How an animation gets made

Making an animation can be a complicated process, but it shouldn’t be complicated for you! That’s why we’ve put together a simple guide to what you can expect while we do all of the work!

Consultation:

An important first step! We’ll use this meeting to get to know you and your ideas. With your input, we’ll map out video objectives, touch on topics like art style and voice-over options, and start brainstorming some ideas! The more information you can give us at this stage, whether it’s showing us any existing branding you have or sending through a technical document for us to read, the better!

Of course, there’s also the elephant in the room to be addressed: price! We can always give rough estimates beforehand, but with the information gathered in this meeting, we’ll be able to give you a more accurate idea of cost and turnaround time.

This step has no commitment and is free of charge! If you like what you see or hear, then we can look at drawing up a full proposal and getting started on the exciting journey that follows!

Building Blocks

A vital part of any animation project is figuring out exactly what we’re going to animate! Based on the first meeting we have and any follow-up information you’ve sent us, we’ll put on our storytelling hats and weave together all of the key points in a concise and engaging way. We often start with a written narrative outline, which we’ll then send to you for approval to make sure we’re checking all of the boxes and not leaving anything out!

You can think of a storyboard as a comic strip; it’ll show how things will be visualised, the composition, and how scenes will flow into one another. The art style in the storyboard is only rough and not how the final animation will look. That’s where our character artists come in! They’ll create a range of art styles and character designs for you to choose from, which serve as a building block for everything else.

Once it’s all ready, we’ll have another meeting with you to run you through the storyboard and character designs and get your input. If there are any tweaks that need to be made, we’ll get these implemented and send you the updated versions shortly after.

Refine and Design

Now that the storyboard is finalised and we have a direction for the art style, we’ll start planning out how everything will look in its final form! This will involve refining the selected character design, drawing up any supporting characters or extra costumes, setting and background designs, and creating a bespoke set of icons. We’ll choose a few panels from the storyboard and turn them into fully realised concept shots, showing you how the final scenes will look.

At this stage, we’ll also write up the final version of the script and provide you with some samples of voice actors to choose from.

It’s vital that everything is perfect at this point (it’s difficult to change things later), so we’ll be quite rigorous in implementing any feedback you may have. Once finalised, we’ll move onto the next step!

Animation time!

Once the design work and script are complete, it’s time to animate! This is where the magic happens; it’s a quite complicated step, and there won’t be much for us to show until it’s all finished, so we usually go a bit quiet while things are brought to life!

While we animate, we’ll be in touch with the voice actor and book a recording session to produce the final audio.

When everything is complete we’ll send you the fully rendered and edited animation for you to view!

If you have any feedback, we can look at implementing it in a final amendment stage. Changes at this stage are limited to simple changes such as colours and text, as changing anything now can be very labour intensive. This is why we are so rigorous in the earlier steps, and usually no changes are needed!