5 best practices you should know when outsourcing animation video projects
Starting a new animation project/video campaign can be intimidating, motion design is a multidisciplinary process, with several parties involved in most cases.
How the project is managed and coordinated can make the difference between a smooth production process or lots of scope creep and extra invoices, not to mention wasted time micro-managing the relationship.
Whether you choose to work with an individual contractor or partner up with a creative agency, using your own money or managing the marketing budget of your leadership it's important to be aware of these best practices for a successful and painless animated video production.
In this post, we will go over some of the best practices to keep in mind when hiring and subcontracting animation work as well as provide examples of what could go wrong if they go ignored.
Review storyboards before moving forward
Establish stakeholders from the beginning, and include every voice from the start
Review the look and feel through mood boards and style-frames
Make sure all of the feedback and decisions are motivated by a strategic business approach
Stick to fixed pricing instead of hourly pricing.
Why should I care about how people make my animations?
“In reality, commercial animations can range anywhere from U$20,000 to U$500,000 — or even more. This is still not a definitive answer and such a large range only brings a lot more questions with it.
The reason why the investment in a motion piece can vary so much is due to the many possibilities, scenarios, and scopes animation can play with. Depending on how you juggle those many variables you can have an animation project that leans more toward the lower or higher end of this range”
Diving into a new motion design project can be a big commitment, It's needless to say that you will probably want to have some guarantees for success as well as keep the process under control so things don't get out of budget or timelines are breached.
It can take an entire day to render just one section of a motion design video, meaning that approaching the planning and feedback aspects of a project can make weeks worth of difference in how soon you can have your video ready to bring in the benefits.
From the many engagements we've had at Zetanimo as well as from our clients sharing their feedback with us, we bring these best practices as a way to help you improve your experience when contracting animation work, regardless of who you work with.
1) Review storyboards before moving forward.
This is by far the biggest trap where my past clients have fallen in past projects when working with freelancers, there is no way for you to know what you are gonna get and if the solution makes sense for your business unless you get to see visually see it through the use of a storyboard.
A storyboard is a series of rough drafts and drawings that indicate the story of how the video will play out, usually done in very simple black & white to make it easy to change.
Storyboard of the Impact with influence logo animation I worked on for a rebrand, learn more here
The idea behind storyboards is to have You and every other stakeholder involved in the project provide feedback and discuss if the plan outlined by the designers has the potential to achieve the goals that you are aiming for.
The storyboard might seem simple but it serves as the foundational piece for the entire project, if not reviewed it can lead to weeks of work having to be redone, which will jeopardize timelines and budget, which leads us to the next tip:
2) Establish stakeholders from the beginning, and include every voice from the start.
Review platform where clients can provide feedback in real time for one of my projects
This is another very important tip that doesn't just apply to animation but any creative project in general, since the entirety of the project relies on the initial foundational steps like the script and storyboard, making changes to these during the later stages of the project will always lead to massive delays and additional invoicing.
This is the equivalent of having to demolish an entire building after it's finished building to change location, therefore, make sure all the decision-makers are set at the very beginning of the project since this is the most important part, that way you can avoid having unforeseen perspectives change the entire direction halfway or later into the project, include them from the start
3) Review the look and feel through mood boards and style-frames.
Similar to storyboards, mood boards are visual representations of the look and feel of your animation's design put together by the creative director, usually as a collage of inspiration for the project.
Style-frames on the other hand, are also visual examples, images, but of how the final project will look once all is done.
One of 3 mood board options for animated promo Gold Shango, more details here.
Making sure that these are part of the process and that you properly review them is important for you to be sure that the final result will fit your brand voice and have the look and feel appropriate for your messaging, that way you can make the change early rather than re-doing the whole design later.
4) Make sure all of the feedback and decisions are motivated by a strategic business approach
Projects of a creative nature are harder to measure from a business perspective than, let's say, developing a new feature on a website for usability, it is easy to get caught up in the subjectivity of colors and shapes and forget about the audience's preferences and what would resonate with the buyer persona you are targeting.
“Confused about what’s strategy and what’s execution? Think of it this way: When sitting down to play chess, your goal is to win by capturing the king. Thinking through the plan that details the pieces and process you’ll use to do it is creating your strategy. The way you carry out that strategy, the actual moves themselves, or the tactics, are the execution. You’ll hear people on the business or marketing side of things critique our ideas as “tactical” or “strategic” based on what’s needed.”
Always make sure to provide feedback to the directors and ask questions from the perspective of what your audience requires. Ask yourself: "Will these resonate with my customers?" And resist the temptation to ask "Do I like this?"
This will help give you the best results for your project and reduce the arbitrary nature of the review process.
5) Stick to fixed pricing instead of hourly pricing.
Now, this may sound controversial, but in most cases, hourly pricing doesn't benefit you, this is due to several reasons.
First, Hourly rates reward the contractor more the longer they take to do the work, it incentives long feedback cycles and project delays as well as low performance.
Second, hourly rates don't regard the value that the work has for you, and places all the value on the seller, you are paying for what the seller values the work as instead of what it's worth to you, they will either value it less than it is worth for your business (putting less care into it) or value it more than you think it's worth (bleeding your budget).
And third, similar to the previous one, hourly rates introduce a lot of ambiguity into the process, you can't compare it to the market value of similar projects, and even if you get an hours estimate it will most likely be inaccuracy as projects always have unforeseen obstacles or even things that make them easier than expected.
Experienced Creative agencies and freelancers stick to fixed pricing, keeping things simple and clear, and letting you decide on the value of the work, they can do so because they have a repeatable process so they understand the cost and what is its market value.
In conclusion
As you can see, lots of things can go wrong when you have someone create animations for you, I will admit I made some of these mistakes through the early years of my career and it caused me plenty of loss business.
But having a reliable process that puts your business goals as the priority can help eliminate the confusion that can come with unclear feedback and help keep your relationships conflict-free while you bring your message to life!
Naturally, here on Zetanimo our process to create animations keeps all of these best practices into consideration while making sure all of our interactions with you are personal and with your marketing strategy as the main priority, otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it!
If you would like help figuring out how to best utilize animation for your marketing strategy, give me a call on this link, I'll be personally there to discuss it with you.
