3D Animation Services

A wide range of clients use 3D animation for business. Some may seem obvious, like companies who manufacture products - think automotive companies, product design companies, etc. Some are more abstract, like tech companies - think SaaS or cloud computing. 3D animation is a brilliant way to stand out and showcase, and those are advantages most companies could take advantage of.

This depends on a few factors, like complexity, custom modelling, different environments, and so on. We’d recommend that the 3D animation timeline is 8-12 weeks which would give enough time to pre-production for tasks like asset creation, scene building, lighting and texturing. In 3D animation you also have to allow additional time for a task called compositing. Think of this like CMYK printing, where each colour is printed separately and the image is slowly revealed. Compositing does this but for custom “passes” like reflections, colour, shadows, depth, etc. This gives greater control in post-production, but requires time.

No two projects are the same. A simple, concise 3D animation project could have an extremely short timeline. Drop us a message or give us a call for us to give you a better estimation based on your project.

2D and 3D animation are defined by the assets you can use.

Think about drawing a picture of a car. No matter how detailed you draw it, how realistic it looks, you’ve created it on a piece of paper. That piece of paper can only be manipulated in certain ways. You could fake the car driving along by making a background pan in the background, making the tyres rotate, and so forth, but ultimately, there’s only so much you can do. 

When working in 3D, you use custom 3D modelling to create the car. You model all the components and assemble them together. You can give your models behaviours like being made of glass and being transparent. You can make your models react to forces like gravity. You can simulate the car driving along a road. The tyres would spin and have resistance. Wind could be simulated to rush past (and take leaves, dust and snow with it). You have not created a drawing of a car, you have created a simulated car. 

With 2D animation you are controlling assets like illustrations, text, photographs, shapes, graphic elements. With professional 3D animation you are controlling assets that have been modelled and textured.

There is no simple answer to when you should choose 3D animation for marketing. It provides a greater level of reality and realism as demonstrated above, which can unlock better storytelling.

Yes, existing CAD files can be imported into our professional 3D animation software. In many times when working with a product this is our preference. It means we can be absolutely sure that the 3D model is realistic and all the aspects of the model are as they should be. There may be cleaning up of the files required depending on how they’ve been made, and how smoothly they import into our 3D packages. There will always be a requirement to add relevant materials and texturing through material design.

This is our mission as a 3D animation studio. We pride ourselves on brilliant project management, fantastic communication and 5 star customer service. It’s easy for us to say this, and hard for us to demonstrate until we work together. Which is why we are ISO 9001 certified. We applied for this accreditation so we could show our potential clients that we are tried and tested, and proven in both project management and quality assurance. It’s what makes us truly different from our competitors. 

Our ISO 9001 certified process is centred around small steps that move us efficiently from stage to stage. This means we are constantly in communication with you, presenting what we’ve created, collaborating with you to meet your objectives and incorporating feedback from you. This means we can deliver high quality work, on time and on budget, at the best possible value.

There is no one price for our 3D animation services. A simple animation of an uncomplicated product is very different to a highly complex and lengthy animation. We always provide a couple of options in our bespoke proposal to show what a 3D animation costs. This shows you what the final animation would look like alongside the cost to achieve it. If you’d like to get a free no obligation proposal, just drop us a message or hit the contact button.

We specialise in a range of 3D animation styles. Photorealistic 3D animation is the most popular as they take advantage of physically based rendering which simulates light, shadow, texturing and much more. Stylised 3D animation can be simpler to achieve which can bring the cost down.

We want you to be involved and have the opportunity to collaborate with us, without overwhelming or adding lots of burden to your already busy schedule. At every important design stage and/or milestone we would have a meeting to present what we’ve created and get any initial feedback from you. Often our clients have a wider team of internal stakeholders to also get feedback from so make sure you identify these at the start of the project so there’s no hidden surprises down the road. With our creative meeting and an internal meeting, we’d suggest allocating roughly 1 hour a week to the project. It’s crucial we have your feedback, but most of the work is done by us.

Absolutely. We create a single ‘hero’ 3D animation that serves as the main piece of content, and then this would be shaped and moulded to different usages. Through our briefing process at the beginning of the project we would identify your requirements to capture any additional sizes, aspect ratios, languages or lengths that you may need for your marketing distribution.

