What is the right process to
create an animated explainer?

Episode 6: Animated Explainer
Why Process Always Wins in Animation

Planning to create an explainer for your business? Would animating it be too difficult? In this episode of Cut Through, we’re diving into what's actually involved in creating animated explainers. From refining your message to designing visuals and bringing everything to life through animation.

https://youtu.be/q7qCXMBLO8E WATCH MORE EPISODES

“Is creating an animated explainer really that complex?”

For many brands and creators, animated explainers seem simple on the surface—but behind every polished video is a carefully crafted process. It starts with understanding the core message: what problem you’re solving, who you’re speaking to, and what action you want viewers to take. From there, a script is shaped to simplify the idea without losing meaning, turning complex concepts into clear, engaging storytelling.

With so many steps working together, an animated explainer becomes more than a video—it becomes a carefully engineered piece of communication designed to educate, convert, and captivate. In this episode of Cut Through, we break down each stage of the process and show how truly intentional animated storytelling can be.

Thinking about an animated explainer for your business? See how we make them on our animated explainer videos page, or submit a brief and we'll come back with a plan and a price.

Full episode transcript

Welcome to Cut Through, the podcast that helps to make video content accessible to more creators. We cut through the noise and a wide range of topics to help you break down those barriers and bring your ideas to life. In this episode, we're diving into what's actually involved in creating animated explainers, building storyboards and bringing everything to life through animation. Let's get started. So what are we talking about today, Mike? Yeah, let's talk about animated explainers. But specifically, what about animated explainers? I think very likely.

why you would need an animated explainer, but more importantly, once you know that why, which we'll cover very, very briefly, how to get an animated explainer commissioned. Yeah, so the idea is you've decided, you've made the decision, you want one, now you gotta go find someone to help you make it, and bottom line is you wanna be very satisfied with the outcome.

both from a budgetary perspective, but also from a, this do what I wanted it to do? Yeah. How do commissioners explain it without getting burned? Because there's a lot of opportunities out there to get burned. How do people get burned? What are the traps? I think trap number one, not understanding the service provider market who's making an animated explainer.

the types of people, the types of organizations, the type of platforms. Understanding that landscape is pretty important. understanding where to look. Correct. And then after you've started looking, understanding or finding out what the process is. Because the process

The steps involved in creating an animated expirer are really, really important. Yeah, so there's two big steps here. One is successfully identifying a partner to help you see through your vision. then two, scrutinizing the process more than the creative idea or equally the process itself will do the heavy lifting in determining whether you've had a successful experience or not.

Why would people want to be doing animated explainers? What type of animated explainers are we talking about? We're going to solidify there's lots of different kind of animated explainers or any kind of explainer video for that matter depending on what you're trying to communicate and to whom you're trying to communicate and potentially any media and basically just thinking like old classic marketing what stage of the communication process are you in will greatly determine the type of output you want to produce. So if you're to reach out

And you're to say to somebody, I like your work. I want to develop an animated explainer. Here is the duration. I have a script, but it may need a bit of work. Or I don't. Concept wise, we've got some pretty good brand guidelines in there. We have some things that we've designed, or we don't have anything. Yeah, or we have a PDF that tells the story. We just want that animated. If you reach out, then you should be able to get

a range based on that information of what you'd be typically looking at. You're either going to put a second range or a complete production range. It's establishing a common understanding of where you belong. there is a look, again, now we're going sidebars here, but there is a potential nuance there is sometimes to make sure you're asking the same questions to each provider and you're showing the same examples because you're only

you don't want to be comparing apples to oranges. So for example, if someone's quoting you 10,000 for one and someone's quoting you 50,000, there's probably a disconnect in communication right there. And if there's not, well, then you've just made your decision that someone's overpriced or someone's unrealistically underpriced. So first off, you've picked your examples from a portfolio, from a website, from a company. You've asked them with the variances that you have in mind for an estimated range.

