Animation built to be watched, not admired.

Four things, in order of how much they matter: a script that decides the story, a design system that makes every future piece cheaper, the finished animation with sound and captions, and the cutdowns and ratios each placement needs. The animation is the visible part, but the script and the system carry most of the value — one because pacing is decided in words, the other because it turns a one-off purchase into a library. You should also expect the source projects, organised and documented, so the work is not trapped in one studio's file structure.

It scales with duration, illustration complexity, how much bespoke design the piece needs, and whether it is the first from a new system or the tenth from an existing one. A short social cut inside an established style system sits at the low end. A ninety-second explainer with custom illustration, an original score and a full set of ratios sits considerably higher, because most of that cost is human hours in design and animation rather than render time. We quote a fixed price per piece after the brief, with the revision rounds written into it, so there is no meter running while you think.

Whichever the subject demands. Live action wins when the product is physical, when people or place carry the story, or when authenticity is the point — and it remains the most common form: Wyzowl found live action is the most-created video type at 51%, with animation at 23%. Animation wins when there is nothing filmable: software interfaces, processes, data, abstract propositions, or anything needing perfect consistency across dozens of variants and languages. It also ages better, since you can update a frame without reshooting a crew. Plenty of the strongest work mixes both, with animated type and graphics over filmed footage.

More than most brands plan for, which is exactly why we build a system rather than a film. Motion's 2026 benchmarks show average weekly creative output rising from 2.8 new creatives under $10,000 a month to 4.1 at $10,000-$50,000, 6.6 at $50,000-$200,000 and 18.8 above $1m. You do not need forty separate concepts to hit those numbers — you need a handful of strong ideas with disciplined variation: different hooks, different opening seconds, different end frames, each ratio framed properly. That is a production planning decision, and it is far cheaper than commissioning new films at the same cadence.

It has to, and we design for it from the boards onward. Most feed viewing starts muted, so the piece is built so the story reads from image and type alone, with captions burned in or supplied as a separate track depending on the placement. Sound then adds to a piece that already works rather than propping one up. Practically that means holding type long enough to read at a glance, using contrast that survives a bright phone screen, and never putting a critical point in voiceover only. Clean versions without captions are delivered too, for placements that add their own.

Yes, and where guidelines cover print and web but say nothing about movement — which is most of the time — we extend them. That means defining how your brand moves: easing character, transition vocabulary, how the logo resolves, how type enters and leaves, how much motion is appropriate. Those rules get documented and handed to you, so any studio can produce work that belongs to the same family. If you have a brand team, they approve the motion rules once and then stop having to review every animation for consistency.

On what happens after it plays, not on view counts. For paid placements we read hook rate, hold rate and cost per result, and we ship variants that differ on one thing so the read is clean. For a product page or an onboarding flow we test the page with the video against the page without it, because a heavy hero video can cost more in load time than it earns in clarity — worth checking against the median landing page conversion rate of 6.6% in Unbounce's benchmark study. Every month we write up what performed and what we recommend producing next.

For a first piece with a new style system, three to six weeks end to end, and the variable is nearly always approval rather than animation. Sign-off on the script and boards is the gate: agree those quickly and the rest runs on schedule, because we do not begin animating until the story is locked. Once a system exists, additional pieces and cutdowns take days rather than weeks, which is the compounding benefit of building components instead of one-off files. Where a launch date is fixed, we work backward from it and tell you the last honest date for changes.

Yes — casting and directing voice talent, sourcing or commissioning music, sound design and the final mix, with licences documented and appropriate to where the piece will run. That last part matters more than people expect: stock music licensed for organic social and then used in a paid campaign is a common and avoidable exposure. We record the licence terms alongside the delivery so you can see what each asset is cleared for. Multi-language versions are straightforward when the system is built for them, which is one more reason we separate type from artwork.

We can, and the loop closes faster when the team making the creative sees the performance data directly. Our paid social, ad creative and creative strategy teams work from the same brief and the same numbers, so the next production is chosen on evidence rather than taste. It is equally fine to buy the animation alone while your in-house team or another agency runs the media — we deliver in the formats they ask for and share what we learn about what held attention.