Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
I am a founder and ideological inspirer of Motion & Design Studio Lakota. We are a creative team that helps companies tell the world about their products and services with the help of animation and motion design.
What is the story behind starting this company?
In the beginning, we worked with video design for offline events and conferences (projections, video screens, and so on). Then we noticed the constant demand of companies for high-quality effective presentations of their services and products. Our competencies allowed us to interpolate our skills for the widest viewer on the Internet, then we decided to go headlong into media advertising.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
Because we are the studio of animation and motion design the core of our company is an in-house team of animators, motion designers, and producers that works full-time. We usually hire illustrators for certain projects. It happens because different clients ask for different styles.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
We are a company focused on the development of the creative potential of employees and offline team interaction. We try not to outsource the tasks associated with animation and we have a lot of funds for training all team members, supporting any creative endeavors. This is the only way - by establishing a creative atmosphere, you can make high-quality commercial products.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
The first segment of customers is the manufacturers of digital products and services aimed at the general consumer. These are Saas services and large digital companies with corporate products.
The second segment is companies with innovative/complex products, the benefits of which are sometimes very difficult to convey and explain to the end consumer. A striking example is a video for startups.
The third segment is the HR departments of large corporate companies with a large number of employees. Animation is ideal for conveying large volumes of corporate information to a wide audience in an interesting way.
All three segments are represented in our portfolio in approximately equal shares.
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
Short animation advertising videos for social media, animation explainers up to 1.5 minutes, long corporate videos (for instance, video about company’s values, a culture of interaction in a team, etc.)
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
The best criteria of satisfaction for us, when after the publication of a project client tells us “That’s exactly what I wanted.” The most important step for satisfying a client’s needs is a detailed pre-production process. We devote a huge amount of time to briefing the client, understanding his needs, and studying the features of the product. High-quality pre-production is 90% of the successful completion of the project.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
We have developed a transparent algorithm for the development of animation products with detailed approvals at each significant stage. We make detailed tutorials, scripts, storyboards, animations, test style frames, drafting (intermediate) animation. The client at any time of work on the project has the most complete picture of the state of work. Therefore, working with us, the client always gets a predictable positive result, because he had his finger on the pulse throughout the production.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
We use a maximum safe payment system. We make the whole pre-production process - treatment, script, storyboard - with a prepayment of 20%. In this step, the client can see the whole project. After paying 40% we draw illustrations and create animation.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
Motion design and animation is an extremely time-consuming and expensive process. However, we are always ready to come up with options for reducing labor costs without dramatically reducing the quality of the visual series. Minimum budget requirement - from 1000 $.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
Minimum $1000 & Maximum $18400.
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
A commercial animation production studio with its training and education system. The number of employees is up to 50-75 people.
