Somewhere between the animatic and the first render, the client's business partner sees it for the first time.
He has notes. They are good notes, in the sense that they would have been good notes at the storyboard stage, three weeks ago, when moving a scene was a matter of redrawing two frames. Now the scene is animated, the transitions depend on it, and the change he is describing in one sentence is four days of work. Nobody on the client side can see that. To them it is a video with a bit they would like different.
Motion design is priced at its gates or it is not priced at all.
The gates
Script, storyboard, animatic, animation, delivery. Each one is a point where the client signs something off, and each sign-off changes what a revision costs. The whole discipline of quoting motion work is getting those gates into the agreement, with a sentence attached to each one saying that changes to an approved stage are a new round at a stated price.
The sentence is not there to be enforced. It is there so the client, when the business partner surfaces in week five, already knows the answer and can decide for themselves whether the change is worth the money. Most of them decide it is not. Some decide it is. Both outcomes are fine, and neither is an argument.
The revision round, defined per stage
A round in motion work is not one thing. A round of script changes is an afternoon. A round of storyboard changes is a day. A round after animation is a week. The quote should count rounds per stage, define a round as one consolidated set of notes from the whole client side, and price a further round at each stage separately. Without the per-stage definition, two rounds means whichever two are most expensive.
Music, formats, and the things that are not the animation
A music licence is a cost and a decision: a stock track sourced at a stated price, or a track the client supplies with a licence that covers where the video will run. A licence bought under your own account generally does not transfer to the client, and broadcast or paid-media use changes what the licence costs. Voice-over is a separate line with its own rounds. Every format is a deliverable with a count: the master, the cut-downs, the vertical and square versions, and a reformat for a vertical frame is real work when type has to be rebuilt. Render time and turnaround belong in the timeline with dates, and a rush is priced as buying the front of the queue rather than absorbed.
The gates, written into the agreement
You paste the notes from the brief call. North drafts the proposal as three options that are different amounts of work, which in motion usually means length and format count: a thirty-second piece in one format; sixty seconds with cut-downs; the piece, the cut-downs and the vertical versions with a voice-over. Inside each option the scope is countable (the running time, the number of formats, the rounds at each stage, with a round defined) and each item is followed by a sentence about its job for this client, drawn from the brief. Each option defends its number by naming the parts of the scope that carry it.
You edit it, add your per-stage revision terms if the draft has not caught them, and press send yourself. The client reads it at a private link, accepts, and is shown the agreement, drafted alongside from the same scope; they verify their email once and sign. After signing, the accepted option can become stages that are your gates, with dates spread across the agreed timeline: script, storyboard, animatic, animation, delivery. You tick each one off as it is approved, and the client watches them from the room, so sign-off is a visible event rather than a "looks good" in a thread. Finished stages become invoice lines that remember what has been billed. Stages, and card payment on your own Stripe account, are part of the paid plan; the invoices, the reminders you choose to send, and the room are not.
The draft can be shown in the same room, and the client's note on it reaches you in full, which is a better place for the business partner's notes than his own email to the founder.
What North does not do for motion
North does not deliver renders, host video, or run frame-accurate review; the client's note on shown work is a note, not a timecode comment. It does not source or license music. It will not tell you how long the render will take. What it holds is the document that says which stage the project is in, who approved the last one, and what a change now costs.
Common questions
- How do I stop clients changing the storyboard after animation has started?
- Make storyboard approval a named stage with a written sign-off, and state in the terms that changes to an approved board after animation begins are a new round at a stated price. The client is not being difficult when they ask; they simply have no way to see that the frame they want moved is attached to forty others. The stage makes the cost visible at the moment it is still cheap.
- Who pays for the music licence in a motion project?
- The client, and the quote should say so, whether you are sourcing a stock track on their behalf at a stated cost or they are supplying a licensed track. A licence bought under your own account is usually not transferable to them, and the use (paid media, broadcast, one region or worldwide) changes the price of the licence itself. Naming it in the proposal avoids the discovery, at delivery, that the track cannot legally run where the video is going.
- How should I quote different aspect ratios and cut-downs?
- As separate deliverables with counts: one sixty-second master at 16:9, one thirty-second cut-down, one 9:16 and one 1:1 version of each. A reformat is real work, particularly when type and composition have to be rebuilt for a vertical frame, and a quote that says 'the video' will be read as including every version somebody thinks of later.