Most brands commissioning their first explainer video have no idea what actually happens between sending a brief and receiving a finished file. That gap in understanding causes most of the friction that derails otherwise good projects: unrealistic timelines, feedback dropped at the wrong stage, and budget surprises nobody saw coming. This is the explainer video process laid out in full, stage by stage, so you walk into your next production conversation knowing exactly what you are buying and why each step exists.
Everything below is how we actually run production at Explainer Videos Company, including the checkpoints we insist on and the places projects most often slow down. It is written to be useful whether you end up working with us or with anyone else.
The Explainer Video Stages
Stage One: Discovery And Strategy
Before a single word of script gets written, a serious studio spends real time understanding your product, your audience, and the one idea that has to land above everything else. This means digging into your existing marketing materials, talking to your team about the objections your sales process runs into most, and getting brutally specific about who is actually going to watch this video and what they need to believe by the end of it. Skip this stage, or rush it, and everything downstream inherits the fuzziness. A script without a clear target audience produces generic messaging that resonates with nobody in particular.
A strong discovery phase ends with a single page creative brief: the core message, the target audience, the tone, and the specific action the video needs to drive. That document becomes the reference point every later decision gets checked against, which is exactly why skipping it tends to cause scope creep and endless revision cycles later in production.
The questions that do the most work in this stage are the uncomfortable ones. Where in your funnel will this video sit, and what does the viewer already know by the time they reach it? What has your sales team had to explain repeatedly on calls? What does a viewer need to stop believing, not just start believing? If a studio does not ask something in this territory before quoting, the brief is going to get written by guesswork and you will pay for that in revisions.
Stage Two: Scriptwriting
The script is the actual foundation of an explainer video, more than any single visual decision made later. A strong script leads with the viewer problem, not your product, introduces the solution at the right pace, and closes with a clear call to action. Most effective explainer scripts run under 150 words per minute of intended runtime, tight enough that every sentence earns its place.
This stage typically involves at least one full revision round with the client before moving forward, since changing a script after storyboarding has started costs meaningfully more than catching a direction problem here.
A genuinely skilled scriptwriter in this space writes for the ear, not the page. Sentences get shorter, rhythm matters more than it does in written marketing copy, and the whole thing needs to sound natural when read aloud by a professional voice actor rather than just look good on a slide. The practical test we use is simple: read the draft out loud at natural pace and time it. If it runs long, the video runs long, because narration sets the runtime and the animation has to fit around it, never the other way round.
Stage Three: Storyboarding
Storyboarding translates the approved script into a full visual sequence, panel by panel, showing exactly what appears on screen at each moment and how it connects to the narration. This stage is deliberately low fidelity, rough sketches rather than finished art, because its entire purpose is catching structural and pacing problems while changes are still cheap. A studio that skips a proper storyboard review and jumps straight into animation is gambling that everyone already agrees on a vision that has never actually been confirmed in writing.
This is the single most important approval checkpoint in the entire process. A client who approves a storyboard quickly and then requests a major structural change during animation should expect that change to cost significantly more and take considerably longer than the same change would have at this stage. The way to review a storyboard properly is to read the narration alongside each panel and ask whether the visual is doing work the words are not, because a panel that simply illustrates what is already being said is a wasted few seconds of a very short video.
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Stage Four: Style Frames And Art Direction
Before full animation begins, most studios produce style frames, which are fully finished, polished single images showing the exact visual style, color palette, and character or asset design the final video will use. This lets a client sign off on the look and feel of the entire project from a small, manageable sample rather than discovering a stylistic mismatch after dozens of scenes have already been animated in a direction nobody actually wanted.
Two or three frames is usually the right number, and which frames get chosen matters more than how many. We pick the most visually demanding moments in the video rather than the easiest ones, typically a key character or product moment, a data or interface moment, and the closing call to action, because those are where a style either holds up or falls apart. A set of style frames built only from simple scenes approves a look that has not been stress tested.
This is also the stage where brand assets have to be fully in hand: logo files in vector format, brand colors with exact values, approved fonts and any licensing that comes with them, and product screenshots at final quality. Style frames built on placeholder brand assets are a rework bill waiting to arrive, and this is the most common reason a project loses a week for reasons that have nothing to do with animation.
Stage Five: Animation Production
This is where the bulk of the actual production time gets spent, bringing the approved storyboard and style frames to life frame by frame, scene by scene. Depending on the chosen style, whether 2D animation, 3D animation, motion graphics, whiteboard, or live action, this stage involves genuinely different technical workflows, but the underlying discipline stays consistent: every scene gets built to serve the pacing of the script, not to show off a flashy technique for its own sake. Most studios share rough animation passes with the client at this stage for a checkpoint review before committing to final polish.
Worth knowing what that rough pass actually looks like, because clients are often thrown by it. It usually arrives without final polish, sometimes with placeholder audio and unfinished transitions, and it is meant to be reviewed for timing, staging, and whether each scene lands the point, not for the finish. Reviewing a rough pass as if it were the final cut generates notes that solve themselves in polish and delays the notes that actually matter.
