 episode outline? What is the main theme of your anime? What is the targeted demographic and genres?
I would like to make an anime of introvert who can access one of his parallel counterpart's bodies on his birthday of Feb 29 (so once every 4 years). He goes to sleep on the 29 th and lives a whole life and wakes up on the next day.(It is exactly like the QT novels).Each episode will be of one his lives (maybe in a prehistoric/ancient/stellar age.)Until he finds a conclusions to his problems in real life. Maybe those lives are real or maybe they are his dreams that he subconsciously makes to escape reality.Targeted demographic is Teen to Adult.
2. Optional Question: Would you make a proposal based something you like? Or would you try to be "meta" and guess what the producer (@lychee) likes?
This is something I hope to see, so lychee please like it
3. Optional Question: Fruitable Studios doesn't have its own in-house animation team. Instead, we use our boatload of money to subcontract the animation work to other animation studies. Which animation studios / animators would you want us to subcontract the work to? Do you have an idea for voice actors and soundtrack/music?
I don't know much about the studio's so let's follow Kaito sempai and use studio madhouse.
4. Optional Question: What factors are important for making a good television anime?
New places, perspectives, and viewers get to see imagination made reality
5. Optional Question: Why do you think your anime will be a successful hit?
A lot of cultures and views can be added to anime from the perspective of an ordinary person (imagine holding a gun in the middle of a mech battle)

 

10mil for 13 eps. You sure you have enough?

This is small budget so you are going to have to outsource some stuff. Voice acting, scripts, advertising, purchasing time slot, music license, OP-ED music, sound effects, engineering...etc. those would cost you at least 40-60% of your budget. Doing them in-house would tend to be cheaper because you don't have fixed costs and just need the pay for labour and stuff. That would leave you 4-6mil for animation, editing, revisions and management.

Assuming 30 frames per second, 20 min anime is like 1,780 frames. If there are a lot of moving and action then it might take you a lot of man hour to draw it. I am not sure how long it would take to draw 1 frame but I don't think it will be less than 30min. Assuming 900 man hour per eps. Pay $300/hr for animators (including overhead) abd editors would be 270k/ep or 3.5mil for 13 episodes.

Not that bad as long as you aren't running into anything bad.

 

Also replying to @Westeller with this, sorta.

Ya but with everyone who is credited there are many contract workers. People whom are only paid for a day, for a week or some other small length of time.
Some people only work on small parts. A voice actor doing background voices will get pennies compared to a leading character... their work load is also vastly smaller as well.

There are also unpaid people whom make it into the credits for various reasons or exchanging of favors, this is not uncommon in Hollywood, not sure in anime to be honest though.

So while the total amount of people whom contribute to a project may be in the hundreds, the amount of core people who work on it full time are much smaller. I saw a documentary on time where the studio had like 15 people being a part of it... it could be less, this was a very long time ago.

Costs are so high all because of animation and special effects, be it in Hollywood, Gaming or Anime. That's where most money goes in a budget. Hollywood has some exception for genre movies where casting takes a majority of the budget. I see this more in Romance or Dramas, even comedies that don't rely of special effects.
Anyways. Special effect studios get paid big money as do graphic designers for video games. When I saw that I mean the people who make the games look super nice. Those smaller studios that make fantastic games usually do so not from graphical fidelity but from great ideas and a polished set of game mechanics. Graphics take a back seat, most still look great but that's the style they are going for. They aren't trying to make a Ubisoft Division kind of graphics game. That's where huge amounts of money go to in my experience and research.

 

Thank you for writing an idea!

I'm really curious about what sort of "problems" the protagonist has in his real life -- and how each of the lives tie into his real one.

Do you have something special about the protagonist that you think would make him attractive to viewers? Given the structure of your anime, it sounds like there won't be a consistent cast except for the protagonist, so it will be driven heavily by the protagonist's personality. I'm curious about how you're thinking of portraying your introverted protagonist's character so that they are likable to the viewers!

Finally, are you sure you will be able to fit each lifetime into a 23 minute episode? It's a very short time period to fit a self-contained story, as well as develop the characters in each world.

If you intend to develop the side characters in each world, then you may need more time than 23 minutes. In the Monogatari series, each mini-arc focuses on a different female character, and around 2-4 episodes are spent on each girl.

In contrast, if you're thinking of working along a formulaic strategy (e.g. Detective Conan) -- where the characters in each world aren't important and are disposable -- you could probably get away with full self-contained plot in 23 minutes. This kind of strategy works better if you have a lot of episodes though, because the plot requirements make it so that you don't have a lot of freedom to develop more non-plot things since each episode would be so jam packed.

I think you have a lot of good stuff you're working with!

 

First thing I need is supercomputer then find group of nerd, anime fanatic and fan artist. Then told them feel free to make anime of your dream and wait, also don't forget give them snack and drink.

Did you know why I chose them? Because they definitely will pour more effort than man who just seeking money.

 

Expect the problems to be something like what an introverted teen who has family disputes hiding himself in books and anime but hoping to see himself interact with society. Take it as a child growing into an adult and during the times he faces problems in real life (Either his imagination /or a parrallel life in which said impossibility occured) and how he faces those problems in those lives and using it to change his real life( e.g. Like his distant parents). The side characters are either his imagination or parrallel lives characters so his real life characters will be used there (e.g. that mean teacher may be an evil general under a tyrant king).

