| Items | Descriptions |
| Expense/Price | Very much depends on requirements and scenarios. A highly complex 30-second video may be costly. |
| Time required | Training employees may be time-consuming especially with a lack of experience |
| Product quality and after-sales care | Animation agencies can provide their input aligned with your objectives, thanks to their years of experience. |
| Creativity | Animation agencies can ensure quality products with their expert staff and resources. |
| Content customisation | Visuals support brand objectives. A professional studio can customise your content to ensure consistent branding. |
Heard of animation software like Blender, After Effects and Adobe Character Animator? Tools like these allow even amateur digital animators to create a variety of content in different animated styles.
Animation software is very easily available nowadays. You may wonder if it’s even necessary to commission an animation agency to create content for your business.
But can DIY animation tools really match up to professional studio services? Let’s break down the essentials.
Expenses
Many animation tools come with free plans or are open source platforms. If you need to save a buck, this is great news. But it also means your access to functionality and updates will be limited.
However, an animation agency has a significant budget for testing and buying a wide range of software. They’ll ensure that all tools are up-to-date and even swap software depending on the project type.
This is important because an animation tool that works great for one project may not be suitable for the next one. Purchasing new animation software yourself each time could put quite a big dent in your budget!
Time
Unless you’re a professional animator, it can take weeks to months to learn basic skills for just one style of animation.
After that, you’ll need time to get familiar with using different animation tools and platforms. The same applies to training any in-house team you plan to set up.
On the other hand, animation studios already have a dedicated group of experts. These animators are skilled at a range of styles, from 2D to graphic motion. All you need to do is present a creative brief and let the team bring your ideas to life. This saves a bunch of time that you can spend on other responsibilities for your business.
Product Quality and After-sales Service
Using animation tools on your own can be limiting in terms of creativity and know-how. This is especially true if you or your team lack experience in digital animation and marketing.
However, an animation agency will provide you with an experienced team who can deliver a great product within a set timeframe. You can also work with them to make edits and changes to the finished animation.
Additionally, the agency can give you professional advice about when and where to post your content. Employing the right platforms can ensure you get the best results from an animated project.
Creativity and Skills
Even with the best animation tools you can find, it will take various skill sets to successfully make and market an animated project.
Aside from the actual animating process, you’ll need to cover scriptwriting, storyboarding, editing, rendering, sound engineering and more.
In contrast, animation agencies have different teams specialising in each of these creative stages. This lets them create polished and professional products for you in a short amount of time.
Customised Content
Having a unique visual style is very important when creating animated branding for your business.
It’s ideal to have an aesthetic that’s memorable and consistent across all your animated content. You’ll need to tailor these elements to best represent your brand. However, it’s difficult to create and apply so many different components on your own across multiple projects.
By comparison, an animation agency can develop a personalised creative approach and save you plenty of resources. They help create unique colour templates, logos and even a signature animated character for your brand.
In a nutshell, modern animation tools are super advanced and can be helpful and even rewarding for small scale projects. But simply having the right tools doesn’t guarantee optimal results every time.
We recommend collaborating with an animation agency. It can save you time and resources that would otherwise be spent on investing in software and learning to do everything on your own. Talk to a professional animation studio today! You’ll definitely get results you can be proud of.
Looking to develop some animated video marketing content for your brand? Take a look at what we can do for you at The Visual Team!