They should be able provide it to you because animated explainers are pretty formulaic in their approaches, even though there is nuance. The variance isn't that much. You should be able to get a good range estimate from a company. Once you have that range and you think that you might want to work, there is one very important step in deciding is you need to ask them about their processes. What are those key items in the process? There's copy development, conceptualization,

There's plates and pre animation and then there's animation and review. So there are the four process steps that we have. So yeah, copy development, which is tends to be copywriting and copy editing. And that can be quite a complex step, which depending on how much information you bring to the table, but it can involve a lot of research because you have to understand nuances and things like that. You really don't want to be thinking about your

exclusively about your behavioral treatment so you have some sense of what your messaging is going to be. So I think the reason this is its own step is you want your messaging pretty much down at least 80%, 90 % there or maybe semantics before you even consider the concept of the storyboard. So locking in as much as reasonably possible other than potentially regulatory or legal nuances on how you say a word, but basically the narrative should be locked in before you even

bring the creative to the table. the time that the copy has been developed, generally the teams should start thinking about the concept and how it will come together with the copy. So we call that conceptualization, where we start to think about ideas, where we'll bring up examples or draw some ideas of what we think will work and how it will work. come up with music and we'll think about the tone, we'll think about the pace. And that's when storyboarding could be, and we had a whole topic on storyboarding.

for, but that's where it's relevant is, and that's again, a variable is, is understanding and putting on paper elements of your, basically your ideas, to get, and then get by into that. Then there's, once you bought into the concept and it sounds good and you understand the direction and keep in mind more often than not with concepts, concepts have to be brought to life. They should then

go through a, what we call a plates or a pre animation process, is designing the plates that are going to be animated. And that's important because that's the look and you'll want that look to be signed off because you know how it's going to roughly work with the concept. Now you want to see what it looks like and that look is critical. And once you get that look and you're like, yep, that works.

Normally, if it's 60 seconds, you'll probably walk away with 10 or 12 plates normally of pre-design, pre-animation work, and you will sign off on those. You'll want to look at them and sign off. Because once they're signed off, they're going to be brought to life by animators. So let's be super specific here. What types of things should a client look for that they're signing off on? it color? Color, shapes, looks, characters, whatever is in the concept.

Too difficult to say without knowing what the concept is, but pretty much everything. If this is what your animation is going to look like, you just, this is what it will look like. If you don't like it, you need to adjust it now. So you've gone from, here's my message. Here's, here's how I see it looking. And step three is the first step in, okay, this is physically what it's actually going to look like when you start getting designers involved. It's a very good way to look at it.

so essentially, yes. So the concept, you kind of know what's going to work. Now you've got the plates in the pre-animation, which is the look. And now we're then going into the next phase, which is the animators and the review phase, which is taking those plates, applying them to the script and the concept and actually bringing them to life. The animators got the hardest job, but we make their job easy in terms of being able to execute the vision.

that we have by following those steps. You want an animator to apply their skills as an animator and not be involved with the discussions of what should we be doing or what should it look like or how should we do it. You just want them to do what they're good at. Turn this idea into moving vision. That's our process. Others will have maybe different processes, but it should be very similar.

In fact, I would challenge the industry to follow that guideline. And part of that process, I guess, for people listening as well is understand to make get the most out of your project with the provider is to understand your own process as well and make sure that's clear to the to who you're working with as well. Because like you said, if there's if if five people have to approve every step along the way, well, that needs to be considered in terms of the pace at which

you do things that even the time allocated to get it done. Good news is actually, you're not with this kind of project, you're not limited to local organizations. You can cast your net wide. You can go international. That's true. This is of all the remote services in the creative space. This is probably the most remote, remotable one. Cast your net, find, find the potential service providers, cite an example, a reference that you like.

Reach out.

reference the reference and you know give them a pre-brief with a bit of variance that's unique to your project duration scripting requirements concepting requirements. think it's okay to have a discussion before a formal brief to inform your own brief which is I just want to bounce a few ideas I'm not really sure what I want exactly.

