The Beginners Guide to Whiteboard Animation

Storytelling is the most common and effective way to get connected with the audience whether it’s for personal or business purposes. And when one combines this skill with animation, it’s a cherry on the top.

Although now most of all industries use animation videos and it is more difficult than ever to stand out in the industry. But no worries, the animation industry is growing and innovating and has come up with better ways of telling a story.

The solution is a new style of animation--Whiteboard animation.

What is a Whiteboard Animation?

Whiteboard animation is a type of animation video style that uses graphics, moving images, text, and sometimes voiceovers to communicate ideas in an interesting way on the plain whiteboard.

At any point in time, whiteboard animation will outshine and perform better than plain videos.

Whiteboard animation grabs immediate viewer's attention

Whiteboard animation is the best and effective way to grab anyone’s attention whether it's a toddler, an adult or old generations. Everyone can resonate with whiteboard animation in some way or another plus it’s fun to watch.

Whiteboard animation is easy to consume and simplify concepts

It is estimated that about 85% of all information processed by individuals is obtained through vision and it is a lot more interesting to the human brain to watch an animated video. Whiteboard animation powerfully combines the two great means of human communications – images and text – to convey rich and replete meaning to the viewer.

Whiteboard animation goes viral easily

Whiteboard animation is entertaining, interesting, visually alluring, and often educational so it has a tendency to go viral easily. When they’re done watching whiteboard animation, viewers feel self-satisfied and informed.

Whiteboard animations are easy to create

Whiteboard animation production process may seem laborious and time-consuming. But it’s not the case, if you love animation then you will fall in love with whiteboard animation and it’s all fun to make interesting to watch too.

There are a number of software programs available nowadays that makes whiteboard animations an easy task. Some of the software programs available are:

Videoscribe

Video scribe from UK Company Sparkol is one of the leading whiteboard animation software used by all. It is available as a desktop version and an iPad app.

Features:

Quick video templates
Free library of over 7,300 images
A diverse range of hands, pens, erasers & more
Over 190 royalty-free music tracks
Add your own logo watermark
High definition (HD) videos
Add your own images and audio.

Doodly

If you don’t have any technical skill to start working on animation, NO worries!

Doodly is the first and the only animation software which helps to create beautiful animations without any technical knowledge required. As the name suggests, Doodly is used to create doodle videos.

Features:

Experiment With Board Styles: whiteboard, green board, glass board, and blackboard images.
Unlimited upload of images
Add Free Tracks.
Templates available.
Sharing is compatible with social media platforms and websites.
Different real hand styles and cartoon hand styles

Vyond

It is a fully-featured Video Making Software designed to serve Agencies, Enterprises and is an effective tool to make professional animated videos easily with N numbers of professional features available.

Features:

Hundreds of pre-made templates
Expanded Timeline(easy to see the props and effects)
Keyboard Shortcuts(save a lot of time)
Global Editing(allowing you to instantly swap an aspect that appears in multiple scenes of your video)
Create MP4s or animated GIFs
Character lip-sync

Animaker

Animaker is a web based and easy to work software on while making animated videos. It can be used for personal as well as business purposes both and one even doesn't need to download the software and can use in online on web.

Features:

Drag and drop interface
Library of images, characters, audio
Professionally Crafted Templates
Gradient Background(Add up to 5 colours in Background)
Extensive Facial Expressions(over 20 facial expressions)
Auto Lip-Sync
Smart Move(Complex Animations with the click of a button)
Multi-User Collaboration (Work together with teammates to create videos in Real Time!)

Explaindio

Explaindio is an online whiteboard software animation tool and is easy and simple to work on.It includes complete package that helps in creating effortless and amazing 2D and 3D animation designs

Features:

Wide range of built-in transitions
Download footage and royalty-free images from Pixabay
180+ Pre-Made Text Animations
Over 300+ Fonts Included
140+ pre-made video, image, doodle objects animations
Import videos in a most popular format like AVI, WMV, FLV, MOV, and MP4

How to create Whiteboard Animation?

Know your mission and goal:

The first thing you notice about a whiteboard animation is the images – but that isn’t where you need to start. If you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re trying to say, your audience won’t either.

You should define the mission and goals behind the animation video in order to properly evaluate it on a later date.

Ask yourself what you want to accomplish with a whiteboard animation.

An example could be: ‘I want to increase the conversion rate by 20%.

Understand your audience:

Before making a Whiteboard video, you should know who your target audience is and what they actually want.

As you are making animation videos for them and they are the one who will see it. So, make whiteboard animation videos that resonate with your audience.

Try to put yourself into their shoes and imagine how they speak and set your tone accordingly.

Compose the perfect script:

Marketing videos, educational videos, presentations, whatever you’re planning, they can all benefit from having a few storytelling elements added- just something your audience can connect with emotionally.

You need to add three things in your script:

Take one likeable hero: It could be anything a product, a person , a thing
Create and satisfy desire: Pose a problem and solve it
Create a perfect call-to-action: what you want people to do after watching your video.

Select graphics or make one:

Now you have two options-

You can use pre-existing images from the image galleries already available in popular whiteboard animation software like in VideoScribe and Doodly.

If you are an artist-You can even turn your illustrations into SVG format.

Things you need to take care while selecting graphics-

The strongest animators use just one type of illustration throughout.
Match the brand elements in your graphics-use your logo.
Stick to one main colour if you can and use other colours to complement the main one.

Find your Font:

An expert animator knows that choosing the perfect typeface can strengthen that message and bring all the other visual elements together.

It’s best to keep the number of typefaces in your video or scribe to a minimum, using no more than two typefaces per video.

Voice-over/background music:

Music is the most emotive and engaging communication skill you can use while making a video.

You may want to hire a professional voiceover artist to record your message.

However, it’s more than possible to produce a strong voiceover yourself by using softwares like audacity available online.

Storyboard- Lay it all out

So, your script has a story, and your story has pictures and music. Now’s the time to lay out your pieces on the storyboard.

Just be careful to get a good balance between movements

Staying still too long risks making your video look static but too much movement can look over the top.

Share it to the world:

Now you have all things ready and one step away from making it viral!

What is that one step?

The answer is-- SHARE IT!

There are tons of other video platforms ready to help you propel your video into the world like youtube, vimeo, Facebook etc.

CONCLUSION:

Whiteboard videos are an effective Video marketing tool. It's a style that makes your audience's mind into an entertaining and engaging mood. Use them to introduce your business to your audience and explain how your product and service can save the day and increase your conversions.

So this is the ultimate guide to Whiteboard animation for 2021. Hope you found what you were looking for. And learning new skills in this changing world adds value to your business and personality. It's a great time to learn Whiteboard animation from the Best Animation Institute and grow your career and business.