Pre-production’s role in animation is like that of noodles in a stir fry. It’s your base, your foundation, and one of the core contributors for success. Plus, it’s what holds together all the other fun, flavour-packed and decorative elements that you add on top.
If you’re about to embark on the process of developing a new animation, it’s critical that you understand the pre-production process and all the steps it covers.So, to help you create content that hits all the high notes, our animation experts have shared their guide to the pre-production process. Keep reading to find out what pre-production encompasses, the value that it adds, and what a successful pre-production process should look like.
As its name suggests, pre-production is the phase of the animation project that comes before its production. But, what does this actually mean in practice?
During the pre-production phase, the project’s groundwork is established. This is the first phase of the animation process, and encompasses all the preparation for the project, including the concept development, the design of the visual elements, and the storyboarding. In short, it covers everything that needs to be completed before the content can be animated and finalised.
Depending on the scope of your animation and the project’s requirements, the pre-production process can include:
Once these pre-production steps are all completed, the project is able to progress into production. At this point, the animators and illustrators start to create the final, fully-designed version of the content. So, to ensure that this time-consuming step is kept accurate, efficient and hassle-free, it’s imperative that the pre-production process confirms as many details as possible.
The pre-production process helps animation projects to achieve a wide range of core benefits, spanning everything from more impactful, consistent design, to improved communication with all the stakeholders who are involved.
The top benefits of a strong pre-production animation process include:
Across the entire marketing board, better planning usually translates to a more effective and higher quality piece of content. By deploying a more sophisticated and collaborative planning process, you can tap into the skills of a wider network of your team. If people have more time to leave their feedback (and give you more detailed insights), then you will be able to refine the content far more effectively, across a broader range of elements.
What’s more, careful planning also supports the strategic element of your animation. With better planning, comes more opportunities to review and refine how your content is achieving the KPIs. This includes how well it aligns with your branding, is set to achieve your key deliverables, and communicates your core message. So, what does ‘good’ project planning entail?
The success of your animation project can be enhanced, when your planning process includes the following:
As we outlined earlier on, pre-production encompasses a broad range of steps. Essentially, it includes all of the early stages of the animation process, which come before creation starts for the actual animation itself.
The key components of pre-production are:
Unfortunately, time alone doesn’t make a strong pre-production process. Although you might think that better planning is automatically unlocked by ensuring everyone has more time, there are a number of other ways that you can more effectively strengthen the process. There are a number of common pitfalls that marketing teams fall into during the pre-production stage. But, knowing these mistakes is the first step towards avoiding them! The most common mistakes that marketers make in the pre-production stage include:
Pre-production is about far more than the ‘steps before’ animation starts. It’s a methodology that ensures more effective organisation, collaboration and fine-tuning, which allows you to create content that is bolder, more impactful, engaging, and firmly on-brand. It just goes to show - there’s a lot to be said for the power of planning.
At OK Social, we are a specialist motion graphic studio, encompassing a team of skilled animation, illustration, branding and marketing specialists.
We work with some of the biggest companies in the world, and enable them to bring their brand story to life.
We create a huge range of animated content - spanning everything from social posts to explainer videos, and digital out of home adverts to product demos - for a client base spanning a wide variety of industries and services. These include Ford, Deliveroo, Coca-Cola, Harper Collins and KFC, just to name a few.
Our talented team achieves this through a combination of bold design, crisp alignment with brand identities, creative concepts, precise targets, and a sleek, professional finish.
So, if you’d like to find out more about how we can enhance your business marketing, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
I’m Jack, the Motion Director here at OK Social. I’ve been working in the world of motion design and animation for nearly 10 years. I had the pleasure of working with leading agencies and brands around the world, such as Samsung, Ford, Shell, Deliveroo, and Starbucks, to name a few.
From a young age, I’ve always been interested in animation, from making stop-motion films in my room as a kid to learning animation on my first computer. It started as a passion and still is to this day. Part of what I do now is more than just animation. I help craft the narratives of the stories we tell to ensure they make an impact to the audience and remain worthy of their attention.
So how do I do that? It starts with asking the right questions, leading to solving the right problems. First, diagnose what the problem is. Then, we can start to see if we can help. I believe that communication plays a key role in delivering a smooth and successful project. Looking into the future, I’m excited to expand my knowledge into creating more engaging stories that make a difference.