>>448
>>449
A higher budget for an episode does not necessarily have to correspondent to more drawings. Just as higher budget overall doesn't say much about the average amount of individual drawings for the show.
Gundam Seed's budget was high because it was a prime-time show, thus they had to pay more for the slot. Additionally there was of course a lot of money spent on marketing and stuff. That goes for most Sunrise shows though. If you look at those charts with the most expensive anime, you'll see that there are many Sunrise shows on them. Gundam is a given but there's also quite some stuff from late '90s and early '00s on them, back when Sunrise didn't yet convert to the late-night anime trend which was starting (with Seraphim Call being perhaps the only exception).
Episode directors, storyboarders and animation directors get a fixed payment, which very well varies on the standing of the persons hired. Cheap productions will often fill those positions with inexperienced people to decrease the pay and thus budget. Think Crescent Love where Tanaka Hironori and others were hired as ADs despite having barely any experience as animators at that time and none as AD, the result were some infamous episodes. On the other hand hiring a well-regarded director for a single episode will also go down into the budget.
There's more than that of course, like outsourcing to overseas companies (China, Korea, Vietnam) and paying less to those companies for the same amount of drawings and so on. Guest artists will increase the cost, so does hiring people for extra history/whatever research on an episode. In the end the overall budget doesn't say much about the show, aside of re-establishing the slot it was aired in. Just as episode budget differences don't necessarily mean a difference in quality or drawings count.