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Animation vs Video | What You Need To Know
It’s often one of the great dilemma’s for marketing teams; should you go with an animation or a live action video for your next video marketing project. Both certainly have their own unique benefits and will work better in various situations. But is one superior to the other?
Whether you choose animation or live action video, that decision will not only be affecting your final product, but it will also have a big impact on your time and budget. There is often the misconception that animations are always cheaper and quicker to make when compared to video.
Before making your decisions, there are a few things that you should know when it comes to animation vs video.
“Ultimately, it can come down to what you want the video to do.”
Animation Isn’t Always Cheaper – Quite often we have clients come to us wanting an animation purely because they’re under the impression it’s so much cheaper than video production; which simply isn’t the case.
High-quality animations often require expensive, highly spec’d out computers in order to handle their complexity. They often require a lot more pre-production planning with in-depth storyboards and scripts. They can also take longer to create, which all adds to the cost.
Ultimately, when it comes to animation vs video, you get what you pay for. It’s true that in some cases, depending on the video, a simple animation will be cheaper than a video. But the reality is, if you want to do it properly, there really isn’t much difference in price at all.
Video is More Personal – If you want your company to come across more personable and human then there is no competition; video is what you need. This is especially important if your company tries to focus on a personal customer interaction.
Companies like this wouldn’t really benefit from having an animation as a part of their animation. But they probably would benefit from a live action video focusing on their customers, employees and services. A good example of this would be testimonial videos. If you can see the person’s face and hear their story, the message becomes so much more genuine.
Animation Is More Abstract – So where video is better suited to tangible products and services, such as clothing or electronics, animation is much better suited to intangible products and services.
Stuff where the audience is less concerned about what the product looks like. For example, if you’re a company that offers some form of complex online service, you can use animation to explain the process to your customer, one step at a time. This would be near impossible to do with video.
Video Can Be Quicker – Quite often, video production can be a much faster process than animation. This is mostly because, with high quality animation, everything has to be built from scratch.
Less time is spent during the pre-production stage creating in depth storyboards and character designs. Quite often, a video (depending on the complexity) can be filmed and editing within a week. But animations (again, depending on the complexity) can take much longer than that to plan, build, animate, amend and export.
Animation is Easier to Change – One downside to video, is that if you get to the final stages and you decide you want to change something drastic, it can often result in a re-shoot.
With animation, if you get to the final stages and you want to make a big change, it’s really easy for the animators to do that. It may result in extra costs depending on the time it takes to make the changes, but it probably won’t be as expensive or time consuming as a re-shoot.
Conclusion
Ultimately, it can come down to what kind of video you want. What’s the objective? What’s the message? Who’s the audience?
Identifying the answer to all these things can often make your decision easier. For example; if you want to create an explainer video to show how a complex system works, then animation may lend itself better.
Alternatively, if you wanted to do a general video promoting your business & service, perhaps live action video is the way to go.
Each medium has their own merits, so it’s all about knowing which one is better suited to your needs.
If you’re still not sure get in touch with our team today. We’ve got lot’s of experience in creating both animations and video productions. So we’ll know exactly how to get the best out of your video project.
Need help with your next business video or animation? Contact our friendly team now!