Creating an engaging animation on a budget comes with its challenges, but if done successfully, you can have a great end product that drives home the results you are looking to achieve.
Here are some tried and true tips to help you make the most of your animation budget — complete with a case study, featuring a video produced by Voices for placement with Adweek.
In this article
- Case Study: What was the Creative Process Behind this Video Campaign with AdWeek
- Voices’s Animated Ad for Adweek
- Animation on a Budget Production Schedule
- What Were the Challenges Surrounding this Animation Production?
- Animation on a Budget is Possible for Those Who Structure Workflow Creatively
Case Study: What was the Creative Process Behind this Video Campaign with AdWeek
One of the most common struggles that Voices clients experience, is a pressure to complete great work on a tight turnaround.
When an opportunity to place a video advertisement in one of the industry’s most respected publications, Adweek, presented itself — Voices found itself in that familiar position. The animated video needed to be completed in just a few weeks. This meant that scripting, storyboarding, animation and voice over had to come together fast and on budget.
Learn how all of the components came together in this short time frame, and how any producer can take these same steps to meet their animation project objectives too!
Voices’s Animated Ad for Adweek
Animation on a Budget Production Schedule
The creative process for Voices’ Adweek ad video began with scripting, which homed in on the core messaging and statements that needed to be showcased and brought to life with visuals.
Since Voices has many product offerings, a writer helped zero in on the main message and broke the main message down into key components. For this particular ad, the messages were distilled into three keywords: fast, easy and professional.
After the key messaging was established, a metaphor needed to be established for what the Voices product does. Since the Voices product doesn’t immediately lend itself to visuals, a brainstorming concept took place to establish a suitable and relevant metaphor — this is how the ‘machine mechanism’ shown in the video was born. The machine mechanism isn’t a true mechanism of what happens — there is no actual machine on site! However, it does demonstrate how several challenges and specifications can be added to the journey of your project creation with Voices. Some of these specifications can include dialect, gender, language, accent, etc. (you can explore how these specifications come into play with different voice over qualities too).
It was also important to showcase some of the diverse voices that are offered.
Once the number of voices and how they should sound was established, then the next step was to hire the voice actors. All of the voice actors were hired from Voices. Keep in mind that choosing voice actors is an important step, especially if you plan to distribute your ad globally.
Then the concept was taken to a freelance animator who brought the original vision and idea to life.
What Were the Challenges Surrounding this Animation Production?
With every project comes its own unique set of challenges. For this one, the main challenges around the project involved the tight turnaround, while sticking to a set budget and ensuring that all talent were paid competitively.
Accurately showcasing what it is that Voices does was also a challenge. While the concepts of fast, easy, and professional service needed to be presented, the ad was not intended to function as an explainer video that showed the process exactly as it occurs. For instance, there is a section in the video when the voice over demos come out of the machine, and only one is selected — in fact, a client will either get a wealth of auditions to choose from (if they choose a self-service route) and/or a shortlist of candidates from their Account Managers.
If you intend to create an ad that showcases your product, considering the use of a metaphor that speaks to your brand values and mission can be a great way to engage your audience.
The Voices budget included fair payment to a freelance animator and six different voice talent. While the actual payment to each individual cannot be disclosed, the Voices team was able to create this ad within a reasonable budget — it helped that there is an in-house writer and producer already, so sourcing freelance talent for the other roles was the only major costs associated with the end product.
Animation on a Budget is Possible for Those Who Structure Workflow Creatively
Creating compelling animation can be affordable and completed within the budget you set aside for your company. Whether it’s for an ad campaign, learning course, or other platforms, it is possible to create an animation that resembles the big production animations that cost millions of dollars.
The key to creating animation on a budget is to stick closely to the budget and see where you can cut costs without compromising the quality of your finished product and messaging.
Animation is a great way to tell a story or illustrate a product concept. There are affordable options that will give you the benefits of animated content for a fraction of the cost.
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