The Animation Process: Every Stage, Explained
A working animator walks through how animation gets made, stage by stage, from script and storyboard to production, sound, and the final render.
Animation gets made in three phases, and knowing them in order is what separates a smooth project from an expensive one. It opens with pre-production, all the planning and design that happens before anyone animates a frame. The bulk of the work is production, the long stretch where artists build the assets and bring them to life. Then post-production takes those finished shots, edits them together with sound and color, and renders the file that actually ships. I have sat through this pipeline from both sides of the glass, next to directors arguing over two frames and next to clients who just want to know why a thirty second piece takes two months.
More brands are ordering animation than ever. Video now sits at the center of most marketing, with 89 percent of businesses using it according to HubSpot’s research, and plenty of the people commissioning it have never watched the process from the inside. If that is you, here is what happens between the brief and the final cut, and why the order of it drives both your timeline and your cost.
The three phases every animation moves through
Here is the shape of it before we get into each stage.
| Phase | What happens | Who leads it | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-production | Script, storyboard, animatic, character and style design | Writer, director, storyboard and concept artists | The cheapest place to fix anything, and it sets the whole look and pacing |
| Production | Modeling or drawing, rigging, layout, animation | Modelers, riggers, animators, layout artists | Where most of the hours and the cost live |
| Post-production | Compositing, effects, color, sound, render | Compositors, colorists, sound designers, editors | Turns raw shots into a finished, releasable piece |
Small teams collapse these roles. On a lean 2D explainer, one person might write, board, animate, and mix the whole thing. On a feature, every cell in that table is its own department. The steps stay the same either way, which is why understanding them helps whether you are making the animation or paying for it.
Pre-production: where the film is really made
Pre-production is the planning phase, and it is the one people are most tempted to rush. Everything downstream inherits the decisions made here, so this is where most projects are won or lost.
It starts with the script. A script for animation is far more than dialogue; it lays out the action beat by beat and the emotional pacing, because you pay to draw every second, so a loose script gets expensive fast. If you are writing one, our guide on how to write a video script covers the structure I lean on.
Next comes the storyboard, the first time words become pictures. A board is a run of panels, close to a comic, mapping the shots and the camera moves. This is where I catch pacing problems while they still cost a pencil and an eraser rather than weeks of finished animation. If you have never built one, here is what a storyboard is for.
From the board you cut an animatic, the storyboard timed out with scratch dialogue and temporary sound. It is the first version you can actually watch, and it tells you the truth about whether a joke works or a scene is running long. Fixing it at this stage is close to free, which is why making an animatic is the single most underrated step in the whole pipeline.
Alongside the story, designers lock the look. Character design bakes personality into shapes, since a rounded silhouette reads very differently from an angular one. Style frames are fully rendered stills that prove out the lighting and composition. A color script maps the emotional arc across the piece, warm and open early, cooler and tighter when the mood turns. Get this right and every later stage has a clear target to hit.
Production: building it and making it move
Production is the longest and most expensive phase, where the plans finally become moving pictures. First, artists build every asset the audience will see: the final character models or drawings, plus the backgrounds and props. Then the animation itself begins.
The core technique is keyframing. An animator sets the key poses that define a movement, and either the software or a junior artist fills the frames in between. Keyframing gives you precise control over timing and weight, which is why stylized character work lives or dies on it. Most of what makes any of it feel alive traces back to the twelve basic principles of animation that Disney’s animators wrote down decades ago, and those still hold today.
Production is also the fork where 2D and 3D pipelines split apart.
| Stage | 2D animation | 3D animation |
|---|---|---|
| Assets | Characters and backgrounds drawn or painted as flat art | Characters and props built as 3D models |
| Movement | Frame-by-frame drawing or moving 2D rigs | Posing a rigged digital skeleton over time |
| Detail | Line, color, and shading inside the drawing | Texturing, shading, and lighting the surfaces |
In 2D, the unsung job is in-betweening, drawing the transitional frames that turn a set of key poses into fluid motion. In 3D, nothing moves until a model is rigged, which means a rigger builds it a digital skeleton of joints and controls. A good rig is the difference between a character that carries its weight and one that looks like a stiff puppet. After rigging, texturing and lighting artists make surfaces read as skin or brushed metal and set the mood of each shot.
Animation reaches far beyond film today. Grand View Research values the global 3D animation market at 22.67 billion dollars in 2023, on track to reach 51.03 billion by 2030, with demand coming from advertising and corporate training as much as entertainment. If you are weighing the format for your own project, our breakdown of 3D explainer videos covers what that route involves.
Grand View Research projects a 12.3% CAGR through 2030, with demand spread across advertising, product, and training, not only film.
Source: Grand View Research
Post-production: the part that makes it feel finished
Post-production assembles the separate pieces into one shot and adds the polish, and it runs in a fairly fixed order.
Compositing comes first. A compositor takes the separately rendered layers and combines them into a single believable frame, managing transparency and light so nothing looks pasted on. Then color grading sets the emotional tone and holds continuity, so a character’s red coat stays the same red across shots that were lit differently.
Sound is the layer people underrate most. It is dialogue mixed clean, plus foley, the custom footsteps and cloth rustle that make a story world feel physical. Add the effects and a score that tells the audience how to feel, and a good mix does as much work as the picture. Finally the whole thing is rendered and exported to the right spec, an H.264 MP4 for the web or a high-bitrate master for broadcast. Pick the wrong export and months of work can look grainy on the one screen that matters.
See a full pipeline come together
Reading about the process only takes you so far, so it helps to watch one happen start to finish. Blender Studio, the team behind the open-source 3D tool, films the making of its own short films and releases them free, and its production log for the open movie CHARGE walks the same pipeline on a real project.
How long animation takes, and what changes it
How long your animation takes depends on the piece, but I can give you the shape of it. A simple 2D motion graphics piece can turn around in a few weeks. A 3D character animation with real scenes and rigging often runs two to three months or more. What stretches a schedule is scope. A hand-rigged 3D character eats far more hours than flat 2D work, and every extra character you add multiplies the design and animation time. Detailed, hand-painted backgrounds push it further still. Timeline and cost move together here, since the same variables that stretch a schedule also raise the price, which is why my colleague’s guide to what corporate video costs leans so hard on scope.
If you would rather not run a pipeline like this yourself, the alternative is bringing in people who already do. Most teams now keep this work close, and Wistia’s 2025 State of Video report found roughly 71 percent of companies produce their video in-house. At Moonb we work as an embedded creative team with a dedicated Creative Director, which is the route a lot of brands take once animation stops being a one-off and turns into something they need every month. Whichever way you go, you can see what the animation route involves on our video animation services guide.
Frequently asked questions
An animatic is your storyboard timed out with scratch audio, so you can watch the pacing before you pay to animate anything. On almost any project longer than a few seconds, yes, I build one. It is the cheapest place to find out that a scene runs long or a beat needs another second, and skipping it is how teams end up re-animating finished work they could have caught in an afternoon.
It comes down to the look you want and the money you have. 2D is usually faster and lighter for explainers and stylized, hand-drawn stories. 3D costs more up front because everything has to be modeled and rigged, but it earns its keep on product visuals and anything with real physical detail. If you are showing how a real object works, I usually push toward 3D; if you are telling a punchy story fast, 2D.
It depends almost entirely on style and length, so treat any single number with suspicion. As a rough shape from projects I have priced, a short 2D motion graphics piece can start in the low thousands, while a polished 3D character animation with custom rigs runs well into five or six figures. The biggest cost drivers are the number of characters and the level of custom design, since both multiply the hours in production. Scope the piece tightly before anyone quotes you.
