What Marketing Teams Wish They Knew Before Producing Animation In-House

At some point, every growing marketing team has the same thought:

“What if we just did animation in-house?”

It sounds efficient. Strategic. Mature. Like the marketing equivalent of buying a Peloton because you’re definitely going to use it every day.

And to be fair, sometimes it works.
But Reddit (and a lot of tired marketing teams) are full of people saying:

“We really wish someone had explained this first.”

Here’s what marketing teams consistently underestimate before bringing animation production in-house, especially once the honeymoon period ends.

1. The Time Truth: Animation Hours Multiply Quietly

One of the biggest misconceptions about in-house animation is that control = speed.

In reality, animation time doesn’t neatly scale just because the team sits closer together.

What teams expect:

• Short feedback loops

• Faster approvals

• Fewer revisions

What actually happens:

• Every “quick tweak” still ripples through design, motion, timing, export, QC, and delivery

• One video quietly expands into dozens of micro-tasks

• Deadlines shrink while expectations grow

In-house marketers repeatedly describe being “stretched thin wearing too many hats.” Animation amplifies that fast.

A 60-second explainer isn’t just “one asset.” It’s:

• Storyboards

• Design systems

• Animation passes

• VO sync

• Music

• Captions

• Versioning

• Revisions

• Final exports (plural)

Time doesn’t disappear just because the talent is on payroll. It just becomes invisible, until timelines start slipping.

2. Creative Cycles Get Heavy (Fast)

Animation isn’t linear. It’s cyclical.
Agency teams are built to absorb this cycle. In-house teams often aren’t.

A common frustration sounds like:

“We don’t have anyone to bounce ideas with and everyone wants it yesterday.”

When animation lives in-house:

• Stakeholders feel closer to the work

• Feedback increases, not decreases

• Creative direction can change mid-production

Suddenly your animator isn’t just animating. They’re:

• Translating vague feedback

• Managing expectations

• Resetting scope (without authority to reset scope)

Without a defined production process, creative cycles balloon. And burnout follows quickly.

👉 This is where a documented workflow matters. (More on that below.)

3. Generalists vs. Depth: The Skill Gap No One Talks About

In-house teams tend to become generalists by necessity.
Animation, especially for marketing, demands depth.

You might need:

• Story structure

• Design systems

• Motion principles

• Platform-specific specs

• Brand consistency

• Accessibility compliance

That’s a lot to ask from one or two people who are also managing emails, landing pages, social, and internal requests.

Several people we spoke to describe in-house animation as:

“Good enough… until we needed something complex.”

Complexity is where cracks show:

• Explainers

• Campaigns

• Multi-language assets

• Long-form education

• High-stakes stakeholder videos

Depth isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s what keeps animation from becoming expensive motion wallpaper.

4. QA, Accessibility, and Localization Are Full Jobs

This is the stuff no one pitches internally but everyone pays for later.

Once animation is in-house, teams inherit responsibilities like:

• Caption accuracy (and timing)

• Color contrast compliance

• Readability at small sizes

• Screen reader compatibility (for embedded contexts)

• Language expansion

• Cultural nuance in visuals

Many online threads have mentioned QA getting rushed or skipped entirely. Not because teams don’t care, but because no time was allocated for it.

Any new language?
That’s not a “swap the text” situation.

It’s:

• Re-layout

• Re-timing

• Re-animating

• Re-exporting

• Re-reviewing

Without a process designed for scale, this becomes the silent killer of timelines.

5. Internal Politics Replace External Alignment

Agencies deal with clients.
In-house teams deal with everyone else.

You may have come across some of these yourself:

• Vague internal briefs

• Conflicting stakeholder opinions

• Last-minute pivots

• Marketing treated as a “service desk”

The irony?
Bringing animation in-house often increases feedback chaos.

Without strong intake rules and decision ownership, animation becomes:

“Can you tweak this real quick?”
“Leadership had a new idea.”
“Sales wants a version too.”

Having a Process protects you from the bureaucracy.

6. Why Process Is the Real Make-or-Break

Almost every pain point above ties back to one thing: process.

Teams that succeed in-house usually have:

• Clear scoping rules

• Defined review stages

• Locked creative direction before animation begins

• Time allocated for QA and localization

• Kill-criteria for “nice-to-have” ideas

This is why many in-house teams quietly rely on external studios, not to replace their team, but to stabilize production when things get complex.

If you don’t already have a documented animation workflow, that’s where things tend to unravel.

That's what our production workflow is built to solve.

The Reality Check

Bringing animation in-house isn’t a failure, but it isn’t automatically a win.

Marketing teams don’t regret wanting control.
They regret underestimating:

• Time

• Creative cycles

• Depth of skill

• Hidden production responsibilities

• The cost of unclear process

The teams that thrive, treat animation like a system instead of a side task.

Whether that system lives fully in-house, fully external, or somewhere in between is the real strategic decision.

Thinking Through Your Options?

If your team is:

• Overloaded

• Stuck in revision cycles

• Struggling to scale animation output

• Or feeling the strain of “doing it all internally”

Our process is designed to complement in-house teams, not replace them. See how our animation workflow supports modern marketing teams.