The Ultimate Guide: How To Make Animated Explainer Videos?
Explainer videos have firmly established their position as one of the most powerful and adaptable forms of digital content for businesses in today’s digital marketing environment. By combining visual storytelling, simplicity, and easy sharing, these concise animated productions have emerged as a primary tool for educating target audiences, facilitating intricate sales processes, and maintaining strong brand awareness in the long run.
By distilling concepts down to their core elements and bringing them to life through engaging illustrations and pacing, explainer videos meet audiences where they are – with limited time and attention spans but a desire to quickly understand how products or services can solve their problems or enhance their lives.
When thoughtfully created and distributed through a thoughtful strategic plan, explainer videos allow companies to cost-effectivelyYet with their ability to simultaneously educate, entertain, and promote in just one to three minutes, explainer videos have enabled countless businesses, both large and small, to cut through the clutter, speak to their ideal customers in their own creative voice, and set themselves apart from competitors through their compelling videographic storytelling skills.
Planning Your Video
Do you know what the first step is in making animated explainer videos? The first step is to clearly define the objective for your explainer video. What do you want viewers to do after watching – educate them on your product? Encourage them to buy? Sign up for a trial. Next, thoroughly research and determine the main topic or process you will explain.
Also, consider any important sub-topics or supporting details that need covering to provide full understanding. Choose a format like a whiteboard, animation, or motion graphics styling that suits your brand messaging and the nature of your content. Developing a script outline that summarizes the key points and logical flow of information is important. Aim for a length of 1-2 minutes unless the complexity of your content demands more time to avoid losing viewers’ attention.
Mark Wilson
Mark is a Senior Content Marketer with 7+ years of experience in growing B2B, B2C, e-commerce, SaaS, & Digital Design Brands. He’s a polished writer, SEO geek, optimist at heart & good at playing table tennis.
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Visual Planning through Storyboarding
With your script outline complete, it’s time to visualize exactly how your video will come to life through storyboarding. Sketch out each individual scene or “slide,” including any visual elements like illustrations, on-screen text, or graphics that will appear. Storyboarding also allows you to plan out the overall flow and timing of your video. Be sure to include things like character introductions if using them, step-by-step demonstrations of processes, calls to action, and appropriate transition animations between slides. Taking the time for this planning stage ensures your animations stay smooth, on-message, and well-paced.
Creating the Animations
Popular options for creating the actual explainer video animations include Adobe Animate, Microsoft PowerPoint, Easelly, and PowToon. All allow for frame-by-frame editing and creating motion tween animations where you can easily transition elements between positions. Carefully design engaging graphic elements like characters, illustrations, or icons that match your branding aesthetic while clearly conveying processes or concepts. Add subtle movement, effects like object highlighting to draw the eyes and polished transition animations between slides. Regularly test your progress to ensure the pacing and timing feel natural while effectively getting your main message across clearly to the viewers. Refine and polish graphics until the animations are pixel-perfect.
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Recording Engaging Narration
To bring your animations to life in the most compelling way, focusing significant time and effort on developing a high-quality narrated audio track is essential. The best options are to hire a professional voice actor with experience in narration, or if you are working with a tighter budget, you can record the narration yourself using a USB microphone coupled with free yet robust audio editing software like Audacity.
When recording yourself, aim for a conversational yet sincere and credible tone of voice that will optimally engage viewers as you progress logically through the storyboard. Make sure to practice your delivery and timing beforehand so the narration has a natural flow without sounding stiff or overly rehearsed. Get multiple clean takes and choose the best one for editing.
Carefully edit the audio recording in your audio software. Ensure there are no unwanted sounds, gaps, pauses, or other issues with the audio quality. Clean up any breaths, mouth noises, or other anomalies. Make adjustments to the volume levels to achieve consistency.
Then, precisely sync the final high-quality audio file frame by frame to match the on-screen motions, text/graphic reveals, and any other timed elements in your animation software. Take your time to get the lip sync and timing exactly right. Thoroughly test that the video and audio are perfectly aligned with no lag or drifting issues when played back in full. Get feedback from others to double-check your work before finalizing it.
An expertly developed narration track can make or break whether your animation engages and informs the viewer. So, investing focused effort on the audio side is truly vital to creating a polished, professional end product.
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Sharing and Promoting
Now that your animated explainer video is complete, it’s time to export it as an MP4, WebM, or optimal GIF file format using H264 codec for quality and ideal file size, depending on your sharing platforms. Publish the video to YouTube and embed it on your website/blog for maximum exposure. Also, they can share via social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, encouraging followers to watch and engage by liking/commenting. Track views and shares over time. Review any audience feedback to continuously improve your explainer video process and iteratively create even better engaging videos moving forward.
Explainer videos provide an engaging way to share messages and educate audiences. When done well, any business or creator can produce high-quality animated explainer videos. Testing different styles helps find what resonates best. Explainer videos maximize exposure online by making concepts easily understandable, building credibility, and driving conversions. Regularly creating valuable explainer videos is smart for growing a brand online today.
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