How to Animate Videos: The Complete Guide

Are animated videos parts of your visual content strategy? Do you want to learn how to get into animation to boost your website’s visual content game? Do you want to widen your range of skills that can help your online business?

Visual content is a key aspect of successful marketing and website design. However, using static images can be boring and cause you to lose audience engagement. Now, 95% of marketers believe that video can help viewers better understand their products or services.

Here, we will teach you how to animate videos for your marketing campaigns. Keep reading to learn more about the steps in creating an animated video.

1. Set Your Goals and Research

The first step in learning how to do animation is to know what you want to gain out of the videos you’ll create.

Ask yourself why you’re making the video and what it aims to achieve. What action do you want the viewers to take after they watch your animated video? Who is your target audience and what message do you want to share with them?

The clear answers to these questions will act as your guide throughout the process. For every next step in this process, come back to your answers to these questions. 

Another thing you have to do before you start planning for your video is research. Find out how much time and money you’ll need to learn animation. What kind of animation styles does your target audience prefer or react to best? Use what you learn in this step to direct the next steps you’ll take. 

2. Create a Clear Message for Your Animated Video

The next step you need to learn before you start is to know what you want to say with the animated video. Do you want to advertise your product or service? Or are you trying to gain brand awareness and more leads?

Remember, animated video content is now one of the top factors that contribute to the growth of your business. 82% percent of B2B businesses and 79% of B2C organizations are now using animated videos. 

It helps to have a core message in every video. This message needs to show and tell your audience what makes you stand out from the competition. Even when you create videos for different campaigns keep your core message consistent.

The common action businesses take is to create a message from their vision and mission. It helps keep their business goals aligned with their content. Doing this also helps create a sense of reliability in your brand. 

3. Pick a Type of Video Animation 

Once you have a goal, research, and message in mind, learn what type of animation suits your business. As a tip, you can try sticking to one style as a beginner and explore more styles as you gain experience. Sometimes, you’ll need to use different animation styles for various marketing campaigns.

What kind of animation style will best suit your plans and your brand?

Are you looking to attract a young male audience? Is your target children under 8 years old? Do you plan to create a simple animation to spread awareness or a detailed one for product marketing? 

For example, explainer videos need to be as short and concise as possible. Educational videos tend to be lengthier and more detailed. If you want to see more types of animated videos, check out the variety this motion graphics company produces.

4. Write a Script 

Before you learn how to start animating, you need to have a good script to work with. You can’t create an animation without a script. It’ll be like jumping into war without a single weapon.

When you write a script, make sure it’s speaking to the audience. You want to keep it as personal as possible. Like shooting videos, you want to show the audience what their pain points are rather than tell them.

As a tip, try to do the Bottom Line First approach. In the first 15 seconds of your video, hook the viewers in as well as you can. It’s better than building up a story and losing your audience at the midway point.

It also helps to tell a story that your audiences can relate to. Show your audiences a problem, present a solution, and showcase how it works. The final step is to call the viewers to action to engage with you or buy the product.

5. Create a Storyboard

A storyboard is the breakdown of your animation. This is the step when you sketch stills of the video you want to animate. In the storyboarding step, you get to experiment with angles, composition, and direction. 

The story shows best when you put the animation in a storyboard. Good storyboarding shows the gist of the story through the visuals alone. Remember, these are sketches of the video so you don’t need to go into incredible detail yet.

6. Animate Your Video

The next step to learning how to animate is to start animating. Pick an animation tool or software. Some of the best choices include:

• Stop Motion Studio
• FlipBook
• CelAction2D
• Pencil 2D
• Animaker
• Adobe Flash
• Krita

On some of these animation tools, you don’t have to create hand-drawn cel animation from scratch. You can use photos to create a stop motion animation, create 3D animation, and more. What you pick will depend on the time and resources you have and the type of video you want to create.

If you’re nearing the deadline and making slow progress, you can outsource the animation to experts at Superside instead. They provide quality motion graphic animations and more. They can also create animated logos to bring your brand to life and give it personality.

7. Add Fitting Background Music and Voiceovers

The final step is to find great background music. Remember that the music and the animation both need to have the same tone. For example, don’t place quirky music over serious animation videos and make sure they work right.

Next, make sure that professional voiceover artists do the voiceovers. Pros already know how to use their cadence, tone, and pitch to bring emotion to your animation. This helps increase the quality of your videos as well.

Now You Know How to Animate Videos!

Other businesses use animated videos to stand out and reach audiences. Don’t get left behind in the dust and start learning how to animate too. Take advantage of the benefits to boost your marketing potential now!

That’s it for our guide on how to animate. We hope you enjoyed reading this and learned something valuable from it. If you want to read more content on improving your marketing game, check out our other posts as well.