As the demand for animated video continues to rise the Snackable team is on hand to help guide your through the water for your first project.

So you have decided that your brand or company needs an animated video – maybe several. Congratulations, you have decided to harness one of the most powerful digital mediums for educating and enlightening your staff and customers in the digital realm.

Animation is dynamic, flexible and has many cost and time saving efficiencies when compared to live action capture, but the process for making it is somewhat different to traditional forms of video making. Thus, it’s important to have an understanding of how a production agency like Snackable realises these projects.

Not only will this help you navigate through the various different stages of production but also increase the effectiveness and suitability of the end result. At Snackable, we work with a many industry-leading creative professionals to bring our client’s vision to life. From storyboard and sketch artists to illustrators, animators and motion designers, voice actor and sound designers, we bring the right team together from the outset to ensure your videos look, sound and move the way you want it to.

Before we move into the animation production process, it’s important to understand the various team members that will often be working on an animation project.

The Team

Producer – Your Snackable contact and project lead. The person responsible for your video.

Creative Director – The senior creative responsible with ensuring quality and control.

Illustrator – The person who develops the look and feel of your video.

Animator/motion designer – The person who makes the images move.

Voice Actor – The person who reads the script.

Sound Designer – The person who creates or mixes the music and voice over.

Before we move into the briefing process, it’s important to understand the Snackable approach to crafting an animated video. It helps you understand what is required at each stage and what needs to be signed off before moving onto the next step.

Vision and Structure

Stage 1:

The first stage of any project starts with research and briefing. This enables us to gather all the relevant material together to create an approach that fits any given client brief. From there we move into scripting, storyboarding the shots and frames we need to show and refining the look and feel of the aesthetic.

• Briefing

• Scripting

• Storyboarding

• Style Framing

• Motion Frames

Story Development

Stage 2:

Stage 2 builds on stage 1 and we don’t move on without locking in all of the components of the previous stage. This ensures we keep the project on track and on schedule. In the story development stage we refine our storyboard to its final iteration, record the script in the form of a voice over and create an anamatic. An anamatic shows the pacing of the video and demonstrates how the words and images will ultimately fit together. This enable us to make any changes or tweaks before we head into the animation process of making it all move.

• Illustrated storyboard

• Voice Over

• Anamatic

Animation Production

Stage 3:

Stage three brings all the creative, design and sound elements together. This is where we make everything move. We create the soundscape to breathe life and give pace to the voice over and add any additional transitions or motion graphics.

• Animation

• Sound Design / Music

• GFX

Delivery

Your video is now ready for delivery.

In order to get the best animated brand or video explainer it’s important that a brand manager can effectively communicate what they want and need. In order to do this it is often beneficial to create a clear briefing document which breaks down everything from the problem the video is looking to solve, the target audience they are looking to entertain or educate and any creative restrictions that need to be considered.

Creating A Great Brief

Start Off Right:

Many brand managers will be familiar with briefing documents. Often they are used to collate material for a variety of different projects. However there is no one way to create, write or deliver a brief and let’s face it, some are better than others. Animation is a unique process and so there is often a need to include additional information which is important to know at the initial stages.

For this reason we have created a Snackable briefing process to ensure we capture all the bits we need to deliver a truly impactful video to all of our clients.

A brief can take some time to fill and complete but it is an important step in outlying the problem a brand manager is looking to solve. The brief is what forms the basis for our creative response. As a strategically focused production company we pride ourselves on delivering content that not only looks and sounds great but is technically impactful too.

From a brief we draw up quotations and a scope of work and this helps us hone in on the best approach for our clients. Here we offer an overview of our briefing process. You can download a briefing form directly below or use our outline as a basis for your own.

Business Objectives

This is an overview of your project addressing the subject matter of the video and the desired outcome.

Target audience

This is the how, what, why and where and gives us an insight into the age, location and spending power of your target audience. We use this information to inform our creative direction.

Target Platform

Every platform has different optimisation requirements including video length and aspect ratio. Youtube favours longer form content whilst Facebook and Instagram prefer shorter videos. Linkedin has a unique aspect ratio and TikTok is primarily used by those under 21 years of age. Knowing where the video will be published helps us with our approach.

Messaging

What do you want to say? The best videos are simple videos, so it’s our job to get to the heart of what you want to say and we’ll work out the best way to say it.

Project Scale

Projects range from the very small to the very large. We’ve made hundreds of video explainers for brands, businesses and start ups as well as educational programming and animated TVCs. Each has its own nuanced approach so its beneficial to know the project scale up front.

Tone and Style

We understand that brands have varying requirements when it comes to style, colour palettes, character rendering and voice overs. We work will companies to find their voice through animation. Perhaps you have a style and visual language already or perhaps you need a hand creating one. We are well-versed with both approaches.

KPIs

We want our content to work in the best possible way for our clients. That’s why we ask for your KPIs in order to know how you and your superiors will be judging the success of the content. This helps us prioritise aspects of the video over others.

References

Seen something you like? Include links to reference videos, websites or images and visual stimuli within the brief itself. It helps us get an idea of what you’ve been drawn to in market.

Export requirements

As with platforms, there are a variety of technical requirements our clients require. From varying aspect rations and specialist broadcast OP59 sound mixes to ClearAds and Adstream submission, we can handle all and any technical export requirements.

Deadline

When is your desired delivery date. Note that it often takes a minimum of 4 weeks to turn around a simple customer animated video. A more accurate timeline is 5 -8 weeks for a video of 90-seconds of medium complexity.

Budget

Budget range. How much do you have to spend. We will always endeavour to find a solution for your budget.

• $4,999 – $9,999

• $10,000 – $19,999

• $20,000 – $49,999

• $50,000+

Have a brief or an idea for an animated video? Contact Snackable today and let us guide you through your first project.