Ask five studios how long does it take to make an explainer video and you will get five different answers, most of them vague. “A few weeks.” “It depends.” “As fast as you need.” None of that helps you plan a product launch, a trade show or an investor deck.
So here is the honest version, based on how animated explainer projects actually run from kickoff to final export.
The Short Answer
A custom animated explainer video takes 4 to 8 weeks to produce, with 6 weeks being the realistic average for a 60 to 90 second video.
Broken down differently:
- Template-based or stock-driven video: 3 to 7 days
- Custom 60 to 90 second explainer: 4 to 6 weeks
- Custom 2 to 3 minute explainer: 6 to 10 weeks
- Complex 3D, character-heavy or multi-language project: 8 to 14 weeks
The number that surprises most clients: roughly 30 to 40% of that calendar time is not production work at all. It is waiting for feedback, approvals and internal sign-off on your side. More on that below, because it is the single biggest lever you control.
The Week-by-Week Timeline at a Glance
| Phase | Studio working days | Client review time | Typical week |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Kickoff & discovery | 1 to 2 days | Brief completion | Week 1 |
| 2. Script writing | 3 to 5 days | 2 to 5 days | Week 1 to 2 |
| 3. Style frames & art direction | 2 to 4 days | 1 to 3 days | Week 2 |
| 4. Storyboard | 3 to 5 days | 2 to 4 days | Week 2 to 3 |
| 5. Voiceover casting & recording | 2 to 4 days | 1 to 2 days | Week 3 |
| 6. Illustration & asset build | 4 to 8 days | 1 to 2 days | Week 3 to 4 |
| 7. Animation | 5 to 10 days | 2 to 3 days | Week 4 to 5 |
| 8. Sound design & music | 1 to 3 days | 1 day | Week 5 |
| 9. Revisions | 2 to 5 days | 1 to 3 days | Week 5 to 6 |
| 10. Final delivery & formats | 1 day | Sign-off | Week 6 |
Total studio effort: roughly 24 to 47 working days. Total calendar time: 4 to 8 weeks once review cycles are layered in.
Phase by Phase: What Actually Happens and Why It Takes That Long
Phase 1: Kickoff and Discovery (1 to 2 days)
This is the shortest phase and the one that determines whether the rest of the project runs on rails or in circles. A proper kickoff covers:
- The single action you want viewers to take after watching
- Who the audience is and what they already know
- Where the video will live (landing page, paid ads, sales deck, trade show loop)
- Brand assets: logo files, fonts, colour codes, tone of voice guidelines
- Reference videos you like and, just as usefully, ones you hate
What slows this down: brand guidelines that live on someone’s laptop who is on holiday. Send assets on day one.
Phase 2: Script Writing (3 to 5 days, plus 2 to 5 days of review)
The script is the video. Everything downstream is decoration on top of it. For a 60 to 90 second explainer you are writing 150 to 225 words, which sounds trivial until you realise every word has to survive legal, marketing, product and the founder.
A first draft takes a good writer 1 to 2 days. Then comes the part nobody budgets for: internal alignment on your side. Script approval is where projects most often lose a full week.
Realistic timing: draft in 2 days, one round of revisions in 1 day, and 2 to 5 days for you to circulate and consolidate feedback.
Phase 3: Style Frames and Art Direction (2 to 4 days)
Before anyone animates anything, you should see 2 to 3 static frames showing the visual language: character design, colour palette, illustration weight, typography. This is a deliberate checkpoint. Approving a style frame costs nothing. Changing the visual direction after animation has started costs 1 to 2 weeks.
Phase 4: Storyboard (3 to 5 days, plus 2 to 4 days of review)
The storyboard maps every scene to a line of script. For a 90 second video that is typically 12 to 18 frames. For a 3 minute video, 25 to 40 frames.
This is your last cheap opportunity to change the video. Reordering scenes on a storyboard takes an hour. Reordering them in animation takes days.
Phase 5: Voiceover Casting and Recording (2 to 4 days)
The sequence here matters. Casting usually means listening to 3 to 6 auditions or demo reels, which takes 1 to 2 days including your feedback. Recording and editing takes another 1 to 2 days.
Non-negotiable rule: voiceover must be locked before animation begins, because animation timing is built on the audio waveform. Re-recording a voiceover after animation means re-timing every scene.