I don't even know how to write the brief because I don't know yet. So to your point, I think it's a really good idea to have a pre-discussion to start teasing out some of those key variables that will inform a very good brief. So again, I'm not going to absolve people from writing a good brief. think that's still imperative to everything that anyone does in all this space. But I think it's good idea to have a pre-discussion so your brief is tight and aligned.

to your needs and also some of the limitations of budgets. So yeah, reach out to a service provider if they've got examples of work that you want to look that you like, reference to work. Give them a pre-brief, which has durations, kind of your requirements, you have copy requirements or scripting requirements or concept requirements, just give those pre-brief, that pre-brief information. Ask for a cost range just so you can ascertain whether the

the potential range of cost is within your parameters because there's no point in wasting your time or their time if it's not. No prejudgment there at all from my end, just makes sense. Once you kind of have a sense that they're potentially the kind of people you want to work with, then really dig deep to find out what their processes are. Processes everything when it comes down to creating an effective animated trainer.

As an example, the processes are, think you should be looking for the copy development process, whether it's copywriting or copy editing, how long it takes, what their process for that is. I think the conceptualization process, what sort of ideas are neighboring to the table or don't make, you know, that's really important. I think there's plates and pre-animation, which is where you begin to actually really define what's going to be animated before it actually gets animated.

And four is the actual animation review process and get a sense on how long that will take. Six to eight weeks is probably the magic number. Six weeks give or take is what I would tell most people. And the review process anywhere from two to three rounds. Now, saying that with the review process with animated explainers, if you follow a process, your review stage should be minor tweaks on the existing work.

to use the analogy I had before, a good process for animated explainers is very much like a four by one hundred meter relay where each step of that process passes the baton to the next. You can't really go back to stage two, otherwise you're talking risk codes. So a good process avoids that. Right. And building on that is it's not just the process with the provider, it's the process that you have your internal approval processes. So be cognizant.

of how many people need to be across things and use those four pillars that we just outlined as touch points for all the stakeholders that need to be involved. Meaning you don't say, I'll just do, you know, me and my marketing colleague will handle the scripting and storyboarding and the plating. And then when it gets to animation, I'll send it to my boss. And then if he has a comment, you basically, then there's no point sending to him.

without a re-scope. get those, anyone who's involved with the process, those are the four points in time I think you should focus on getting them involved. Get those people to sign off on copy, on the concept, the design plates. Then it's just final sign off. And then it should be a really painless and on budget and meeting expectations project and everyone tends to be happy. Yeah, like that first leg.

of copy developments really it's clarity before creativity. It really is. And conceptualization is developing the look, the feel, the music, the pace. that aligns kind of like the intent, the emotions, it gets it all down. You know what you work with. Before you execute and the first step of the execution is the

is the last two steps of our process, which is let's design and then let's animate. Stage three, the placement and the pre-animation, that's all about, you know, it's about explaining what you're going to see and that's critical. And that also allows for minimal revisions later, because once it's animated, it's hard to change. And that's the critical step. You want to lay the...

foundations for the animation to happen flawlessly on a well executed plan. And that brings it to life. The animation brings it to life, smooth transitions. It's the timing, it's the energy. It's bringing it to life and then you're all just tweaking it at the end. the scrutiny should occur at each major step along these four milestones, not at the end. The end should just be the

the culmination of all that work. you like an animation with the company and it's pretty sophisticated, the animation style, you really like the look and the feel of it. You can also ask about how can you take that style, but is there a way to reduce the complexity without so that you can reduce the cost? Because sometimes it's possible to do things a little differently. You can reduce animation complexity.

But that's a really interesting insight, which is you could, by having that discussion and identifying those pieces, you can understand what you really like about that piece and realize there are different ways to achieve 90 % of what you like at maybe 50 % of the price. So again, it's, yeah, you could do it that way, but you can achieve most of that by doing it this way and that's a better outcome. that's usually part of a healthy iterative process with a provider is to have those clear.

open discussions about what you like and what your budget limitations are and again it's the classic. You can boil down all these little tips and tricks to one thing is just clear communication. Identify what you like and make sure it's within your budget range and drill down and really get the damn thing that process with whoever you're asking because that will tell you a lot. Thanks for watching and listening to this episode of Cutthroat if you liked it.

hit subscribe and if you've got thoughts or questions we'd love to hear from you. See you next time!