We keep our projects as flexible as possible – far more flexible than most other studios. But there’s no getting around the fact that animation and motion graphics are time-intensive processes, so a basic understanding of how we work will help you to get the best out of us. Our standard process has five definite stages – ideally with sign-off between each stage.
1. Treatment
It’s important to work out the exact message that you want to get across – as well as your target audience. Once we get a briefing document from you, Spot will create:
• an initial treatment talking through a possible approach to the film.
• a mood board: a pdf of stills to use as a discussion point to determine the visual style of the final piece).
• an initial selection of music and voice-over artists.
2. Script
Once we’re all happy with the visual style and the treatment, Spot will create:
• A script detailing voice-over and visuals.
• Two or three worked-up stills to illustrate key points in the film.
3. Storyboard
Again, once everyone is happy with the look, voice-over, visual content and music, Spot will create a storyboard. This will be roughly sketched to keep it as flexible as possible. The storyboard is essentially a blueprint for the time-consuming animation, so this is the last chance for you to make cost-effective changes.
4. Animation
Once the storyboard is signed off, we start to animate properly. This is the part where everything will go quiet for a while while we get going. We will show you work in progress every few days so you can feed back and comment. Two days before the deadline, we will send you an animation that is almost complete. We ask that you look through it carefully and compile a list of final feedback.
5. Delivery
Once we’ve finished animating, we will send you a file for final approval. Once this is approved, we will upload a high-definition Quicktime master, as well as various smaller encodes. Please download these and keep them somewhere safe, as we have to charge for de-archiving and re-posting them up. We can deliver any format you need, but our standard suggestion is:
• Master file: High Definition MP4.
• Small MP4 for playback on slower computers.
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