How do I pitch a BIG software purchase to my employer?

[MasonDoran]

lol....sounds like a typical misconception of Internet companies of doing 3d work. Flying logos is easy....3d characters is a hell of a lot of work. heck, in the game company i work for .....with 4 artists we can manage with a 3-5 month art production cycle for a budget game....


The most reasonable solution is outsourcing to 3d artists that already own the software. It sounds like a lot of work if you need all of that software, and from my own experience...Internet companies can only afford 2 to 6 weeks of production time if they expect to make a profit.

I should suspect that you would have to work closely with the freelancers...


For a convincing bid you will have to explain the time/cost for the bells and whistles versus something that you can feasibly do with maya complete single handedly. As an artist i am sure you would love to do it all, but they think like a business and that means balancing time, quality and cost(choose 2).

[BigSky]

I'd suggest that you do a storyboard now, with pencil and paper, and use that to pitch your treatment. If your boss is positive, then that's an easy segway into "okay, so I'll have to ramp up the tech and the people for something like this. I need...(insert list here)". So your boss might say "yea, cool" or "no.", but you still haven't lost the animation...you just need to storyboard it again. Do you really need shave & a haircut? Is there another way you can conceive of the characters? Go for telling the story, and you'll be animating. Go for the tech, and it may be back to CSS and XML...

[Nicool]

Talk him about what interest him. How much he will gain, how faster the workflow could be, how easier it will be to find new skilled employee... publishing/multimedia company : then take teh alias.com commercial demonstrations about these domains (web/flash export, print workflow)

Sorry for out topic

[Castiglion]

Thanks for the comments.

I think I'll probably have to convince them to scale back on their idea for doing an animated short and settle for just getting After Effects. Thats the only tool I really couldn't do the project without...I need the ability to composite render passes. I'm hoping though that if I manage to pull off this project, that they'll be more open to investing money in the "bells and whistles" for future projects.

[twedzel]

Be realistic, do your homework, be thourough on what you'll need (create a budget) and then pitch it in a well presented, clear and proffesional manner. Your goal is to convince the money people that it makes good sense to invest in it. Try to look at it through their eyes, how will investing all this money pay itself back to the company? What is the benefit to investing beyond one of our employees doing some cool shorts? Make sure that you are confident in what you are requesting, and that you have used the programs befor asking someone else to put good money in to them.

However saying this you'll obviously need to nip a problem in the bud befor you are left hanging out to dry without a paddle (how many more cliches can I get into a sentence?) . As part of the proposal you'll need to do some educating with the amount of man hours and CPU time that a project like this will actually take. Also take time to educate the higher ups on what is realistically attianable and what would be foolish to undertake.

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