Casestudy / Graebert
How one 2D explainer style carried Graebert's ARES CAD software through eight product films
Industry
CAD Software (B2B)
Geography
Berlin, Germany
Format
2D Animation
89sARES Touch explainer
2Dflat vector animation
3languages: English, German, Japanese
Site + officethe CAD users it had to reach
Graebert is a Berlin software company that makes the ARES family of CAD software for DWG drawings. ARES Commander runs on the desktop, ARES Kudo in the browser and ARES Touch on phones and tablets. Together, they are sold as the ARES Trinity.
In 2021 Graebert needed four product explainers ready for an event in April: one for each ARES product and one for the Trinity, each in English, German and Japanese. ARES Touch, the mobile app, was one of them.
Graebert came back to us three more times, for four more films, and each brief asked for the same characters, colours and style as the first set.
- Client
- Graebert GmbH
- Industry
- CAD software (B2B), DWG drawings
- Geography
- Berlin, Germany (Europe)
- Audience
- Architects, engineers and site teams who work in DWG
- Service
- 2D animated explainer video
- Deliverables
- 89-second ARES Touch explainer in three languages, one of eight ARES-family films
- Language
- English, German, Japanese
- Website
- graebert.com
The brief
Show what the software really does
Graebert sells to professional CAD users, and they judge software by what they see on screen. So the brief had one hard rule: every drawing and every interface in the film had to show what ARES actually does, even when we simplified it into illustration.
For ARES Touch that meant real DWG files, arriving from email and from the cloud storage services the app connects to. We design the brief before we design the deliverable, and this brief asked for precision above all.
How we made the ARES films
Brief and kick-off
Graebert wrote a pitch for each product. A kick-off call with its project lead then fixed the message and the audience for all four films.
Script
Plain words for CAD professionals. Each script tells one product's story in well under two minutes.
Storyboard
Every scene sketched and annotated, then checked by Graebert's team against the real software screens.
One cast for four films
Characters, offices and devices drawn once and shared across ARES Touch, Kudo, Commander and the Trinity, so the films look like one family.
Animation
Flat 2D vector animation that slides from scene to scene, so the drawing on screen carries the viewer from one place to the next.
Voices in three languages
Graebert translated the scripts and recorded German and Japanese voices. We fitted each voice to the picture, scene by scene.
Inside the film
It opens in your hands and ends on the offer
An app film has two jobs in under ninety seconds. It shows the product at work, and it says how to get it. ARES Touch opens on the app itself and closes on its three tiers.
Impact
Three return briefs, each asking for the same cast
After the first four films, Graebert came back three times. In 2023 it asked for a film on its Flex Cloud licences, in 2024 for a film for eagle eye technologies, and in 2025 for two developer-platform films shown at its neXt 2025 event. Each time, the brief asked for the look of the first set.
Graebert's website still runs the films on its ARES Touch, ARES Commander and ARES Trinity pages, and its YouTube channel carries ARES Touch in five languages.
8films commissioned by Graebert
3return briefs after the first set
5languages ARES Touch now runs in
Liveon graebert.com product pages
In their words, after the 2024 film
As I trust our process from working together with other projects so successfully done in the past… We are very happy with the outcome!
Design that compounds
One cast, carried through eight films
ARES Touch was one of four films we made together in 2021. Here are two of its siblings and the four films that followed. Press any film to watch it.
Questions buyers ask
Planning an explainer for a software product?
How much does a software explainer video like ARES Touch cost?
How long does a 2D explainer video take?
Three to four weeks of production for a studio-made 2D explainer, plus the time your team needs for reviews. Graebert's first four films ran side by side, from a signed work order in mid-February 2021 to final files in April.
Can you make our explainer video in several languages?
Yes. ARES Touch went out in English, German and Japanese: Graebert recorded the German and Japanese voices, and we fitted each one to the picture. Later films also shipped without the voice, so Graebert's own team could add more languages.
Can a new film match the explainers we already have?
Yes. Each of Graebert's later briefs asked for the same characters, colours and style as the first four films, and we built every new film from that same cast.
Do you make explainer videos for software companies in Germany and Europe?
Yes. Graebert is in Berlin, and the whole process ran remotely: a kick-off call, a shared chat channel for reviews, and comments written straight into the scripts and storyboards.
For the record
Graebert ARES explainer videos: the facts
WowMakers produced the ARES Touch explainer video for Graebert GmbH, the Berlin maker of the ARES CAD software family for DWG drawings. It is an 89-second 2D animated explainer on mobile CAD for phones and tablets, delivered in English, German and Japanese. It was one of four films made together in 2021, with ARES Kudo, ARES Commander and the ARES Trinity. Graebert has since commissioned four more in the same style: a Flex Cloud licence explainer in 2023, a German-language film for eagle eye technologies in 2024, and two developer-platform films for ARES Commander and ARES Kudo in 2025. Produced remotely from India for a client in Germany.
Work with us
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