Let's raise the bar!
“A picture is worth a thousand words. And an animation...? We simplify the animation process so that more stories can be shared with the world in the form as animations."
How it began
Hi, I'm Arno.
After graduating from the Graphic Lyceum (a creative college for media, design & technology) and working in design and communications for 20 years, I found myself drawing again during my sabbatical in 2018. My next thought was: okay, now I want to animate it quickly so I can share it with a wider audience.
This proved complicated. The learning curve of existing animation software is steep. And even if you master it, it is still a lot of work to convert an illustration into a moving image. So, I discovered that creating an animation takes a lot of time and money.
And that's a shame, because many companies want to have animations developed, but simply don't have the time or big budgets to do so.
Let's fix that
When I came across this problem, I almost immediately set to work with my business partner and experienced programmer Ronald van der Kraan to develop software to simplify this process. With the aim of creating professional animations at lightning speed.
On 1 February 2020, we registered Animation studio LiM ('Less is More') at the Chamber of Commerce and from then on, we started production immediately. Under the guise of, the best way to think is to do! Meanwhile, we worked on improving our software and fine-tuning the process for our clients.
An animation in a week
This was a matter of trial and error. Working with our customers, we learned how the animation process works and where the biggest pitfalls are. We developed smart tools and solutions to get around these.
For instance, we found out that small tweaks often need to be made after voicing the voice-over. A (temporary) robot voice-over brings more flexibility to the process and ensures that we don't have to step back.
These lessons and experiences have helped us significantly shorten the animation process. With a turnaround time of 1 week from the delivery of illustrations, we prove that an animation does not have to be a dormant item on the to-do list!
More than animating
Of course, the animation process includes more than just animating. Think about writing and voicing the voice-over text and creating a storyboard. To make the process as smooth as possible for our clients, we provide support wherever possible. For instance, we have developed a manual for writing voice-over text and visual storytellers can use our sample storyboard.
A series of animations
Since 2021, we have also been using our software to develop animation series for organisations that have a lot of content and want to share it in ways other than text. We do this by developing a drawn corporate identity with an icon set (100+ icons) as a basis, which we can then reuse for multiple animations.
So are you an illustrator and think it would be awesome to add animations to your offerings?
Or does your organisation have a lot to say and do you believe in the power of animations?