This page is a guide to what you can expect when working with us to produce your animated explainer video.

Contract and invoice

We email you a contract and an invoice. We require the contract to be signed and returned. The invoice for a percentage of the overall fee (usually 50%) will need to be paid before the project is officially booked. As well as booking the time, the pre-payment also covers pre-production expenses such as purchasing music, hiring voice-over talent and scripting. We can also arrange 3-tier payment terms if that’s preferable.

Bullet points

Before we start pre-production, we’ll ask for a bullet point list that will give us an idea of how you would like to structure the video. It could be as simple as this:

• 15 second elevator pitch
• Problem
• Solution
• Brand introduction
• Call to action

If you’d prefer to write the script internally, this could be skipped over.

Scripting

Before the production date, we will write the script (unless you’d prefer to create the script in-house). The script will include visual descriptions to go along with each paragraph as well as notes that explain our creative decisions. The document will be posted for your review and feedback and then alterations made where necessary based on your comments.

Style sample

We will provide fully produced style samples or specially produced custom stills to give you a good feel for how the characters, text and backgrounds will appear. This makes sure we’re on the same creative page early on before we’ve committed to anything.

Storyboards

Storyboards are produced to show you how the video will play out scene by scene. We create a PDF document displaying 6 frames per page with the narrative shown under each. This gives you a look at what each scene and composition will look like and a good idea of how the story will move along.

Voice-over

While the script is being written we will post up voice-over samples for your review. Once a VO talent is agreed upon and the script is finalized, we will hire the vocal talent to record the narration and then post up the file for your review.

Music

We may provide music samples to choose from during pre-production or during the production process. It is often better to review music samples when we can layer them on top of the animated video for review rather than before we know how the video will be stylized.

During production, at least twice a week, we will post up progress updates including stills and clips to allow you to review progress and make suggestions.

Once we have the entire video produced, we will post a review copy online. At this point, we would expect you to provide us with a list of any necessary alterations. We offer up to 3 of these revision sets on a single video project. ‘Necessary alterations’ cover such changes as swapping out the colour of a character or a background scene, adding or removing transitions or adjusting the composition of a scene. Examples of things that would not be covered by our review sessions would be creating additional scenes and segments, having a new voice-over recorded or a complete style overhaul (although not included in the agreement, these can be arranged). It should be noted that there are many opportunities to adjust the content, suggest changes and guide the creation of the video during the pre-production and production processes. We don’t move on from one portion of the project or commit to the next without your ‘go-ahead’.

Once we have finalized the video, a second invoice will be issued for the remaining percentage of the fee. Once the invoice is paid, the video file will be delivered (usually in MP4 format HD 1080p). We also render various images to be used as thumbnails (the still image that shows on an embedded video before the play button is clicked). Services like Vimeo and YouTube will offer you a small selection of random thumbnails to use but an optimized image is almost always the way to go.

And we won’t hit and run once the project is completed. We’re always available if you have any questions or need any advice.