The final animations would be delivered in either MP4 format (which is suitable for web/streaming/online usage) or MOV format. As technology has improved over the years, MOV requirements are becoming increasingly rare, but are still required in some instances. We would work with you at the briefing stage to understand any specific requirements you may have around file types and file formats.

Our approach to storytelling in a 3D animation process is no different than 2D animation or motion graphics. We collaborate with you to understand what we need to say and who needs to hear it. Then we create a script that speaks to those people. Depending on the brief, we might be using emotive storytelling to really hook into audiences’ emotions, or we might be using a very factual approach. Once the words are finalised, we use storyboarding, moodboarding and styleframes to understand exactly what’s going to happen on screen to deliver those words, and what that content is going to look like. The difference with 3D animation storytelling vs 2D animation storytelling is that you unlock the ability for greater realism in the final outcome. Forces can be simulated, light can be manipulated. There are more tools at our disposal, but the fundamental steps remain the same for any story that we tell, 3D or not.

Like any animated project, 3D animation costs come down to the team we need to build around the project. If you need the project delivered very quickly, we would build a larger team, which might have a greater cost. If you need something very specific and highly detailed, we may need a specialist to achieve that, which could increase the cost. Then there are secondary factors like translating into multiple languages, creating lots of variations in aspect ratios or durations. Ultimately delivering something fast and complex will be more expensive than something simple and slower. Give us a call or drop us a message and with some additional information we could give you a rough ballpark based on our years of experience creating professional 3D animation.

Absolutely. We would work within your brand guidelines to add the correct colours, utilise graphic elements and of course your logo to any 3D animation. If you don’t have strict guidelines, we can work with you to advise what to use and how.

At each stage of the process you have the opportunity to give feedback on what we’ve done. We offer a single round of amendments per stage. If you need further amendments we would work with you to understand what that would cost to implement.

It is important to note, and we always discuss this at the start of any potential project, that going backwards through the stages may incur fees. For example, if we’ve got everything approved and have started animation, and the decision is made to change a fundamental part of the script, this will impact the storyboard and potentially a voiceover. We’d always have the conversation and advise what the cost would be to do this.

Many of our projects are sensitive and we operate under NDAs. All of our projects are safely stored in the cloud with strict access permissions, and everyone on your project would have signed an NDA to work on it. IPR is handled on a case by case basis. But everything we create you have complete access to - we don’t charge licensing fees. What we make is yours to use.

We have an extremely efficient, tried and tested, ISO 9001 certified process. This means we’ve been audited to ensure our processes meet the standards to be awarded an ISO mark. We meet strict requirements set out by ISO 9001 to ensure we have the standards necessary to deliver absolute quality. Our clients are often using their animation in a wider use, like launching a new product, for a trade show, in an advertising campaign, and so on. Therefore it’s critical to deliver to the deadline, and ISO 9001 accreditation gives the reassurance that we will deliver.

Definitely. We often work with clients who need their animation produced in multiple languages for accessibility requirements. Subtitling is a cheaper option but less immersive than using a new voice for each language. This is something we would define at the start of the project as we have ways to make dealing with multiple languages and versions of the animation more efficient.

This is our passion, it’s what we live and breathe! We’re constantly exploring new technologies and seeing if our workflow would benefit from using them. We get the latest industry news and keep our eyes peeling for our favourite artists and studios. We always want to deliver exciting, high quality work for our clients and we can only do this by staying up to date with our industry.

We have no specific reporting we can give on ROI. Most of our clients are using their animations for brand awareness and brand perception which are very hard to quantify. When clients use our animations for performance marketing campaigns, this is very dependent on the industry, the advertising channel and the marketing agency involved. 

We can say that 75% of our clients to date have returned for another project, meaning we must be doing something right given 3D animation costs.

We offer a turnkey 3D animation process from idea to audience. We will source everything you need to deliver a stunning, compelling, high quality 3D animation. Some projects require voiceover, bespoke audio with custom composition, sound design of effects, custom 3D modelling and asset creation, 3D character design, complex simulation of fluids, and much more. No two projects are the same for us, everything we do is completely custom to your requirements, and we’ll work together with you to define those at the beginning of your project.