Why your notes matter
Animation is built in layers. The script decides the storyboard, the storyboard decides the animation, and the voiceover sets the timing of every scene. A change is quick while a layer is still open and slow once the next layer has been built on top of it. So the most useful thing you can do as a client is look closely at the right things at each stage.
What to check at each stage
Our process has four approvals. Each one has its own questions:
- Script: is the message right? Check every fact, name, number, claim and legal line now.
- Style and storyboard: does it look like your brand? Does each scene show the right thing in the right order?
- Voice and sound: is the voice right for your audience? Are the pace, the pronunciation and the music right?
- Animation: do the movement and timing feel right? Is anything hard to read or too fast?
Seven rules for useful notes
These work with any studio, not just ours:
- Collect comments from everyone on your side before you reply.
- Send them from one person, in one message per round.
- Describe the problem, not the fix. "The price is hard to read here" is more useful than "make it bigger".
- Point to the place: a scene number or a time in the video.
- Mark what must change and what is only a preference.
- Say what is working, so it stays in.
- Reply to the stage you were sent. Storyboard notes belong at storyboard stage.
Changes inside a stage and changes of scope
Notes on the stage in front of you are part of the job. With us, revisions within the agreed scope are unlimited, and we keep refining a stage until you approve it.
A change that reopens something already approved is different. A new script after the script was signed off, a longer video or a different style means redoing finished work, so it is estimated separately before anything happens. Our terms set out where that line sits.
When you are not sure what is wrong
It is fine to say "this scene does not feel right and I cannot say why". Tell your producer what you expected to feel at that point, and send an example of a video that does it well. That gives the team something to aim at.