I understand that the animators for a given show are normally paid by the cut/frame, meaning the more animation budget a show has, the more frames it will have. I assume shows normally will get a fixed amount of money/frames per episode (IIRC Toei always put Precure episodes at ~3500 drawings, except for special occasions like HC #48 or Smile #47), so the correlation between amount of frames (regardless of how well they're used) and money is pretty linear.
Where does this leave studios like Kyoani or Ghibli which pay animators a fixed salary based on hours of work? If I'm interpreting this correctly, a Kyoani show wouldn't have a "budget" in the normal sense since they animators are going to get paid in relation to the time spent working, which in turn directly correlates to schedule. So the amount of drawings a given show by these studios has isn't directly proportional to the budget, meaning Nichijou wouldn't necessarily be more expensive than any other given Kyoani show even if it has the most amount of frames.
If they DO have a budget, how does it work? They have a fixed amount of work hours which will vary per show? This doesn't seem very likely. Do they work less than they could potentially work for a "low budget" show? or do they get turned into slaves for shows like Nichijou/whatever takes the most time to animate?
The correlation between amount of frames and money spent doesn't seem so linear here. Does anyone know in detail how this works?