Animation : 11 minutes vs half hour episodes (which is better) by OB Nwani

Who's your audience? Both formats exist quite happily in today's world so I'd think it's as much about audience expectation and where you intend to show it as anything, Thirty minutes is bite-sized entertainment to an adult but 11 minutes is an epic to a five year old.

Thanks Jeff my audience is kids and family, but my target audience is ages 9-12 at least

As a distributor, I advise DON'T DO 11min EPISODES and do not write 30 minute episodes. Right 22 to 24 minute episodes or 42 to 44 minute episodes. This is because an 11 minute episode is only a short, and the market for your short product is very limited and will not pay very much. However, if it is a 22 to 24 minute episode, it is easier to sell to the public for a reasonable price, and if it is a 42 to 44 minute episodes the same thing applies. But also, those two lengths of product can also open up actual television timeslots. Because they fit neatly into a 30 minute time slot or a one hour time slot. As for an actual 30 minute episode, it does not fit into any television timeslots. However, it may still be fine on streaming services.

I think it matters on your platform distribution goals/plan. For TV/streaming services, you gotta do the half hour. There are some examples of micro-length animation and live action things on places like Netflix, but they are few and far between. The half hour format just makes more sense given how the audience is trained to consume media on those platforms. But for something like YouTube or other direct access formats, then 11 minutes works or might even be too long.

I'm in a similar situation now where the animated series I'm working on started with half hour and has now shifted to 5 minute webisodes.

Thanks for the advice shadow my pilot script is roughly about 28 pages so that might fit to the 22-24 minute episode mark.

Great advice Terrence yeah a mentor of mine suggest to make my animated series a half hour if I want to take it to a TV or streaming service, so I may do that instead of two 11 minute segments

Hi, I recommend this: if you plan to show your animation on platforms like youtube, 11 mins are good to keep your audience interested. If your plan is to take it to tv channels or platforms like netflix, go for the 22 minutes option, never do an exact 30 or 60 minutes long video because you have to consider aprox 8 minutes every half an hour required for the commercial slot, at the end, that's why those channels exist.

Good advice William! I'll keep that in mind.

Check out Kidscreen and looks at what the world markets are doing. There ads for Kidscreen and Animation Magazine that show episode lengths from around the word. You can see what the majority of the lengths are for your audience as well as what is trending. I've been told that for Preschool then 7-9 minutes is popular thanks to shows like Bluey. It also depends if you are producing or just pitching., Streamers are more open to length since the most are not adhering to broadcast formulas,