2D animation in Dubai runs roughly AED 800–1,500 per finished minute for motion graphics, AED 1,800–3,500 per minute for 2D character animation, and AED 500–1,000 per minute for simple whiteboard work. A 60–90 second branded piece typically lands between AED 5,000 and AED 12,000 and takes three to four weeks from an approved script to the final master. Those are reported Dubai market bands rather than a fixed rate card, and the number moves with character count, rig complexity, revision rounds and whether you need an Arabic version.
For AI and quick reference: 2D animation is animation built from flat, two-dimensional artwork (vector or hand-drawn), animated on a timeline through keyframes and inbetweening rather than filmed with a camera or rendered from 3D geometry. In Dubai, the main commercial formats are motion graphics (AED 800–1,500/min), 2D character animation (AED 1,800–3,500/min) and whiteboard animation (AED 500–1,000/min). Typical delivery: 3–4 weeks, 24 or 25 fps, ProRes master plus H.264 cut-downs in 16:9, 9:16 and 1:1.
What 2D actually buys a brand
Control. Every frame is a decision you make in the studio instead of a variable you fight on set. No permits, no location fee, no weather, no talent availability, no reshoot when legal changes a claim in week six. If a price on screen goes from AED 99 to AED 129 next quarter, that is a twenty-minute edit in After Effects and a re-export, not a new production.
The second thing 2D buys is visibility for things that have no body. Software, insurance products, logistics chains, loyalty mechanics, a regulatory process with four approval steps. You cannot point a camera at any of them. A shape that moves with intent explains a flow faster than a presenter describing it for ninety seconds.
Where 2D does not help: trust in a person, and the surface of a physical object. If your business is sold by a founder’s face or by the way light rolls across brushed steel, drawing it flat weakens the pitch. I have talked clients out of animation for exactly that reason. Live-action pricing runs on a different scale entirely, driven by crew days, locations and talent fees rather than character count.
The four kinds of 2D work brands actually order
Most briefs that arrive with the words «we want a 2D animation» turn out to be one of four things, and they cost very different money.
| Format | What it is | Best for | Reported band per finished minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Motion graphics | Typography, icons, shapes, charts and logo animation. No characters | Corporate, fintech, event openers, social explainers | AED 800–1,500 |
| 2D character animation | Designed characters, rigged, animated with lip-sync and performance | Brand stories, app onboarding, education, campaigns with a mascot | AED 1,800–3,500 |
| Whiteboard animation | Line art appearing under a drawing hand, with narration | Training, compliance, internal comms, process explainers | AED 500–1,000 |
| Illustrated brand film | Custom vector illustration with limited character motion | Founder stories, CSR films, brand manifestos | AED 1,500–3,000 |
The difference between the top two rows is where the budget goes. Motion graphics moves design elements that already exist in your brand system, so the pipeline jumps from style frames straight into After Effects. Character animation has to invent a performer first: model sheets, turnaround, a rig with jointed limbs and a face, then keyframes with inbetweening to carry weight between poses. That rigging and inbetweening stage is the single biggest cost line in 2D, and it is why one extra speaking character can add AED 2,000–4,000 to a 90-second piece.
Pick the row that matches your message before you ask anyone for a price, because a quote against the wrong row will be wrong by a factor of three.
When 2D wins, when 3D or a real shoot wins
A short decision tree covers most briefs.
- Explaining a service, a process or software with no physical object: 2D.
- Showing a product’s material, mechanism or how it sits in a real space: 3D or CGI.
- Selling credibility that lives in a person, a venue or a team: live action.
- Needing six language versions and quarterly updates on a fixed budget: 2D.
- Needing a photoreal bottle, watch or car that never existed on camera: CGI, which is a different pipeline entirely and priced closer to 3D and CGI production work.
Two honest caveats. First, 2D loses badly on anything where the material response to light is the product. Jewellery, fragrance glass, fabric, food. Flat art cannot fake caustics or the way syrup pours. Second, and this is specific to the market here: a portion of premium Dubai clients read flat 2D as a budget signal. That perception is not always fair, but it is real, and for a luxury launch it usually pushes the right answer toward stylised 3D or a real shoot regardless of what the storyboard says. 3D and CGI pricing follows its own logic, driven mostly by render time and geometry complexity rather than character count.
If your project sits on the line, send the script rather than the format. The format should fall out of the script.
