Are You Animating? Always save your design files
At LNC, our goal is perfection. No matter the client or the project’s objectives, we always seek the highest quality. From the first tiny detail to the completion of the project, we ensure that our work is exactly what the client wants. To ensure the best quality and cost effectiveness, always save your design files!
The Breakdown
Video production manifests in two categories: live filming and computer-generated animation. The first includes live actors: humans and staged scenes. The latter is for things like the animation of a user interface platform, or to make two-dimensional objects come to life.
When we’re working with live subjects, like actors, it’s easy to deliver verbal instructions and get instant gratification. On the other hand, animation is more complicated. In an animated video, every single object is manipulated individually; each button, moving image, and text box is created from scratch. The process can be extremely time consuming and expensive. The artists must spend hours upon hours in front of the screen, making magic happen.
Why you should save EVERYTHING
The good news is there is a way to cut through some of the tediousness of the process. You probably hired a designer to create your marketing elements, like your logo or featured branding assets. When they finished your project, they should have sent you some of the original design files. Remember those? They’re extremely important! These documents and files, mostly likely created in Adobe programs like Photoshop or Illustrator, can jumpstart the animation process for our creative team.
Save time & money: keep Your originals
There is a catch, though: they must be the original files straight from the designer. In Adobe Illustrator, the most commonly used creative software in graphic design, you can create vector images. Vectoring is used to stretch and shape the image to suit the desire of the designer. So, let’s say that there’s a small object, like a button or icon, within the frame that you want to highlight. It’s thanks to vector images that we can zoom in on that detail while maintaining the optimal resolution. Quality is key! If your originals don’t exist, our animator and designer have to start from scratch— this adds a lot of time and money to the process. You don’t want that, and neither do we.
The only situation where being a hoarder is essential
Keeping your files is helpful for us, but it’s also beneficial for you. Let’s say you want to do create video down the road or maybe revamp of your website. Having the elemental foundation on-hand will help to speed up your process, while also keeping your cost down.