The Animation Process 101: How Does Animation Work?
Ready to start working on your first animated video?
Animated videos are engaging marketing tools that help businesses build their brands and connect with their target audiences. Compelling animations can help you effectively explain new concepts, demonstrate products, and break down your services.
But to create an animated video that generates results, it’s important to understand what the animation process entails so that you can effectively plan your project.
To help you plan your next animated video, here are the seven stages of the animation process.
7 Steps of the Animation Process
For most projects, the animation process consists of the same seven basic steps:
1. Research & Creative Brief
2. Writing a Script
3. Storyboarding
4. Choosing a Style
5. Voiceover
6. Animation
7. Post-Production
Each of these stages is critical to effectively plan and produce a high-quality animation that appeals to your target audience’s needs and interests.
1. Research & Creative Brief
Every marketing video, be it live-action or animation, starts with research and writing a creative brief.
During this stage, you’ll work with video production professionals to help them learn more about your brand, products, and services. This is also when you will discuss what you want to achieve with your marketing video and who your target audience is.
After doing the necessary research, the video production team will start working on the creative brief — a concise document that explains what the video will be about, who it’s for, what its goals are, and any other necessary details.
2. Writing a Script
The script is one of the most essential aspects of planning a marketing video. Not only does it establish the video’s dialogue, but it also sets the video’s tone, establishes its style, dictates the length, and conveys the video’s core message.
Scripts need to be easy to understand, complement your brand’s image, and should be as short and concise as possible to keep viewers engaged.
With an extensive track record of planning and producing animated videos for businesses across a wide range of industries, our team has the experience necessary to write a script that effectively communicates your message while remaining true to your brand's identity.
3. Storyboarding
Once the script is finalized, it’s time to move onto the storyboarding stage. Storyboarding is the process of sketching out each individual scene. This makes it easier to create assets for the video and begin animating.
Once storyboarding is complete, you’ll be able to more easily visualize the progression of the video.
4. Choosing a Style
Your video’s style should accurately reflect your brand while also standing out from your competitors and appealing to your target audience.
To establish a style, video production companies often use style frames, which are full-color frames that depict scenes from your video and are meant to reflect what the final product will look like. This includes character design, color palettes, text, logos, and more.
Once you sign off on the style, production moves on to the voiceover and animation stages.
5. Voiceover
Voiceovers can make or break animated videos. It’s important to find the right person to deliver your message so that it connects with consumers and helps you achieve your goals.
When working with a professional video production company, you’ll typically be presented with a curated list of high-quality voiceover artists to choose from. Once you make your selection, the production team will work with the talent to record the narration for your video.
6. Animation
The animation stage is when all of the previous planning finally comes together to create the final product.
After designing all of the necessary assets, professional animators will begin putting these assets together and animating each individual scene of your video. This stage requires great attention to detail, and as a result, is one of the longer stages of the video animation process.
7. Post-Production
After animation is complete, the video moves into the post-production phase.
Post-production includes sound design, music selection, editing, and delivery. Once post-production is complete, you’ll receive a high-quality, ready-to-download video file to review and distribute.
Working With Digital Spark Studios
The animation process involves several steps that contribute to a compelling final product. From research and conceptualization to animation and post-production, it’s important to carefully plan out every detail of your video so that the final product accurately reflects your brand and goals.
At Digital Spark Studios, we work with businesses in all industries to help them create high-quality animated marketing videos that appeal to their target audiences and help them achieve long-term business growth.
Contact us today to learn more about our professional animation and video production services.
