The Anatomy of an Animated Video
Animated videos look crisp, colorful, and beautifully dynamic on screen, but unless you’ve dissected one — you have no idea just how complex the process is to create one. Don’t worry, this isn’t a flash back to high school biology. But it is an important lesson that will help you become more familiar with your role as the client in an animated video project. Yuckiness aside, you’re about to discover just how much value is packed inside every video we create.
The Juice Session (1-2 Hours)
A discovery meeting that gives the creative team a sense of your brand’s flavor.
This meeting lasts 1-2 hours. Prepare to have your brain picked as we find out all about your:
Brand Personality
Target Audiences
Manner of Speaking
Style
Purpose
Business Goals
Budget
Timeline
The Script (1-2 weeks)
The message you want to deliver, professionally written as a compelling, informative, concise, conversational story.
You’ll have two review periods to make sure we nailed the story and brand voice. After final approval, there’s no going back! Just kidding, we can always make additional changes, but you may incur additional fees.
The Storyboard (1-2 weeks)
A rough, scene-by-scene sketch of all the main actions that will appear visually on screen.
Storyboarding helps designers, animators, and the client visualize — not just WHAT will be on the screen — but HOW the visual story will unfold in tandem with the script.
VIDEO TIP! Multiple parts of your animated video will be developed at the same time to shorten the total amount of production time.
VIDEO TIP! Not all videos require all the parts we dissect here.
The Design (1 week)
The branding and preliminary illustration of your video’s visual components.
Designers use your style guide or branding parameters to conceptualize the universal aesthetic of your video, including color pallet, text size, font, icons, backgrounds, etc. You may even get to meet the characters that will star in your video!
The Style Frames (1 week)
The full-color mock-up of a few video scenes — absent of motion.
This is where your video really starts to take shape! We will provide another review period to make sure you dig the design before we finish creating the frames and send them to animation.
The Voiceover (1 week)
The audio recording of a professional voiceover artist reading the video script with exact annunciation, tone, and inflections.
A song is only as good as its singer. The same can be said of a video and its voiceover artist. Your creative team will help review auditions and select an artist that emulates your brand and the story being told.
The Board-o-Matic (1 week)
The rough rendering for how text, images, and motion graphics will appear and move about the frames of your video.
Animated videos sometimes involve text and other motion graphics that fade in and out of scenes. Our animators beautifully choreograph this movement so that its fluidly ties into what audiences see and hear.
The Animatic (1 week)
The rough sketch outline of the video storyboard in motion.
This is when the magic happens! Animatic is a preliminary stage of animation that results in a black and white rendering of the movements that will take place in each scene; all carefully timed with the script, voiceover, and music.
The Music (2-3 days)
The audio that will enliven the visual experience, bridge scenes together, and compel the audience to engage on a deeper level.
This is our favorite part! We find music that enhances the story and evokes the exact emotion we want viewers to experience. We also compose original music and beats. Heck…we might even rap for you! But keep in mind, custom music takes more time and money to produce.
VIDEO TIP! Plan for roughly 6-8 weeks to custom create a 2-minute animated video.
Full Production (2-3 weeks)
The full-scale development and integration of all your animated video’s parts.
This is the home stretch! While you anxiously await your finished product, we are all hands on deck making sure every detail falls perfectly into place, including full-color, full-detail animation, voiceover, and music.
Final Review Period (2-5 days)
The semi-final animated video, delivered to you for one last check-check-double-check!
We loved working with you but it’s time to wrap this up! Final review is a crucial phase that depends on your prompt participation and feedback. Thanks to the numerous checks we built into your production experience, the semi-final video will be on-point! However, if you see anything you’d like tweaked, we’ll make final adjustments before finalization.
Delivery
Your finished, polished, finalized, beautiful customized animated video!
That’s a wrap! After any last minute adjustments are made, we will finalize your video and deliver it to you on a silver platter (not really). But we will host your video and make sure you have all the file formats you need. We also send you a URL for the video and embed code so that you can publish your striking new video on your website or intranet!