Finance

Financial studies relevant to my roles as a screenwriter, and 3D animator.

For the portfolio unit, I made a budgeting sheet to reflect expenses and income I encounter as a student. A budgeting sheet is a spreadsheet where person(s) or a business records their expenses, incomes and savings. This is extremely important as it provides a level of financial organisation:

tracking income and expenses in one place,
spending, savings, and incomes are quantifiable and numbered which gives specificity,
calculating disposable income across each period; and,
reveals spending patterns.

After having made this sheet, I feel as though I became acutely more aware of my habits when it comes to spending.

I spend a lot of money on food, which is reasonable since it is required to live. But my eating out habits are considerably more expensive than I would like, so that is an area I would be targeting to reduce in order to lower my expenses.
I have a family Spotify account with some close friends and family, so my cost is split. I don't have any additional streaming services since most of my entertainment comes from YouTube, so Spotify is my only current entertainment subscription.
My broadband charges are inclusive with my rent, so I have tied it to my phone charges for simplicity,
I currently have no work expenditure in terms of software subscriptions or the like, since I am a student and I get Maya and Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

However, this was simply the spending and incomes I have as a student; which does not reflect the expenses and income I will encounter as a freelancer/artist/writer. Using my research into Salary and Potential Day Rates for my roles and any additional expenses, such as software, I may encounter. So I made a second budgeting sheet to reflect that, which you can see below.

Upon working through my budgeting for after graduation, I had some interesting realisations.

Currently, I get Maya and Adobe's Creative Cloud package (which I use After Effects and 3D Substance Painter) for free as a student. After graduation, I would need to pay for the subscriptions each month.
- Procreate Dreams, which I have experimented with and calculated under "Hobbies" expenses, could be a potential substitute for After Effects. Not entirely replacing it, but it is a possibility in consideration.
Blender, which I have experimented with in my Pipeline, is free and does not require any costs to use. While it isn't a replacement for Maya since Maya is still dominating the 3D Animation Industry in terms of software, Blender provides a new means of animating without adding to my work expenses.
Since I would no longer be a student, I would be required to pay council tax.

This was a really eye-opening discussion to do, and I feel far more confident in my abilities to understand financial prospects as an artist, since that is one of (if not) the biggest foreseen difficulties with artists' careers.

Savings and pensions are incredibly important to artists and workers. It is incredibly important to have savings in case of any unforeseen major expenses and building up enough money to enjoy your life. I have identified three types of savings: Short-Term, Medium (or Media) Term, and Long Term.

Short Term Savings typically cover 0 to 3 months work of living expenses and are for potential cases of income drought. To make this, it would be the most important to being saving up for since this would cover my direct living expenses in the immediate future. As seen on the image on the left, I have currently placed a portion of my currently culmulative income (about £650) from part-time work over two years into a fixed deposit with a 4.50% Annual Equivelent Rate (AER). Currently I have recieved £3.06 since late October 2023, and this has been recent so building the savings pot will increase over time.

A good example would be the SAG-AFTRA and Writer’s Strike that happened earlier this year (from May to December 2023), whereby artists in the industry were facing mass layoffs and struggling to find work. This, however, is not an occurrence which happens frequently; but it is important to have. With The Animation Guild of America's current contract ending at the end of July 2024 and The Guild preparing for negotiation, this might be a good savings plan to have post-graduation.

Medium (or Media) Term Savings typically cover 3 to 6 months of expenses and are for necessary yet infrequent expenses: if I would need to repair my plumbing in case of a maintenance issue, or go on a travel back home. For this I would put away 5% of my income at a time and since I would be needing to cover up to 6 months of expenses, I would need to build up to that. So if my daily rate is £62.88 (after tax) and I work 5 days a week, that means the amount of money I put away each week for Medium Term Savings is £15.72.

Long Term Savings typically cover 2+ years of expenditure, and are for when I decide I want to stop working altogether. The main way this is achieved is via Pensions. Pensions are an interesting topic for me, since I am on a Tier 4 visa and will have to apply for work visas soon after my graduation. I did some research into the applicability for pensions international students and workers have, and I found some pretty new information which surprised me.

According to Gov.uk, to be applicable for pensions as a UK resident, I would need to make 10 qualifying years of National Insurance contributions either voluntarily or through an employer in the UK. These ten years do not need to be consistent, which is very helpful considering I do have international responsibilities outside of the UK post-graduation. Social security contributions made in the European Economic Area (EAA), European Union (EU), or Switzerland help me qualify for UK pensions.

This surprised me since there are often strict restrictions for non-UK nationals as opposed to UK citizens. Although this is an additional cost I will have to consider, it is extremely important to add this to my expenses as reflected in my Budgeting Sheet for after I graduate.

After building short-term and media-term pots as a freelancer, it would be good to contribute about £100 per month to long-term pensions. I found this analysis chart from MoneyHelper which explains how freelancers saving and contributing to pensions earlier in life could help in multiplying the amount received. They make assumptions about tax charges, savings growth rate, and factoring inflation which are aspects I wasn't even aware of.

It is essential to know how much my roles’ average salary totals in order to not be undervalued and receive an amount appropriate for your services, aware of making informed decisions for negotiations, and a general idea of what to expect in my role in the industry. My roles are quite different from one another, so it is important to look at both separately since their responsibilities vary.

3D Character Performance Animator

According to Payscale, the median salary for an Animator in the United Kingdom is £24,907 per year, approximately £14.00 per hour. As seen below, Payscale also showcases pay charts according to amount of experience in role, which for my three years of experience fitting within 1 to 4 years would be £24,000 annually.

Through Payscale, a 3D animator in the United Kingdom has an average base salary of £26,558 annually, approximately £14.74 per hour. This fits my role as an Early Career artist with 3 years of experience in that role of a 3D animator.

Glassdoor is another really incredible resource for understanding from many sources how much salary and pay rates are. Junior 3D animators did not have enough data, but based off one source the average payment was £27,815 per year (with 0 to 1 year of experience). I don’t think this is a very reliable or well-founded result, but it is important to mention since it is within the range of Payscale’s data.

Meanwhile, Glassdoor estimates a Mid 3D Animator’s salary in the UK averages to about £42,095 per year. This has very reliable data due to the wide pool of 165 anonymous salaries submitted, updated as recently as 28 Nov 2023, and even has a variety of companies payments for roles: including (but not limited to) DNEG and Jellyfish Pictures, two of the companies I identified in my research.

Glassdoor provides the average salary for Freelance Animators, to about £43,275 annually.

Scriptwriter/Screenwriter

According to Glassdoor, Freelance Writer in the UK averages to £31,531 annually.

Glassdoor also estimates a Screenwriter averages a salary of £40,580 based on 43,200 salaries submitted anonymously from workers in the UK.

According to Payscale, the average script writer salary is £33,000 annually. The issue is the reliability of the results, since it uses a small pool of data. It does enter the range of the Freelance Writer, but it doesn’t make it reliable.

SIDigital Animation

Finance