What is animation (2D and 3D)?
Animation is moving pictures made rather than filmed. In 2D animation the images are flat: drawn frame by frame, built from illustrated pieces and moved like puppets, or designed in software where shapes, type and characters are animated on a plane. In 3D animation the images are modeled: objects, characters and environments are built in software with geometry, surfaces and lights, then posed, moved and rendered by a virtual camera from any angle. The two have different histories, different tools and different looks, and brands use both, often in the same film.
For a creative agency the distinction is practical. 2D is the language of explainers, motion graphics, illustrated brand worlds and social content, with a directness and a warmth that comes from the hand behind it. 3D is the language of products that need to be seen from every side, environments that do not exist, visual effects that have to sit inside live footage and the photoreal renders that have replaced product photography for many categories. Both can be stylized or realistic; the choice is about what the story needs and what the budget allows.
Why it matters
Why animation matters
Animation shows what cannot be filmed. The inside of a product, the mechanism of a service, a process that happens over years or in microseconds, a character who does not exist, a space before it is built. For brands whose offer is invisible (software, finance, healthcare, energy) animation is often the only way to make it visible, and for brands whose product is physical it is the way to show it perfectly, without a shoot, in every color and from every angle.
It also travels. An animated piece can be re-versioned for every market, re-cut for every format and updated when the product changes, without a reshoot. And it carries brand with unusual force: a distinctive animation style is as ownable as a typeface, and a brand that moves in its own way is recognized before its logo appears. In a feed where everything moves, how a brand moves is part of its identity.
In practice
How animation works in practice
- 01
Every animated project starts with a script and a storyboard, then an animatic: the boards timed to a scratch voice track so that the pacing can be judged before anything is built. For 2D, the design phase produces the characters, environments and style frames, and the animation phase brings them to life frame by frame or through rigged characters and keyframed motion. For 3D, modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting and rendering follow in sequence, each a specialty, with render time a real cost that has to be planned. Sound design, music and voice are built alongside, and the final is composited, graded and delivered in every format required.
- 02
The team scales with the ambition. A simple 2D explainer might be one designer and an animator; a photoreal 3D product film might involve modelers, texture artists, lighters, animators and a compositor. The creative director holds the whole thing to the idea. The most important production decision is made at the storyboard, because changes after animation begins cost many times what they would have cost on paper.
At RIOT
Animation at RIOT
The new identity trailer we made for the Washington Commanders in 2022 introduced a new mark through motion, and the sizzle reels we have made for Coach over more than a decade carry animated type, logos and transitions between the live footage. Animation at RIOT is rarely a separate deliverable; it is part of how a film is built, from title to end card.
Watch out
What people get wrong about animation
Assuming animation is cheap because there is no shoot. Good animation is labor, and a minute of character animation or photoreal 3D can cost more than a day of filming. The second mistake is choosing 3D because it looks expensive. Many stories are told better in 2D, and a flat style executed well beats a 3D render executed carelessly every time.
The third is skipping the animatic. A project that goes from storyboard to animation without timing the boards to sound discovers its pacing problems at the most expensive moment. The fourth is treating animation as a style rather than a tool. The question is never "should this be animated" but "what does this piece need to show", and the answer decides the medium.
