Animated clips are among the most versatile marketing materials every business should make the most of. Discover the complete animation production process, from ideation and scriptwriting to execution. Begin world building today.
In this post, we’ll cover:
Introduction to Animation Production
When you hear the word “animation,” you may think cartoon TV shows and films. Yes, those are animations. Another kind is live action or when human actors are involved, but parts of the video are animated. Say, the company logo and name at the end of the clip.
The animation pipeline covers a lot of aspects of creating 3D scenes, from developing a concept and scriptwriting to post-production. And Shutterstock Studios is home to amazing production and marketing specialists who nail animation to its core.
For a detailed rundown, keep reading!
Step 1: Understand Your Audience
If an LGBTQIA+ dating app created a short animated clip for its ad featuring straight couples, would it gain more LGBTQIA+ users?
Or if a make-up company geared towards Black and Brown-skinned folks posted on social media featuring a fair-colored girl, would they have connected with their target audience?
Understanding your audience sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s something a lot of businesses miss. In other words, know who you’re creating your animation for. Know who you want to reach.
Here are three questions to ask yourself and your team:
- What demographic is your target audience?
- How do you want them to feel after seeing your animated clip?
- What devices do they prefer? Or where do they show up online?
By asking these guiding questions, you can proceed to the next steps with more clarity. Your team or chosen animation studio won’t go in blind, so to speak.
Step 2: Determine Staffing and Resources
Speaking of animation studios, do you need to hire a whole team? How big of a team? Or is your project manageable by in-house folks?
Also, what budget are you looking at? Do you have materials from previous projects that you think can be used to reduce expenses?
Staffing and resources can be overwhelming. Aside from asking those guiding questions, it’s advisable to meet with a credible company, like Shutterstock Studios, that’s lenient enough to adjust to their client’s budget.
You’ll know you’re with a top-notch company when they are open to making adjustments, offer resource suggestions, and really guide you to build the right team for your project.
Step 3: Ideation and Research
This is the part where a lot of questions will be thrown around. Whether you’re working with your own team or you hired an animation company, research involves asking key questions, which leads to clarity.
Some of these questions evolve around the intent of the project, the audience, and if you have any specifics. There are various types of animation so it’s important to discuss them during the ideation and research stage.
License these images via MITstudio, Chema Peral Illustration, and MOJI.
You may also want to ask how long it takes to animate a video to better understand the next steps and adjust your expectations accordingly.
To sum it up, this is when the story starts to become whole.
Step 4: Scriptwriting and Development
If research is what helped you put the story together, scriptwriting is what will bring life to that story.
This is where you’ll work on (or review) a story brief. You’ll also finalize how short your animation is—yes, most animations work best if they’re short.
Other things that will be discussed, developed, and finalized during this step include the tone, the flow of the story, and the call-to-action.
Keep in mind that no matter how long or short your animation is, make sure you maintain that show-don’t-tell rule.
Step 5: Visual Development and World Building
World building can be as literal as it sounds—you are building fictional worlds.
In this part of the animation production process, everybody’s creative juices need to flow freely. This is like the bridge between Scene A and Scene B—the thing that allows people to connect these scenes together.
You can’t just put an animated cat in an ad for a vacuum cleaner without emphasizing the role of cat hair or the importance of cleanliness.
Building these worlds won’t be good without visual development. This is where elements like composition, color enhancement, and visual conceptualization enter the picture.
Should you put a real cat or an animated one? Why is one more visually appealing than the other? How will that affect the story you’re trying to tell?
Step 6: Storyboarding and Pre-Visualization
This is probably one of the most exciting stages of animation, mainly because it’s when everything starts to really happen visually.
A storyboard is a series of sketches (done by hand or digitally) that lay out the whole story, one scene at a time.
This helps you visualize the entire animation project more clearly so you can decide if it’s precisely how you’re visualizing it in your head.
Step 7: Voice Casting and Direction
Voice casting happens when your animation includes characters that speak or need sound effects. It may sound basic, but voice casting is an art.
It involves finding one person whose voice encapsulates the character’s essence.
Authenticity plays an important role here because if you cast a young person to play a grandmother, they may be unable to maintain that “old lady voice” throughout, which will affect the whole production.