Multi-language projects add 3 to 7 days per additional language, and more if you need lip-synced characters.
Phase 6: Illustration and Asset Build (4 to 8 days)
Every background, character, device mockup, icon and UI screen has to be drawn and rigged so it can move. This is quietly the most labour-intensive phase and the one clients underestimate the most.
Cost and time drivers here:
- Number of unique scenes (reusing environments saves days)
- Character count and how many angles each needs
- Whether real product UI has to be recreated pixel by pixel
- Isometric or 3D-style illustration versus flat 2D
Phase 7: Animation (5 to 10 days, plus 2 to 3 days of review)
A useful benchmark: a skilled animator produces roughly 10 to 20 seconds of polished custom animation per working day. That is the arithmetic behind every timeline on this page.
- 90 seconds of animation: 5 to 9 working days
- 180 seconds of animation: 9 to 18 working days
Most studios deliver animation in two passes: a rough pass for timing approval, then a polish pass with easing, secondary motion and transitions.
Phase 8: Sound Design and Music (1 to 3 days)
Music selection, mixing, whooshes, clicks, ambience and the final loudness mastering pass. Small phase, disproportionate impact on perceived quality. Skip it and your video feels like a slideshow.
Phase 9: Revisions (2 to 5 days)
Most contracts include 2 rounds of revisions. Handled properly, a revision round is:
- You collect all feedback from all stakeholders into one consolidated list (1 to 3 days)
- The studio implements it in one pass (2 to 3 days)
- You review and approve (1 day)
The myth to bust: revisions are not free time. Each unplanned extra round adds 3 to 5 calendar days. Three rounds of drip-fed comments can add two weeks to a six week project.
Phase 10: Final Delivery and Formats (1 day)
Master file plus the variants you actually need in 2026 and 2027: 16:9 for your site and YouTube, 9:16 for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, 1:1 for feeds, a subtitled burn-in version, a silent version for autoplay, an SRT file and often a shortened 15 or 30 second ad cutdown.
Ask for these at kickoff, not at delivery. Retrofitting vertical crops onto animation designed for 16:9 can mean re-composing scenes.
60 to 90 Seconds vs 3 Minutes: The Timeline Does Not Scale Linearly
Doubling the runtime does not double the timeline, it does something worse. Longer videos need more unique scenes, more characters, more transitions and, critically, more stakeholders who want a say.
| Element | 60 to 90 second video | 3 minute video |
|---|---|---|
| Script length | 150 to 225 words | 420 to 480 words |
| Storyboard frames | 12 to 18 | 25 to 40 |
| Illustration days | 4 to 8 | 9 to 16 |
| Animation days | 5 to 10 | 10 to 20 |
| Review rounds in practice | 2 | 3 to 4 |
| Total calendar time | 4 to 6 weeks | 7 to 10 weeks |
Worth knowing before you commission a long one: retention data consistently favours the 60 to 90 second range for top-of-funnel explainers. A shorter video is usually faster, cheaper and more effective. Save the 3 minute format for onboarding, training and technical products that genuinely need it.
Myth-Busting: Five Things People Get Wrong About Explainer Video Timelines
Myth 1: “Animation is the long part”
Animation is typically 25 to 30% of the calendar time. Script, storyboard and approvals together account for closer to half. The thinking takes longer than the moving.
Myth 2: “A rush job just means the team works faster”
Nobody animates faster under pressure. A rush job means one of three things: more people working in parallel (which requires extra coordination and art-direction time), evening and weekend hours (paid at a premium), or fewer checkpoints (which increases the risk of an expensive reshuffle late in the process).
That is why express delivery typically carries a 25 to 50% surcharge, and why a genuine 10-day turnaround usually also means a simplified visual style and a single revision round. motionvillee.com has covered this at length.
Myth 3: “We can decide the script later and start the visuals now”
This is the most expensive shortcut in the industry. Visuals built against an unapproved script get rebuilt. Starting production before script lock does not save a week, it costs two.
Myth 4: “More revisions equals a better video”
Beyond round two, most changes are stakeholder preference rather than improvement. Videos that go through six rounds are rarely better than the version approved at round two, they are just later and more expensive.
