We've been creating animated marketing content for several years now, and we've noticed that certain questions and discussions frequently come up with our clients. We thought it might be helpful to go over a few strategies for successfully working with artists, as they may have processes and produce deliverables that don't always fit neatly into an established corporate workflow
- Audience is key. Are you educating your existing consumers about your products and services, or are you trying to attract brand new consumers to your brand? Different goals require different kinds of videos, and being confident of your intended demographic can usually make or break a project before it even begins.
- We start very rough, and very general. A lot of the brainstorming and storyboarding process can seem very loose, and this is very much intentional. We often find that are clients might have very specific preferences that they only discover once they see *something*, and this is usually very educational in determining the timing, style, and mood of the video.
- Revisions are usually unavoidable, but they do take time to implement. It's very unlikely we'll hit the mark perfectly on the first try (and boy do we try), and there will likely be some back and forth early on while we craft the perfect production plan. This is normal. Where it becomes a bit trickier is after this plan has been created, production starts, and then (for whatever reason, stuff happens sometimes), changes to that plan need to be made. Meaning that a lot of already created work won't be usable in its current state. This often will lead to additional charges depending on what the changes are, so coming up with a plan very early on how to address revisions is definitely a good idea.
- Please don't design by committee. We get that some companies and agencies work as a democracy, and that's awesome. So please, please, please: Democratically delegate someone to approve the design decisions, and have us talk to that person, and only that person. We realize this isn't always possible, for a lot of reasons that (probably) make a lot of sense, but we do view it as our responsibility to mention that any project (visual or otherwise) is typically going to go a lot more smoothly if feedback is only coming from one direction, and if it doesn't contradict the feedback that came right before it.
- Yes we have fancy art degrees, but as humans, we all have design preferences. If something doesn't look right to you, or if you have a suggestion on how to tweak something, please say so! There's usually a reason something might look off to you, and we want to discuss it!