The first step to getting your new killer marketing tool is to come up with your message. You might have a fully formed idea or just the pure principle that you want to ‘increase your bottom line’. No matter what stage the idea is at, we will work as a team to create a perfect marketing message for your business, product or service.
In this initial stage, we will need to find out key analytics of your audience (where available). Having this will help tailor your video to suit your viewers. For example, a video made to attract 18 years old female students isn’t going to appeal to your key demographic of older businessmen looking for a professional edge. Knowing and understanding your audience will help guide the creation of the best video for your marketing.
Once we have the key ideas of your animation and how best to put across the information, we can move onto creating a kickass script.
Writing your script allows you to get everything that you want to say down on paper – and how you want to say it. It’s very different from writing normal prose, it’s the visual blueprint of what you want to show your audience.
It’s a collaborative process, with notes and suggestions going back and forth, and it should be led by the underlying rule of ‘best idea for this video wins’.
The aim is to intrigue and excite, inform and entertain – and you only have a short amount of time to do it. Every word becomes crucial and that’s why scripts should be scrutinised and reworked until you’re left with that magical blueprint that delivers your key message, in the way you want to, that will connect with your audience.
Once you have your script nailed it’s time to move on to your storyboard. The storyboard is like a visual plan of the scenes and animations that you want to be created. It provides a step by step of everything you want to happen and lets you see the structure and graphical style of the video.
Putting images to the script is an important moment, and seeing this plan makes it easier for us to create the video exactly how you imagined it and essentially get the video finalised before it’s even created. Storyboarding your animation is a crucial step to ensure that you are making the most of your animator’s time, rather than going back to the drawing board halfway through because you don’t like the styles of animation or the delivery of certain messages or important pieces of information.
After your storyboard in finalised and you are happy with it, it’s time for the actual creation of your animation.
This is the stage where your initial ideas and all of the hard work laid out in the script and storyboard stages come to life. Your animator(s) will create your video frame by frame, ensuring each fine detail and movement is perfected and looks incredible. Having the touch of a professional means you can be assured that your video is going to stand out from the crowd and reassure your customers as to the quality of your business.
Careful attention is paid to making sure the message and the story move forward in an engaging way, with visual flair, and in a way that makes the viewer unable to take their eyes off of their screens.
Now that the visuals of your animation have been crafted, what’s next?
Nothing brings those slick animated movements and transitions to life like great sound design. With Facebook video’s best practices telling us to “design for sound off and delight with sound on”, there is a still a strong emphasis on sound within this modern video marketing world.
It goes beyond merely entertaining, it can also inform the audience by adding context and recognisable/metaphorical sounds too abstract ideas or imagery. It’s often overlooked, but it really is a powerful step in the animation process – and it’s probably our favourite step of the entire process.
With animation, the styles, narrative choices, and overall options are endless. You can literally do anything. Of course, you should have a good creative reason for doing those things, but there are no limitations. You can see some very different examples of animation on our corporate animation page.