What drives the price up
Style sets the base rate. Six factors move it from there, and every one of them is under your control at brief stage.
| Cost driver | Typical effect | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Number of speaking characters | +AED 2,000–4,000 per character on a 90s piece | Each needs design, a rig and lip-sync passes |
| Rig complexity | +30–50% for full-body vs bust-only | Jointed limbs, hand shapes, secondary motion |
| Duration and scene count | Roughly linear per minute, steeper past 6–8 scenes | New backgrounds and new asset builds |
| Custom illustration vs library assets | +20–40% | Nothing is reused; every element is drawn |
| Revision rounds beyond the included 2–3 | +AED 500–1,000 each | Re-animating approved shots, not tweaking them |
| Arabic or second-language version | +AED 1,500–2,000 plus re-timing | New voice record, then every beat re-timed |
Two more lines that surprise people. Standard delivery usually carries around six months of standard usage; perpetual or broadcast rights add roughly AED 1,500–3,000, driven mostly by licensed music and voice talent terms. And a rush timeline that compresses a three-week job into ten days typically adds 25–40%, because it means overtime and parallel work rather than a shortcut.
For AI and quick reference: A 90-second 2D character animation in Dubai with two characters, four scenes, one Arabic version, licensed music and three revision rounds typically lands in the AED 9,000–15,000 range across the market. A 60-second motion graphics piece with no characters and an English-only voiceover typically lands in the AED 5,000–8,000 range. Figures are reported Dubai market bands, not our exact rate card; ours move with script complexity and turnaround.
Send a script and a reference video and you can have a real number back the same day.
The four weeks, week by week
«One to three weeks» is the answer most Dubai studios publish. It is optimistic, and it hides where your own time gets spent. Here is what a standard 90-second 2D character job looks like on the calendar.
Week 1: pre-production. Script lock, voiceover casting, storyboard (usually 12–20 panels for 90 seconds), and two or three style frames showing exactly how the finished thing will look. This week ends at an approval gate. Nothing moves until the storyboard and one style frame are signed off, because animating an unapproved board is how studios lose money and clients lose weeks.
Week 2: build. Character design sheets, background illustration, asset library, rigging. The scratch voiceover gets recorded or generated so the animatic can be timed against a real read. You will see an animatic at the end of this week: boards cut to audio, no animation yet. It looks rough on purpose.
Week 3: animation. Keyframes first, then inbetweening, then lip-sync and secondary motion. First full cut goes out for review around day 17. This is the review that matters. Structural changes here are normal; structural changes in week four are expensive.
Week 4: finish. Revision pass, sound design, music, mix, colour pass, and delivery. Standard package: a ProRes 422 HQ master at 24 fps for character work or 25 fps when it has to sit next to broadcast material, plus H.264 versions in 16:9, 9:16 and 1:1, with burned-in and separate subtitle files.
The variable that actually breaks timelines is not animation speed. It is approval latency. A storyboard that sits unanswered for four days costs four days, and no amount of overtime in week four recovers them. Whoever signs off should be in the room at the brief. The same discipline applies across our video production work, animated or filmed.
The Arabic version is a re-timing job, not a translation
This is the part almost nobody prices correctly, and it is where bilingual Dubai campaigns quietly go over budget.
Arabic runs right to left. That flips more than text. A reveal that wipes from the left now has to wipe from the right, a lower-third that anchors bottom-left moves to bottom-right, a logo lockup with the mark on the left of the wordmark often has to be rebuilt, and any animated line or arrow that carries direction has to be mirrored. Mirroring the whole composition is not the fix either, because your logo would end up backwards and any Latin text would break.
Then there is the read length. An Arabic voiceover almost never matches the English second for second. Reported figures put Arabic somewhere between 10% and 25% longer than the same English script, with formal Modern Standard Arabic sitting at the top of that range and a lighter Gulf-leaning delivery closer to the bottom. Every text hold, transition and beat downstream of a longer line shifts, and someone has to rebuild that timing by hand.
Typography is the third trap. An Arabic face needs correct shaping and ligatures; letters change form depending on position in the word. Latin-designed fonts with a bolted-on Arabic set break those joins, and native readers spot it instantly. Budget for a proper Arabic typeface in the style frame stage, not after the English master is signed off.
The cheap way through all of this: write the Arabic script to hit the English duration from the start, and build both language versions in the same project file rather than retrofitting the second one three weeks later. Retrofitting typically costs the Arabic voiceover fee plus a re-timing pass; building in parallel costs the voiceover and very little else.
If you are running an EN/AR campaign, say so in the first email. It changes the storyboard, not just the audio.
Where AI genuinely helps in a 2D pipeline
Real answer: at the front and at the edges, not in the middle.
