Studio capacity planning for small creative studios

The short answer

Count the hours each person can actually spend on client work in a week, which is closer to 25 than 40. Add them up, take off 10 to 15% for rework and surprises, and that is the studio's weekly capacity. Compare it with the hours of the jobs you have in the next four to six weeks, spread over the weeks they will really happen. Because jobs wait on client feedback, you can run more projects than the raw hours suggest, but only if the waiting is on the plan. Freelancers cover peaks. When the plan is over 90% for more than two weeks, move a start date or say no.

Why "how many projects" is the wrong question

A studio does not run out of projects, it runs out of hours in particular weeks. Four small product jobs and one large animation are very different loads, and the same five jobs are fine if they are spread over two months and impossible if they all need lighting in the same week. So the unit is hours per week, per person, and the question is which weeks are full.

The number of projects matters for something else: attention. Each active project costs some time in emails, calls and switching, whatever its size. That is the reason a studio of four running twelve tiny jobs feels busier than the same studio on three big ones at the same hours.

Step 1: real billable hours per person

Start with a working week and take out what is not client work. For a small studio, an example looks like this:

The owner's line looks worse, often 10 to 15 client hours, because sales and admin fall on them. Be honest about it. A plan that counts the owner as a full-time artist is the most common reason small studios overbook.

The hourly rate calculator uses the same logic to work out what an hour has to cost, and the day rate calculator does it from a target income. Your capacity and your rate come from the same numbers.

Step 2: the studio's weekly capacity

A worked example. Harbour & Line is a four-person studio doing product renders and short animations:

So Harbour & Line has about 82 hours of client work a week to sell, not 160. Over four weeks, about 330 hours.

Step 3: lay the jobs over the weeks

Now take every confirmed and likely job, and spread its hours over the weeks the work will happen, not evenly over the project's length. Feedback weeks need few hours; production weeks need many.

Week 3 is over by 21 hours. Weeks 1 and 2 have room. That is the whole use of the table: it shows the problem three weeks early, when it can still be solved by moving the furniture catalogue's start, booking a freelancer for week 3, or asking the kettle client for their feedback a day sooner.

Feedback time is capacity

A job that waits three days for client notes uses almost no studio hours in those days. This is why a studio can carry more projects than its hours suggest, and why it gets caught out: if every client replies on time, every job wants hours in the same week.

Two rules help. Put each feedback block on the plan as a dated block with the client's name on it, so the overlap is planned rather than hoped for. And do not book a job's production hours into another job's feedback week unless you have somewhere to put them if the notes come early. The guide on how to schedule a CGI project covers the feedback blocks in detail.

Freelancers are the overflow

Most small studios should be staffed for their average month and use freelancers for the peaks. In the example, 21 hours in week 3 is about three days of a freelance lighter. Two things make that work:

• Pieces that can be handed over. A furniture set, a product model from CAD, comp on two shots. Not "help in week 3".
• People already lined up. A freelancer found on Monday of the busy week is a freelancer who is booked elsewhere. Keep a short list and ask two weeks ahead.

Count the freelancer's cost on the job, and count the hours you spend briefing and reviewing them; it is usually one hour of yours for every four or five of theirs. Managing freelancers in a small 3D studio covers the handover.

Warning signs

You are over capacity, whatever the plan says, if:

• Internal checks get skipped because there is no time to look at work in progress.
• Every job is "almost done" and none is delivered.
• Feedback rounds take longer on your side than on the client's.
• The owner is lighting scenes on Sunday instead of quoting new work, which is how a full month turns into an empty one six weeks later.
• Hours on jobs are running past their budget across the board. The guide on project budget versus hours shows how to see it per job.

When to say no, or say later

When a new job would put any week over 90% for more than two weeks, you have three options, in this order:

1. Move the start. Most clients asked for "as soon as possible", not a date. Offer a start date two or three weeks out with a firm delivery; many accept.
2. Add a freelancer for the pieces that can be handed over, and price that into the quote.
3. Say no, or quote a rush fee high enough that you are happy either way.

Saying yes and absorbing it costs more than it looks. The work you do in overtime is billed at your normal price, the next job's quality drops, and someone on the team starts looking for another job.

When to hire

Hire when the plan has been over capacity more weeks than not for three months, and the freelance cost for those peaks is approaching what a salary would be. Hire for the stage that is always full (often lighting and rendering, or animation), not for the stage you would like to stop doing. One more person adds about 25 client hours a week, minus the weeks it takes them to learn how you work.

Doing this in OIO

OIO has no capacity chart or workload view. What it gives you is the data to build the table above without retyping. Every job is a project with its deliverables as tickets, each with an assignee and start and end dates, and the timeline lays a project's tickets out against those dates, so the heavy weeks of each job are visible. Hours are entered on each ticket by hand (there is no timer), and the project page shows the budget against what has been invoiced and paid.

Client feedback blocks can be tickets too, so the waiting is on the same timeline as the work. Freelancers on a peak get a link to their own ticket with no account and no seat, and their fee goes on the project in their currency. More on OIO for 3D studios.

Questions