Explainer videos
An explainer video is not a tour of your software. It is an argument, made in pictures and as few words as the argument needs, for somebody who has about a minute of attention and no reason yet to give you more. This page is what that means in practice: what we make, how a scene gets built, and what arrives at the end.
Shapes
The shape is not a package name. It changes how the script is structured, so it is settled at the brief rather than chosen from a menu afterwards.
Shape 01
One idea, held for as long as it takes to land
One thing your product or service does, one audience, one thing to do next. The script carries a single argument from the opening frame to the closing card, and the animation is built to keep that argument moving rather than to show every screen you have.
Suits A landing page, an advertisement cut, or an idea that has to survive being watched with the sound off.
Shape 02
A job inside your software, step by step
A sequence through your interface: where somebody starts, what they press, what changes on the screen and what they end up with. Screens are rebuilt as vector artwork wherever a step needs elements to move on their own, so the pace follows the explanation rather than a recording.
Suits Onboarding, a help centre, a sales call that keeps having to walk through the same thing.
Shape 03
Several features or audiences in one script
More than one idea in a single piece, with the structure to keep them apart: chapters, a returning device between sections, and a close that pulls them together. Cut-downs for separate features and a captioned version for silent playback are made from the same build rather than started again.
Suits A launch, a conference reel, or a product with distinct audiences who each need their own part of the story.
Building a scene
Every scene in every piece is built one of three ways, and a single video can draw on all three. The choice is made scene by scene at the storyboard, and it is the largest single thing that moves the scope of a job.
Your screens are redrawn as vector artwork, so a button, a row, a cursor and a panel are separate objects that can move, appear and change on their own. Text stays crisp at any size and a step can be slowed down or held without going soft.
Screenshots, exports and artwork you send are animated as they are: panned, scaled, masked, revealed and annotated with on-screen text and pointers.
Shapes, diagrams, icons and figures drawn for the script where there is no interface to show: the situation before the product, a comparison, a flow between people or systems, a number made visible.
A video can be opened anywhere, and sound is the first thing to go: in a feed, in an open-plan office, in a meeting somebody is only half in. So we write the on-screen text to carry the argument on its own, rather than to repeat a voice that may never be heard. It is written with the script rather than added to it: what appears, when it appears, how long it holds, and what is deliberately left unsaid because the picture is already saying it. Where an interface needs pointing at, it is pointed at on screen.
Voice
Decided at the brief, because a piece written for narration and a piece written to stand in silence are written differently from the first line.
You hear auditions against your own script and choose the voice before anything is booked. The script is locked before the session: a recording is bought once, and rewriting a line after it has been recorded means buying the line again.
You record the narration and send the files; we clean them up as far as the recording allows and cut the animation to them. What we cannot do is rescue a recording made somewhere too noisy, so we will say plainly if a take will not hold up.
On-screen text, pacing and sound carry the whole piece. It is written differently - fewer words, longer holds - so this is decided at the brief rather than dropped later.
Music and sound design are chosen for the piece from a licensed library, and the licence is bought for the use you actually need. The quotation names it: a licence for an internal video and a licence for paid advertising are different purchases, and finding that out afterwards is nobody's idea of a good day.
Handover
Each of these is its own item in the quotation. None of them is assumed, and none of them is quietly missing.
01
The master and any agreed cut-downs, in the file format, frame size and frame rate set out in the quotation. Sent by email where they are small enough, otherwise as a download link.
02
Burned-in captions as a separate version of the video, a separate subtitle file, or both. Which of those you get is an item in the order rather than an assumption.
03
The animation project, the vector artwork and the audio as separate files, so another studio can pick the piece up. This is its own item in the quotation: it is a different thing to buy from a finished video.
04
Fonts and licensed music stay under their own licences, and those licences do not transfer with a project file. Where a piece uses either, the quotation names the licence so you know what you have and what you would need to buy to reuse it.
Next step
We come back with a written quotation: the shape of the piece, how each scene would be built, what is included at every stage and what it costs.