Same thing applies to sound effects—there is an art to matching a sound to an animated item’s action.
Step 8: Animation Techniques and Methods
Part of any animation production process is learning various animation techniques and methods, and making sure you choose the one that matches your budget and needs.
You don’t have to be an expert but a good overview helps.
Animation techniques include:
2D Animation
2D animation is more labor-intensive, where you’re creating movements in a two-dimentional space.
3D Animation
3D animation (also called CGI animation) is more technical but easier to work on because there are more software and resources.
You’re essentially using computers to generate images instead of drawing by hand.
Traditional Animation
Traditional animation (also called cel animation) is where the characters are hand-drawn in individual frames, on clear celluloid sheets.
Because they are drawn as their actions change, it’s also called frame-by-frame animation.
Stop Motion Animation
Stop motion animation is a meticulous animation method where physical objects are moved carefully and frame by frame to maintain a seamless animation.
Step 9: Sound Design and Music Composition
One of the reasons why it’s important to hire a reliable animation studio is that it’s not only the visuals you need to address.
Animations don’t have sounds unless you create them, and animation studios have designated people to work on sound design and music composition.
This process of animation production is not only about creating sounds per se, it is also about making sure they are the right sounds to support that particular scene perfectly.
Step 10: Lighting, Texturing, and Effects
Part of the 3D animation workflow includes lighting and texturing. Here, you will add lighting and shadows to create the mood you want for each scene.
This is why it’s super important to plan everything out during the early stages of the animation production process, so when it comes to adding details like lighting, texture, and effects, you and your team know exactly which direction to go.
Step 11: Feedback and Iteration
In simpler terms, fine-tuning. This is where everything is finalized, up to the smallest detail.
Everything from the timing to the characters’ facial expressions, from the gestures to the lull moments in-between, is being carefully curated.
Step 12: Rendering and Post-Production
This is probably the most chill part of all these steps in creating an animation because now you can implement computer software.
If you hired a team, they may provide a low-resolution file for you to sign off. Once that’s done, the rendering begins.
This is when all the elements—textures, lighting, sound, and visuals—are brought together to create the finished product, a.k.a. the animated clip.
Two types of rendering include real-time rendering (process time may take 15 frames per second), which is mainly used in creating games, and pre-rendering, which is mainly used in animated clips and motion pictures.
Step 13: Marketing, Promotion, and Distribution
Where do you want this animated clip to appear? Is it exclusively for your company’s website, or do you plan to distribute it on your social media channels? If you want to include it in your company newsletter, is it in the right size?
This branded content for Carvana had very minimal animations—the team knew too much of it would ruin the documentary style needed for the project.
This three-video series for TD Bank features comedic scripts and animations that include a giant plastic donut.
This is where video marketing enters the picture and why marketers also need to be part of a solid animation production team.
It’s not just about creating the animation. It’s about making sure what the rest of the team is creating matches where the marketing folks need it to be.
FAQs About Animation Production Steps
What is pre-production in animation?
This covers the beginning stages of animation where no movement is happening yet. Instead, the focus is on recording voice-overs and creating illustrations.
This is also the perfect time to ask important questions like how to plan an animation?
What is post-production in animation?
Post-production is when the actual animation or movement is developed. This is also when rendering happens.
Where can I find an animation production company?
There are so many animation production companies out there, Shutterstock Studio being one of them.
What is the difference between the 2D and 3D animation workflow?
2D animation workflow involves an artist drawing frames, and then those frames stitched together during post-production. With 3D, a software is involved and the output tends to be more realistic.
Animation Resources
There are tons of animation resources out there, so where do you begin?
Shutterstock: Stock Resource
Shutterstock is home to a diverse library of photos, videos, and graphics. They also have Shutterstock Studio, which is comprised of creatives from different disciplines.
Vidtoon: Easy to Use Software
If you wish to play around with animation software, Vidtoon is among the top favorites. Why? Mainly because it’s super easy to use—no need to worry about that steep learning curve.
Blender: Free Software
Blender is a free, open-source 3D creation suite. Not to mention that despite being free, there’s actually a lot you can do with it, including creating animated films, 3D printed models, visual effects, motion graphics, virtual reality, and computer games.
License this cover image via Harry Haysom / Ikon Images.
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