Make a professional-looking video-intro for my Kopy.tv videos.

The problem is I don’t know how to make snazzy little video clips like that.  However in my head, I SOOORRRT OF knew what I wanted.

This required I hired some outsourced person to do it for me.  Now for most people this kind of task intimidates them, and they’d spend way too much time “storyboarding” their idea or drawing it out.

But I’m lazy….and tried to spend the least amount of time possible on this….so I made this quick YouTube video describing what I wanted.  Look how ghetto it is:

I made this with Camtasia screen capture software in less than 5 minutes.

Notice how I didn’t even really have any font suggestions or anything.  After all, I was paying a designer to make those decisions for me (what the hell do I know about fonts)??

So with JUST THAT VIDEO as direction, I went to look for a designer on eLance or RentACoder……but then remembered a guy named Samuel Pitcher because he made this AppSumo animation for us because he liked AppSumo.

I was impressed because he took our static logo, and made it into an animated video…..without asking him.  We now use that animation for EVERY AppSumo video!

I decided to give Samuel a try before going elsewhere, and sent him the above “specification” video for the Kopy.tv animation, and within 2 days he came back with this:

PRETTY DAMN GOOD EH!!

I was blown away.  It was short, super-clean, and looked amazing.

That’s the benefit of a great designer…..they just “do it” without asking too many questions.  You’re essentially paying them to make your creative decisions.  

It’s nice to give them SOME direction so you’re both on the same page….but notice how easy that was in the specification video I sent.  Not hard as some people make “outsourcing” seem.

SO TWO THINGS LEARNED HERE:

1.) When outsourcing something, it’s often good to make a video explaining it.
You can see a video Noah and I did about outsourcing tips here.
You can see another example of my outsourcing here.

2.) If you need a great graphics or animation designer….hit up Samuel Pitcher (at least bookmark his name in your contacts):
sam@pitcher.me.uk

BY THE WAY:
Please don’t hit up designers asking for free work.  The good one’s won’t do it, and you get what you pay for.  Even though an animation maybe short, if it’s going to be seen in ALL your branding, it’s worth getting it done well!