 

1. Optional Question: What is your 13 episode outline? What is the main theme of your anime? What is the targeted demographic and genres?
One of the few I believe well done game that should have been made into a movie was “ Killer Instinct “ live action.

As to anime. I could name a few anime I wish had a second season...
Highschool Of The Dead
The Irregular At Magic Highschool

As to books into shows.
Wheel Of time series
Honor Harrington series
The Lost Regiment series

Conrad Stargard series
13 episode outline-
1. Original timeline 2000s
2. In the past
3. Settling down
4. Industry
5. Town building
6. City building
7. Expanding
8. Innovating
9. Shifting on to a war footing
10. War
11. Khan
12. Battle
13. Victory

Theme: Time traveler that doesn’t want to die.

Target demographic: Men and kids.

2. Optional Question: Would you make a proposal based something you like? Or would you try to be "meta" and guess what the producer (@lychee) likes?
I’d base it on something I like. I choose this route because the drive in my heart will burn fiercely for a story I choose. You need the drive to see it get done right.

3. Optional Question: Fruitable Studios doesn't have its own in-house animation team. Instead, we use our boatload of money to subcontract the animation work to other animation studies. Which animation studios / animators would you want us to subcontract the work to? Do you have an idea for voice actors and soundtrack/music?
I would choose certain countries over others. I like Korea and Japanese studio styles. As to voice actors/ actresses. No. Not really. As to music. Since this is a medieval setting. I guess classical is best. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven sounds about right.

4. Optional Question: What factors are important for making a good television anime?
Keep to the fans ideas. Film it the long way. Film everything. Then trim it for the broadcast, but keep the other footage for extended version for the dvd release. Like Lord Of The Rings.

5. Optional Question: Why do you think your anime will be a successful hit?
I don’t. What I hope is to bring more people to the joy of reading.

 

1. Optional Question: What is your 13 episode outline? What is the main theme of your anime? What is the targeted demographic and genres?
A handsome, intrepid Nobody is isekai’d to this world. He must figure out how to interact with the Earthlings, how to get home, and how to get cookies. For both genders and all ages.
Fan service will be at a minimum or non-existent. If there’s any fan service, it will be of the MC.
2. Optional Question: Would you make a proposal based something you like? Or would you try to be "meta" and guess what the producer (@lychee) likes?
What I like?
3. Optional Question: Fruitable Studios doesn't have its own in-house animation team. Instead, we use our boatload of money to subcontract the animation work to other animation studies. Which animation studios / animators would you want us to subcontract the work to? Do you have an idea for voice actors and soundtrack/music?
MC must be voiced by Kenichi Suzumura in Japanese, Ryan Sean O'Donohue in the dub. Music will be composed by Yoko Shimomura with OP and ED by Hikaru Utada.
4. Optional Question: What factors are important for making a good television anime?
Good story.
5. Optional Question: Why do you think your anime will be a successful hit?
Because it’s about me.

 

1. Optional Question: What is your 13 episode outline? What is the main theme of your anime? What is the targeted demographic and genres?

Let's see, a story of a UK citizen going to Japan, saving girls wearing a cardigan and using a bastard sword, while locals fawn and adore his every move, how cool and powerful his sword is, and how UK food is so much better than Japanese food... especially blood pudding is so tasty that old and young alike cry tears of joy after tasting it only once, and women can't get enough of the fruit cakes he cooks.

Additionally locals all the time acknowledge that their culture is just so much worse than the UK guy's that everything he suggests is immediately much better than what they had ever seen and must be immediately adopted, especially their technology and house insulation practices.

All the cute girls he sees also immediately fall for his body, since Japanese obviously aren't strong when it comes to pure lust; ugly girls and males in general are all selfish bad people who want to kill him, but he'll show them what a revenge means!

Anyhow, all of this obviously because the UK guy is superior in every way to the Japanese people, because the UK race is just simply superior and they can only happily submit to their role as the master race's slaves that the UK guy can exploit as much as he wants.

Also all Japanese inhabitants act constantly subservient in front of their imperialist conqueror, and know exactly where in UK is Lancaster and how the blood pudding over there is especially tasty in that one place behind the railway station.

Oh, as a bonus, we could throw some popular historical characters like William Wallace, Shakespeare or Charles Dickens gender bent as beautiful female idols who culturally dominate the whole country and are as popular as garden gnomes in a British garden.

2. Optional Question: Would you make a proposal based something you like? Or would you try to be "meta" and guess what the producer (@lychee) likes?

If it wasn't evident, my proposal would be full of sarcasm to see if they can even understand how horrible the general plots they approve are.

3. Optional Question: Fruitable Studios doesn't have its own in-house animation team. Instead, we use our boatload of money to subcontract the animation work to other animation studies. Which animation studios / animators would you want us to subcontract the work to? Do you have an idea for voice actors and soundtrack/music?

Well, maybe subcontract a animation studio like Pixar and voice actors from China, since not all animation comes from Japan.

4. Optional Question: What factors are important for making a good television anime?

A story that has enough readers on syosetu and has basically no depth or originality whatsover... as long as it has women, bath scenes, katanas, an idiotic protagonist, tournament and domestic violence/rape, it's all good.

5. Optional Question: Why do you think your anime will be a successful hit?

It won't, because they don't want to acknowledge how their prided anime is not after all as good and great as they think, because a lot of the time they let their "tradition" and "tropes" that "work" strangle all creativity and immersion in its crib.​