Let’s start with the bad news…Here we are in a world where live action video is not an option for us. We cannot currently come onsite anywhere to produce the high quality content that we’re used to doing for our clients. We’re being forced to pivot into a post-production world of video editing, motion graphics and animation. The good news? We’ve been doing this for 12 years and we’re well positioned to continue executing this content for our clients. How? It’s experience and process.
Video animation is a popular way to showcase complex products, explanations, topics, or visuals that cannot be shot with live action video. Animation makes video content that’s easy to digest and simple to comprehend in a short amount of time. If you check out this article highlighting notable video designs of 2020, you’ll see that many of them are animated. The process, however, in getting from A-Z for an animated video project isn’t THAT simple. There’s always varying levels of animation and levels of the laborious processes that comes along with it, but regardless of the scope, we’ve mastered a process to mitigate the pitfalls and to always hit the mark.
5-Step Process for a smooth video animation project:
Phase 1 – Discovery + Content Outline:
In this phase we learn about your business, your goals, audience and your objectives. We will then work on a timeline for execution. We then require a very basic content outline from you so that your video is represented with the proper content.
Phase 2 – Assets + A/V Script:
Next, we write the full audio visual script based on the approved outline. This helps you understand what will be said by a narrator or text on screen and the visuals to accompany that. Once that’s in a good place we will custom design or source stock vector assets to work in with your brand assets. Then a sign-off and approval is required before moving on.
Phase 3 – Storyboard + Voiceover:
We next create a storyboard based on the approved script and visual concepts. We will also get a professional narrator (which you can have options to choose from) to record the VO. Again, sign-off and approval required before moving forward.
Phase 4 – Animatic + Animation:
We build a rough cut of the video based on the script and the approved storyboard/voiceover. This is also known as the animatic, which is a live but static version of the storyboard time out with music and the narration for pacing. This can take some rounds of revisions, which is OK during this time before we do the heavy lifting. This is where the magic happens. We begin animation! Depending on the length of the animation we might do this in chunks to make sure we’re going in the right direction. In the end, sign-off and approval are required before moving to the final phase of the project.
Phase 5 – Delivery + Distribution:
After the video animation is finalized, we package it into multiple formats and get it ready for downloading and embedding upon final approval. We can build out the final deliverables in different aspect ratios and make sure you’re covered on all your key platforms for distribution.
Conclusion
Animation is a fun and exciting way to engage your target audience. It is a blank slate where your creative ideas can be brought to life by the post production team at New Pace. There are a lot of decisions that need to be made when creating an animated video, but we will help you every step of the way. The only thing you have to do on your own is schedule a strategy session with one of our producers to go over your specific needs! Contact us here.
