Animated Shorts.

A 60-second animated short can explain a product that takes your sales team twenty minutes and a whiteboard to get across. That is the real job here. You have something genuinely useful to say, but the moment a viewer hits a wall of text or a screen-recording demo, they are gone. We make short animated films, motion graphics and explainers that carry one clear idea, hold attention to the last frame, and leave the viewer actually understanding what you do.

What it is

An animated short is a self-contained piece of film, usually between thirty seconds and three minutes, that uses motion graphics, illustration and a tight script to land a single message. No camera, no studio booking, no presenter who freezes on the day. It is the right format when the thing you are explaining is abstract, technical or invisible. Think a cloud platform, a data flow, a process change, a regulatory shift, an app that does not photograph well. Where a live shoot shows people and places, an animated short shows ideas. You can draw the inside of a system, speed up six months into ten seconds, and make a dry concept feel worth watching.

How we deliver it

We are a London broadcast and video company on the Southbank, and we treat animation the way we treat a live programme. It starts with the script, because a short that wanders is a short nobody finishes. We write to a single takeaway, then storyboard every beat so you see the film on paper before a frame is animated. From there we build the visual style, animate the motion graphics, and record the voiceover. If a sequence needs a real face, a founder talking to camera or a presenter linking sections, we can shoot that against green screen in our virtual studio and drop them straight into the animated world. You sign off the storyboard, then the rough cut, then the final. No surprise reveal at the end, no budget spent before you have seen where it is going.

What you get

• A scripted, storyboarded animated short built to one clear message
• Custom motion graphics and illustration matched to your brand colours, type and tone
• A professional voiceover, plus on-screen captions so it works with the sound off on social
• Optional green-screen presenter or talking-head footage composited into the animation
• Delivery in the cuts you need, a full-length version plus square and vertical edits for LinkedIn, Instagram and conference screens
• Source-correct exports and clear usage rights, so you can run it on the website, in a pitch, or on a paid campaign without going back to square one

Where it earns its place

Product launches, where you need the value clear in the first ten seconds. Onboarding and training, where the same explainer saves your team repeating themselves every week. Conference and event opens, where a thirty-second animated sting sets the room before a speaker walks on. Fundraising and sales decks, where one embedded film does the work of three slides. And anything you cannot point a camera at, an internal process, a security model, a market trend. If the idea is strong but hard to see, this is the format that makes it visible.

Why it beats the obvious alternative

The default move is to film a member of staff at a desk explaining the product, or to record the screen and talk over it. Both feel cheap to make and they show. The screen-recording demo dates the moment your interface changes. The talking-head explainer rests on whether your spokesperson has a good day, and if they do not, you are back to a reshoot and a slipped deadline. An animated short has no bad takes and no weather. It does not age when your UI moves on, because the concepts it draws stay true. Spend the budget once on a film built around the idea rather than around a single recording, and you have something that still works in eighteen months, across every channel, in every cut.

Common questions

How much does it cost?

It depends on length, the animation style and how much custom illustration the script calls for. A short motion-graphics explainer built from your brand assets sits at the lower end. A fully bespoke illustrated film with original characters costs more and takes longer. The honest answer is that we price it after a short call about what you actually need, because quoting blind tends to either oversell or sell you short. You will get a fixed figure before anything starts, not a meter running.

How long does it take?

A straightforward explainer is usually a few weeks from approved script to final delivery. The script and storyboard stage is where most of the time and most of the value sit, so the more decisive you are at sign-off, the faster the rest moves. If you have a hard launch date, tell us at the start and we will build the schedule backwards from it.

Can you match our brand or an existing video?

Yes. We work to your brand guidelines, colours, fonts and tone, and if you already have a film or a house style we can sit the new short alongside it so the set feels like one body of work rather than a one-off. If you have no guidelines yet, we will agree a simple style frame up front so there are no surprises.

Do we need to write the script ourselves?

No. You bring the knowledge and the goal, we write the script. You know your product and your audience better than anyone, so we start from a short brief or a conversation, draft the script, and refine it with you until the message is right. If you would rather write it yourself, that is fine too and we will shape it for animation.

If you have an idea you keep struggling to explain in words, that is usually the sign it wants to be an animated short. Come down to the Southbank studio for a walkthrough, or have a quick call with us about the message you are trying to land. No commitment, just a sensible conversation about whether this is the right format and what it would take to do it well.