Why is Medical Animation So Expensive to Create?

I've had a number of inquiries over the years regarding the process of creating medical animations for educational purposes, especially given the decent number of animations I have produced over the years. Beyond the active role of "directing" the animation, I actually hire professional medical animators to do the actual creation, bringing to life what I imagine in my mind.

In other blog articles, I have already discussed how to go about informing the animator what I want and will not be discussed further here.

BUT, the big elephant in the room is cost. It is EXPENSIVE to create medical animation and often people are surprised by how much... typically $5,000 - $10,000 a minute for 3D animation. There are tricks one can employ to drive this cost down as low as possible, but in the end, it still is expensive, but why?

Because it is extremely time consuming requiring not only artistic ability and a computer, but also knowledge in multiple different fields. A medical animator is part artist, sculptor, architect, mechanical engineer, construction worker, lighting engineer, and computer programmer all rolled into one.

Below are two videos that show 3D objects being created using Blender, a free 3D animation software... never mind the animation... this is just creating the object to be used in animations. One can clearly get a sense of the time involved to make.

The first video is an iPhone 6 smartphone and the second is a house.