Stage Six: Voiceover And Sound Design
Professional voiceover narration typically gets recorded once the script is fully locked, matched to the brand tone and to the expectations of the target audience. A playful startup voice reads very differently than a clinical B2B enterprise voice, and the wrong choice here can undercut an otherwise strong video instantly.
Casting usually runs through auditions on a short section of the actual script rather than a generic demo reel, because a voice that sounds right in a showreel does not always sit right on your specific copy. Accent, pace, and read direction all get decided here, and locking the script before recording is not a formality: a rewritten line after the session means either a pickup recording fee or a compromise edit.
Sound design and music licensing happen in parallel, building the audio layer that gives finished animation its sense of weight and polish. Licensing needs checking against where the video will actually run, since a track cleared for web use is not automatically cleared for paid advertising or broadcast. This stage is frequently underestimated in client budgeting, treated as an afterthought when it is genuinely one of the biggest levers on how professional a finished video actually feels.
Stage Seven: Compositing And Final Polish
All the individual pieces, meaning animation, voiceover, sound design, and music, get combined and fine tuned together at this stage. Color grading gets applied for visual consistency across every scene, transitions get smoothed, and final timing adjustments get made against the finished audio track rather than the placeholder scratch track used during earlier production.
Small details carry a disproportionate amount of the perceived quality here. Sound effects get synced to motion so a transition feels driven rather than decorative, music gets ducked under narration so the voice stays clearly readable, levels get set to consistent loudness so the video does not arrive noticeably quieter or louder than everything around it in a feed, and any on screen text gets a final legibility check at small sizes. None of this appears as a line item a client thinks to ask about, and all of it is the difference between a video that reads as professional and one that reads as almost finished.
Stage Eight: Revisions And Final Delivery
Most studios include a set number of revision rounds within a standard quote, and this stage is where those get used against the fully composited video rather than an earlier work in progress cut. Revisions land best when they come back as one consolidated list from the client side, with timecodes attached, rather than as separate messages from different stakeholders across several days.
Final delivery includes export ready files formatted for every platform the video will actually run on: web, social, broadcast, and presentation decks, each with slightly different technical requirements that a professional studio handles without the client needing to request it separately. A complete handover usually also includes vertical and square crops if social is in scope, a version with captions or a separate subtitle file, a clean version without narration for use at events or in other languages, and the project files or source assets if that was agreed in the contract. Asking what the delivery package contains before signing is a reasonable question and the answer tells you a lot about the studio.
The Roles Actually Involved, And Why That Matters To You
A finished explainer video looks like the output of one seamless creative vision, but it is genuinely the product of several distinct specialists handing off work in sequence: a strategist or account lead who owns the brief and keeps the project aligned to your actual goals, a scriptwriter who thinks in narrative structure and spoken rhythm rather than marketing copy, a storyboard artist who thinks in sequence and pacing, animators who specialize in whichever technique the project calls for, a voice director who casts and directs the narration performance, and a sound designer or composer handling the audio layer.
Understanding this division of labor matters for a practical reason. It explains why a genuinely good explainer video costs what it costs, and it tells you what to ask a prospective studio about specifically. A studio that has one generalist doing all of these roles is not necessarily bad, because small and talented teams do excellent work, but it is a meaningfully different production model than a studio with dedicated specialists at each stage, and it is worth knowing which one you are actually hiring before a project starts.
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Where Clients Most Commonly Slow Down Their Own Project
Beyond scattered feedback across multiple stakeholders, a few specific habits reliably add unplanned time to a production timeline. Requesting a completely new creative direction after style frames have already been approved is the single most expensive change a client can make, since it effectively restarts the art direction phase while the clock keeps running on the original schedule. Providing brand guidelines or logo files midway through production, rather than at kickoff, forces rework on anything already built using placeholder or incorrect assets.
Treating the first full cut as a rough draft rather than the near final product it actually represents, then sending back extensive notes at the composited stage that should have surfaced at storyboard, consistently produces the most frustrating and expensive revision cycles in this entire process.
One more that comes up constantly: introducing a new stakeholder late. A senior reviewer who sees the video for the first time at the composited stage has not agreed to the script or the storyboard, so their notes almost always reach back into decisions locked weeks earlier. If someone holds the final sign off, they need to be in the room at script and storyboard, not at delivery. None of these mistakes is unusual or embarrassing. They are common enough that an experienced studio should proactively flag the risk of each one during kickoff rather than waiting for a client to discover them the hard way.
A Realistic Budget Breakdown Across The Process
Understanding roughly how a typical explainer video budget distributes across these stages helps set expectations for where your money is actually going. Discovery, strategy, and scriptwriting together typically represent a meaningful but not dominant share of total cost, front loaded work that shapes everything else.
