Our 8 steps to awesome explainers

So you’re thinking about making a 2D animation but have no idea what to expect? Here’s a quick breakdown of the 8 steps we take to make the magic happen.

Simon van Wyk

Director & Creative Producer

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We make 2D explainer videos for clients who are animation experts, and those who have no idea how it all works. No matter who the video is for, our process remains the same as we’ve discovered it’s the best way of making sure everyone is happy with the end result. How do we do it? Here’s a breakdown…

1. Brief

It all starts with a brief. This is when we see if your vision matches your budget, and if not, we’ll suggest a solution which doesn’t break your bank.

We’ll also use this opportunity to answer questions you have, talk you through our process and work out a basic timeline.

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2. Script

If you don’t have a script already, the next step is writing one. We’ll ask you to send all the information you have for the video, with notes about what the most important parts are.

For most explainer videos, we initially focus on what the narrator / voice-over will say. We figure if it can work on radio using only speech, it’ll pack an ever greater punch when we add visuals.

Once we’ve finalised the above we might send through a version which contains some visual notes, but often we save that for the storyboards.

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3. Style Development

There are millions of different ways to illustrate characters, backgrounds, objects, icons and text. In this step we suggest 2 to 3 illustration styles that we think would work for your current branding or vision. If you don’t have a corporate identity, we’ll help you establish something basic for the purposes of the video. If you do have a very definite brand bible that includes a specific illustration style, we’ll simply mimic what your brand is already doing in this area.

This part of the project can get tricky, especially if you don’t quite know what you want. Don’t worry - this is fairly normal and we’ll hold your hand throughout the style development phase so you land on something which works for you.

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4. Storyboards

This is when we start breaking down the script and suggesting what will happen visually in the video. We’ll break down the voice-over line by line, drawing quick sketches of what we think should happen for each part. We keep things rough and ready so that it’s easy to update if you don’t like a particular visual.

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5. Illustration Boards

Once we’re certain the storyboards are working for you, we’ll start recreating each visual we’ve suggested in the final illustration style of the video. This will take some time, but the end result will be all the static images that we will eventually animate.

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6. Voice Over

If there’s a voice over we’ll usually record it before we animate as there can sometimes be minor script changes right up until the illustration boards are locked off. We’ll ask you to tell us the sort of voice over you’re looking for, then we’ll suggest artists who match. You can choose to sit in the recording online, or trust the artist’s interpretation.

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7. Animation

You guessed it, this is when we start the actual animation. This is also a long process, but at the end of this process all the illustrations will have come to life.

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8. Music and SFX

Music has a wonderful way of setting tone, and sound effects can emphasise events in the video and also help build a world that feels larger than what is on screen. We leave music and sound effects to last because music is easy to swap out at the end to explore different options, and sound effects are better to add when the animation is set in stone - otherwise every time we tweak the animation, we’d need to tweak the sound as well.

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And that’s it! Those are our 8 steps to an awesome explainer. It’s worth mentioning that at the end of each step we’ll ask for feedback, and we won’t move onto the next step until you’re happy. Your quote will factor in three rounds of feedback for each step, but if you’re good at consolidating your feedback clearly, you most likely won’t get to a third round of reverts. And if you need to go beyond three rounds of changes for any particular part of the project - don’t worry - it’s possible, it might just push out timelines and budgets… but, if they do, we’ll have those discussions with you beforehand so you know what to expect.

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At the end of this journey you’ll have an explainer video which fits your budget, hits your deadline and meets your expectations. Actually, with any luck, we’ll exceed the latter!