One question clients always ask us at Napoleon Creative is “How long will it take to make the animation?” They’re keen to know how long animation takes to produce so they can plan their marketing campaign.
What factors affect how long animation takes?
Here are five key variables which will affect the answer.
First, how clear your message is when you start working with us.
Some clients have a very clear idea of what they’re communicating, others need more time developing their ideas with us before we can really start writing on the script.
We can accelerate this with our Discovery Deck workshop.
Second, how well we know you as a client.
If you’re a new client, then it’ll take us a little while to get to know your brand – both in terms of your visual style and tone of voice.
The more work together, the quicker we’ll be able to come up with ideas that work for your brand.
Third, the complexity of the animation style. Word or icon based animations tend to be faster than character animation.
That said, if you’re adding more effects and 3D, it can take longer!
It’s all about getting the right look according to the time available and budget you’ve invested.
For example, one client came to us with a two-week deadline, which is tight for bid video production.
We needed a whole host of characters working in an office together, so we went for a modern, streamline style which meant we didn’t have to animate all their facial expressions.
The result was a cool and complex animation delivered in under a fortnight.
Fourth, the size of the team we allocate to your animation.
If you’re in a hurry, we can put more of our team members on the job.
This always makes it a little more complicated to manage, with people working on different parts of the animation at the same time, but we’re used to that.
And fifth, how quickly you can give us feedback on the work we’re doing.
Obviously we can only make changes and progress the animation if we know what you think of the work done so far!
We use a web-based, video review platform to ensure it’s simple for you to make comments and for us to action them.
When should I commission an animation?
Ideally, you’ll give us six weeks to make your animation. We won’t be working on your project the entire time. This means we can take a break from it, and come back to it with fresh eyes.
This always allows us to develop better ideas.
But if you’ve got a hard deadline, we’ve been known to turn around projects in under a week.
That’s because we have a mature, structured creative process, built over a decade of delivering great animations for our clients.
And we make sure between us that we’ve got the key things right:
So, those are the factors which you need to consider when asking how long it takes to make your animation.
If you need to know anything else, get in touch.