Storyboarding and style frames represent a smaller line item individually but an outsized value relative to their cost, since they are the cheapest insurance against expensive changes later. Animation production is consistently the largest single line item, unsurprising given it is the most labor intensive and time intensive stage regardless of the chosen style. Voiceover, music licensing, and sound design typically represent a smaller but meaningful share that inexperienced buyers frequently underestimate when building an initial budget.
Seeing the breakdown this way makes it clearer why an unusually low quote from an unfamiliar vendor should raise real questions, since it is difficult to cover genuine specialist labor across all these stages at prices dramatically below industry norms without cutting corners somewhere the client will not notice until the finished product underperforms. The specific things to check in a low quote are how many revision rounds are included, whether voiceover is a professional artist or synthetic, whether music is properly licensed for the intended use, and whether the price covers one aspect ratio or all the versions you actually need.
What Actually Determines How Long This Whole Process Takes
A straightforward 60 to 90 second explainer typically runs three to five weeks from kickoff to delivery, assuming reasonably prompt client feedback at each stage. Complex projects, character heavy 2D animation, detailed 3D work, and multiple stakeholder approval chains can extend meaningfully beyond that range.
The single biggest controllable factor on the client side is not the raw production speed of the studio. It is how quickly and clearly feedback gets consolidated and delivered at each checkpoint. A brief that bounces between five internal stakeholders with conflicting opinions reliably slows a project down more than almost any technical production challenge a studio encounters. Naming one person as the final decision maker at kickoff, and agreeing a turnaround window for each review, does more for a timeline than any amount of production speed.
How This Process Adapts Across Different Explainer Video Styles
While the eight stages above hold true regardless of style, the emphasis shifts meaningfully across 2D animation, 3D animation, motion graphics, whiteboard, and live action projects alike. 2D character animation typically demands more time in the style frames stage, since character design and expression range need real exploration before committing to full production.
3D animation shifts weight toward modeling and rigging before animation can even begin, an upfront investment that does not exist in 2D or motion graphics work. Motion graphics, built more around typography, data visualization, and abstract shape language, often moves faster through storyboarding since there is no character performance to choreograph, but demands more precision in timing and rhythm to avoid feeling mechanical.
Whiteboard animation is usually the fastest and most affordable of the animated formats, which is exactly why it suits longer explanations and training content where clarity matters more than visual ambition. Live action shifts an enormous share of the process earlier, into pre production scheduling, location scouting, and casting, work that has no real equivalent in fully animated formats. Knowing which style your project needs before requesting a quote helps set realistic expectations for where in this process your specific timeline will naturally take longer or move faster than the general range.
What Separates A Strong Process From A Weak One
The explainer video studios producing consistently strong explainer videos treat every stage above as a genuine checkpoint, not a formality to rush through on the way to animation. They push back on vague briefs instead of guessing. They insist on storyboard approval before animating a single frame. They budget real time for voiceover casting rather than grabbing whatever is available. None of that is glamorous, and none of it shows up directly in a finished reel, but it is the actual difference between a video that performs and one that just looks finished.
If you are evaluating studios, the useful questions are process questions rather than portfolio questions. Ask what happens if the storyboard is rejected. Ask how many revision rounds are included and at which stages. Ask who writes the script and whether you speak to them directly. Ask what the delivery package contains. A studio with a real process answers all four immediately, because those answers are just how they already work.
How Explainer Videos Company Runs This Process
Every project here moves through the same checkpoints in the same order, with script, storyboard, style frames, and a rough animation pass each requiring sign off before the next stage starts. Feedback gets collected into consolidated rounds at each of those points rather than applied piecemeal, and the risks listed above get flagged at kickoff instead of surfacing as a surprise invoice later.
See how this full process plays out across real projects, and explore the range of styles it supports, on our portfolio page.
Frequently Asked Question?
How Long Does The Full Explainer Video Process Typically Take?
A standard 60 to 90 second explainer video usually takes three to five weeks from kickoff to final delivery, assuming timely client feedback at each review stage. More complex projects with detailed 3D animation or multiple stakeholders can extend this timeline considerably.
What Is The Most Important Stage In The Explainer Video Process?
Storyboarding is arguably the most important checkpoint, since it is the last stage where structural or pacing changes remain cheap to make. Changes requested after animation production has begun cost significantly more and take considerably longer to implement.
Do I Need To Approve Every Single Stage Of Production?
Most professional studios build in specific checkpoints at script, storyboard, style frames, and a rough animation pass, rather than requiring approval at every small step. This balances client control with keeping the overall process moving efficiently.
Why Does Voiceover Casting Matter So Much To The Final Result?
The voice carries a huge share of the perceived tone and professionalism of a video. A mismatched voice, whether too casual for a serious B2B product or too stiff for a playful consumer brand, can undercut an otherwise strong video, which is why casting deserves real consideration rather than treatment as an afterthought.
How Many Revision Rounds Are Typically Included In An Explainer Video Quote?
Most studios include one to three revision rounds within a standard quote, applied at specific stages like script, storyboard, and final composited video. Revisions requested outside these included rounds, or major structural changes late in production, typically incur additional cost.