Myth 5: “The studio controls the deadline”
Partly. But in our experience the majority of overrun days come from the client side, and they are entirely fixable.
Where Clients Slow Their Own Projects Down
| Bottleneck | Days typically lost | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No single decision-maker | 5 to 10 | Name one final approver at kickoff |
| Contradictory feedback from multiple stakeholders | 3 to 7 | Consolidate into one document before sending |
| Late brand assets or product screenshots | 2 to 5 | Deliver everything in week 1 |
| Legal or compliance review not scheduled | 3 to 10 | Book the review slot at script stage |
| Changing the script after storyboard approval | 5 to 12 | Treat script lock as final |
| Holidays and absent approvers | 3 to 10 | Appoint a deputy approver |
How to Get an Explainer Video Faster Without Paying Rush Fees
- Commit to a 48-hour feedback window. This alone can cut a week off a six week project.
- Choose a simpler visual style. Flat 2D motion graphics animate roughly twice as fast as character-driven or isometric work.
- Keep it to 60 to 90 seconds. Shorter is faster, cheaper and performs better.
- Reuse scenes and environments. Three well-designed backgrounds used cleverly beat twelve one-off illustrations.
- Lock the script before anything else moves. Non-negotiable.
- Pre-book your voice talent. Popular voice artists have waiting lists of several days.
- Request all output formats up front so vertical and square versions are planned into the composition.
Sample Reverse-Engineered Schedule
If your launch is fixed, work backwards. For a 90 second custom explainer needed for a launch on Monday 2 November 2026:
- Kickoff: week of 21 September 2026
- Script locked: by 2 October
- Storyboard approved: by 13 October
- Voiceover locked: by 16 October
- First animation cut: 26 October
- Final delivery: 30 October, two working days of buffer before launch
Notice the buffer. Any timeline without 2 to 3 spare days at the end is a timeline that will be missed.
Template vs Custom: The Honest Trade-Off
| Template / DIY tool | Semi-custom | Fully custom | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timeline | 1 to 7 days | 2 to 3 weeks | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Brand fit | Generic | Good | Exact |
| Best for | Internal comms, quick tests | Feature launches, social | Homepage hero, funded campaigns |
FAQ
How long does it take to make an explainer video from scratch?
A custom animated explainer video takes 4 to 8 weeks from kickoff to final delivery, with 6 weeks being typical for a 60 to 90 second video. Template-based videos can be produced in 1 to 7 days but will not match your brand precisely.
What is the fastest an explainer video can realistically be made?
With a locked script, a simple flat 2D style, same-day feedback and a rush surcharge, 7 to 10 working days is achievable for a 60 second video. Anything advertised as faster than that is almost always template-based.
Why do rush explainer videos cost more?
Because speed is bought with resources, not urgency. Rush projects need parallel teams, out-of-hours work and dedicated project management, and they carry more rework risk because approval checkpoints are compressed. Expect a 25 to 50% premium.
Which stage takes the longest?
In studio hours, illustration and animation. In calendar days, script and storyboard approval, because those phases depend on your internal review cycles.
How long should an explainer video be?
60 to 90 seconds for most marketing use cases, which is around 150 to 225 words of script. Go longer only for onboarding, training or genuinely complex technical products.
Does a 3 minute explainer take twice as long as a 90 second one?
Slightly more than twice, in practice. Expect 7 to 10 weeks rather than 4 to 6, because scene count, asset count and the number of review rounds all grow. This guide goes deeper on it.
How many revision rounds should I expect?
Two consolidated rounds is the industry standard and is enough when feedback is gathered properly. Each additional round adds roughly 3 to 5 calendar days.
Do multi-language versions extend the timeline?
Yes. Budget 3 to 7 extra days per language for translation, voice recording and re-timing, and more if on-screen text or lip sync is involved. Plan all languages at the start rather than adding them later.
Planning Your Explainer Video Timeline
The studios that hit deadlines are not the fastest animators. They are the ones with a phase-locked process, clear approval checkpoints and clients who know exactly when their input is needed.
If you have a fixed launch date, tell us the date first and we will build the schedule backwards from it, including the buffer. Get in touch with Meltincast and we will send you a phase-by-phase timeline for your specific project before you commit to anything.