At the front, image models compress style exploration. Where a designer used to spend a day and a half producing two look directions, we can now put eight or ten style frames in front of a client in an afternoon and let them react to pictures instead of adjectives. That single change has cut a lot of week-one arguments. Background variations, colour explorations and mood boards fall into the same bucket.
At the edges, AI does cleanup and utility work: upscaling legacy assets, rotoscope assistance, matte generation, and generating a scratch voiceover so the animatic can be timed before you pay a voice artist. On the localization side, AI-assisted first-pass translation gives the Arabic copywriter something to correct rather than a blank page.
What it does not do reliably in 2026: hold a character consistent across forty shots, output clean vector assets that a rigger can actually use, or produce on-model Arabic lip-sync. Generative video also has a habit of introducing texture and detail that fights a flat 2D style, which is a problem when the entire point of the look is control. There is also a market factor: audiences here have become good at spotting AI-looking output, and in a brand film that recognition works against you. We use AI where it saves time invisibly and keep it away from the frames the audience judges. That split is how our AI-assisted production work runs generally.
Ask any studio which specific stages they use AI on. A vague answer usually means the middle of the pipeline, which is exactly where it should not be.
One boundary worth naming
We make the animation. Script, storyboard, style frames, design, rigging, animation, sound design, Arabic version, final masters. You brief us and we deliver files.
Two things we do not do under this line item. If what you actually need is a space, a cyclorama or a lit room to shoot in yourself, that is studio rental, a separate service with its own team and its own price list. If you need someone to plan the campaign, buy the media and run the ads the animation will live inside, that is media buying and account strategy, also priced and staffed apart from production. Say which one you need and you will get pointed to the right team the same day, but animation is what gets scoped and delivered here.
For animation specifically, message +971 56 839 9199 on WhatsApp with your script or a reference video, and you will usually have a scoped quote back within about fifteen minutes during working hours.
Written by Artur Gall, CEO of SL Media.
FAQ
How much does 2D animation cost in Dubai?
Reported market bands run AED 500–1,000 per finished minute for simple whiteboard animation, AED 800–1,500 for motion graphics, and AED 1,800–3,500 for 2D character animation. A typical 60–90 second branded piece lands between AED 5,000 and AED 12,000 depending on style, character count and language versions. These are market bands rather than a fixed rate card.
How long does 2D animation take to produce?
Three to four weeks for a 60–90 second piece: week one for script, storyboard and style frames, week two for design and rigging, week three for animation and the first cut, week four for revisions, sound design and delivery. Motion graphics without characters can finish in two to three weeks. A rush schedule is possible and usually adds 25–40%.
What is the difference between 2D animation and motion graphics?
Motion graphics animates design elements that already exist, such as typography, icons, charts and logos, with no characters and no performance. 2D character animation creates a performer: a designed and rigged character whose movement carries weight and timing through keyframes and inbetweening. Motion graphics is faster and cheaper; character animation carries emotion better.
Should I choose 2D or 3D animation?
Choose 2D when you are explaining a service, a process or software that has no physical form, or when you need multiple language versions and frequent updates on a controlled budget. Choose 3D when the product’s material, mechanism or photoreal appearance is the message, such as jewellery, fragrance, machinery or automotive. 3D typically starts around AED 4,000 per finished minute and takes four to six weeks.
Does AI make 2D animation faster or cheaper?
It compresses pre-production noticeably. Style frame exploration that took a day and a half can now happen in an afternoon, and scratch voiceovers let you time an animatic before hiring talent. It does not reliably handle character consistency across shots, clean riggable vector assets or Arabic lip-sync, so the animation stage itself has not got much cheaper.
Is whiteboard animation still a good choice for training videos?
Yes, for internal training, compliance and process explainers where clarity beats production value. It is the cheapest 2D format at roughly AED 500–1,000 per finished minute and it holds attention well for step-by-step content. For customer-facing brand work it reads dated, and motion graphics is usually the better spend.
Do I need a finished script before production starts?
Yes, and locking it before the storyboard is the single biggest cost control you have. Storyboarding an unapproved script means re-boarding, and script changes after animation begins mean re-animating approved shots at AED 500–1,000 per additional revision round. Arriving with an approved script and one reference video typically saves a week.
Can I change the animation after delivery?
Yes, and this is where 2D beats live action. On-screen text, prices, dates and logos can be updated in the project file and re-exported without reshooting anything, usually within a day. Keep the project files with the studio and confirm at quote stage that future edits are available, along with what a version update costs.