Hi, I think it depends on the complexity and the quality you're going for, there's a big difference between smooth and satisfying animation and rough and jagged. For 40 seconds, I think first draft can be ready after 3-4 days of full time work, then polish extra ~3 days. If the animation requires complex visuals, with topics you may not be familiar with such as physics, electricity schematics, etc. You have to take research into consideration, also complex simulations, such as water, smoke, fire, etc. Can drastically increase the production time. Even if you use real time solutions for simulations, it's still takes time to set it up properly and make sure it looks good in the scene. Hard to nail it down to a realistic timeline due to different factors, but usually within 2 weeks majority of the animations below 50 seconds can be done

Character animation, the most difficult and important part of the animation

@Maksim Baruskov the prices fluctuate, depending on what clients you get and market prices, more recently for a generic 3d animation for youtube the price seems to go down

@Maksim Baruskov I would suggest focusing on improving you character animation and camera movement. Try to avoid the clipping, and position the fingers accurately

Depends on the length, if you have multiple characters doing very specific actions, it's going to take quite some time to animate, which is normal. For me it usually takes 1 week to animate 30 seconds. You can check out Mixamo and reallusion mocap packs, that could save you some time. Also AI mocap solutions

Character Creator 5, is pretty good but it's quite expensive. Metahumans are free and really good quality directly in Unreal. For clothes I usually either generate the mesh with AI and texture manually, or marvelous designer sim