Needing motion constantly is a different problem from needing one video. It doesn't get solved by hiring the same way, and it usually doesn't get solved by hiring at all.
One senior animator. A set amount of my month, held for you. No re-briefing, no onboarding, no wondering who is actually doing the work.
Fixed scope is the right shape when you know exactly what you want and you want it once. It is the wrong shape when priorities move. Every new project restarts the clock: a brief, a quote, a calendar negotiation, and me relearning your product. If that is happening every six weeks, you are paying for onboarding over and over instead of paying for animation.
A reserved block of my month, agreed up front. Inside it we work from a running list rather than one fixed deliverable, so priorities can shift without renegotiating anything. Same animator every time, which means the tenth video takes far less explaining than the first.
We set the queue at the start of the month and reorder it whenever you need to. Work comes back in weekly check-ins rather than one nervous reveal at the end. Anything unfinished rolls to the top of the next month, so nothing gets lost between cycles.
Product and UI motion, feature announcements, explainers, launch films, social cutdowns, conference loops, brand animation, and the endless small pieces nobody budgets for but everybody needs. If it moves and it carries your name, it is in scope.
Animation takes as long as it takes, so I am not going to pretend a tier makes me faster. What changes is how much can be in flight at the same time, how quickly it comes back, and how much of the small stuff you stop having to budget for.
Keeping the lights on. For teams with a trickle rather than a pipeline — cutdowns, iterations, small product moments. Not a new hero film every month, and I would rather say that now than have you discover it in month two.
For teams where motion is part of the weekly rhythm. Launches, features, product moments, social cutdowns — without scoping and quoting each one as if we had never met.
For teams whose roadmap has outpaced one animator. I assemble a crew around the work and stay on it as lead, so it still looks like one hand made it.
A senior motion designer in-house runs well over $150,000 a year once you count benefits and equipment, and you still have to keep them busy. The point of a retainer is not that I am cheaper per video — it is that you stop paying for the three weeks of briefing, quoting and scheduling that sit in front of every project, and the small pieces finally become worth asking for.
Thirty minutes. Tell me how much motion you actually need and how often. If a retainer is wrong for you I will say so and we will scope a project instead.