Welcome to F.Learning Studio’s guide to create an awesome animaon for educaonal purposes.
Animaons, if done right, could be the best teaching materials for eLearning professionals. The success
of KhanAcademy and Ted-ED is such a good evidence of how animaons inspire and engage learners
of all ages, backgrounds and genders.
The problem is, how to create an animated video?
Is it dicult, especially for those with no designing background?
The answer is yes! It is hard to create something with Cartoon Network standard. However, you don’t
need unicorns or sparkles to engage online students. The impact of visuals is denitely strong but it
cannot overpower the importance of content. We don’t want the unnecessary “fun” distracon, we
create something that brings true values to students.
This ebook is for anyone with a need to create animaons in eLearning industry, whether you are an
online teacher who wants to create simple animaon for class, or an instruconal designer who is
collaborang with a professional studio to create awesome content.
We will guide you through how to make a proper animated video for online courses. You would
nd informaons on how to create animaons on your own, or what you need to work with your
producon team.
Enjoy!
3
INTRODUCTION
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CONTENTS
Why educaonal animaons?
How to choose an animaon style for your course?
How to create an educaonal animaon?
Brief
Script
Storyboard
Voice-over
Illustraon & Animaon
What to do if you don’t have any skills in illustraon or animaon?
Conclusion
05
08
12
13
18
21
24
26
28
31
WHY EDUCATIONAL ANIMATION?
The use of animated videos on eLearning is a controversial issue. Some
researches reveal a signicantly posive impact of videos on learning
outcomes while others show no enhancement when applying animaons
to educaon. However, visuals informaon is consumed approximately
60,000 mes faster than text. Animaon, if done right, could become an
eecve teaching material for eLearning educators.
There are two major movaon classicaons idened by Educaonal
Psychology: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic movaon comes from
within the students like their own interest and desire to learn. For
example, if a student is fascinated in painng, then he is more likely to
enjoy art classes. On the other hand, extrinsic movaon comes from
external sources like recognion from lecturers and peers.
Animated videos for educaonal purposes could inspire students in both
ways. They could be appealing teaching resources for online learners
with sounds and visuals. Then with a powerful storytelling and explaining
ability, they help learners absord the informaon beer in an engaging
way. When students feel more accomplished with their work, they are
movated to learn more.
Concentraon booster
The millennials have much shorter aenon span nowadays. A research
of Microso shows a shocking fact that people generally lose their
concentraon aer eight seconds, which is lower than a nine-second
memory span of an ill-focused goldsh. Then how can we keep learners’
aenon in long hours? A well-designed eLearning course should be
able to keep learners focused throughout the learning process. An
informave animaon is not a distracon then.
An addional animated video could give online learners an educaonal
break. It explains the subject in an engaging way, it saves people from
ring texts then it movates them to connue their lesson. A series of
short animated videos is more appealing than forever long slides anyway.
The bite-sized animaons could help learners digest the informaon
easier. It follows the concept of micro-learning when a long course is
divided into much smaller modules.
Amazing explainer
It would be beer to let people see how things work than taking forever
to tell what happened. Animaons then have such an amazing explaining
ability, no maer how complicated the topics could be. While texts force
the brain to create an image from scratch, the video gives the pictures
right away. Any types of teaching content could be simplied and
converted into highly-visual and engaging videos. Moreover, animaons
capture the abstract ideas much beer than a normal live-acon clip.
Live-acon shows what is in front of the camera, however, animated
videos are beyond that.
As a result, animaons help students understand and focus on the
lessons beer, which has a posive eect on the learning outcomes.
When students get a sense of achievements in the course like praises
from lecturers or good grades, they are likely to be movated to
accomplish more.
6
The Power of Visual Content
WHY EDUCATIONAL ANIMATION?
Fresh and engaging experiences
Animaons could break the common assumpon of scienc courses
to be painfully boring. Learning should be fun. Animaons have such an
incredible story-telling ability that converts any dull topics into the most
interesng ones. Words become visuals and charts turn to movements.
Students’ experiences are no longer limited in the pen and paper
method with engaging animated videos.
However, the most important thing is that animaon brings new
experiences to learners. It gives them a getaway from long and stressful
documents, which may inspires their enthusiasm in the lesson. There
are various ways to movate a student. We could give them praises,
show them full support or personalize the eLearning. However, if a
student take great interest in the subject, they could develop a desire to
learn deeper without a demand for high grades or recognion.
There are various ways you could reuse your educaonal animaon.
You could edit it into an animated explainer video to show o the key
features of your course. It would be much nicer than a long post on the
website explaining the same ideas. You could also public some parts of
the animaon on the company fanpage to let people hear about your
project. Most social media channels supports video content greatly
nowaday. The potenal of animaons is unlimited. It all depends on you,
and how you use it.
7
Animaon is beyond looking nice
There are various types of animaon for educators to choose. The most
common types that are used for educaonal purposes are:
2D Cartoon Animaon
3D Animaon
Moon graphics
Infographic animaon
Typographic animaon
Stop-moon animaon
In fact, each type has its own advantages and there is no parcular type
that is beer than others. However, if you are lost in the animaon
diversity, this guide may help you.
Let’s start with your audience’s insights. You should design your course
based on the behaviors and needs of online learners. Who are they? Are
they K-12 students? Are they corporate employee? Each type of learners
has their own tastes in animated videos. By understanding their needs,
you can create videos that not only aract their interest but also result
in posive impression and learning outcomes.
K-12 students:
In terms of animaons for children and adolescence, you must think of
those on Cartoon Network. The idea is obviously fascinang considering
how fun and beauful it can be done. However, it requires a lot of me
and eort as well as a stable fund to create such high quality. This is not
impossible but it is unnecessary when you can produce moon graphics
with same quality but less trouble.
However, there are 2 lessons in relaon to styles we could learn from 2D
cartoons:
Vibrant color: Vibrant colors are more appealing and inspiraonal to
school children. They release a happy vibe, making the lessons more
fun and lively.
Humorous character design: We can feel the fun at rst glance
without any silly acons. The emoons or the body shapes alone
aract their interest immediately.
So, the key here is fun. Learning should be fun, and learning for children
should be way more fun. The fun concept lies in not only the content,
the script but also the style. The more you make it more lively and
colorful, the more young students feel curious about the subject.
F.Team Suggeson: Moon graphics
HOW TO CHOOSE AN ANIMATION STYLE FOR YOUR COURSE?
9
Who are you teaching?
Bar Model
Character Design
HOW TO CHOOSE AN ANIMATION STYLE FOR YOUR COURSE?
Higher Educaon or Corporate Employees:
Courses for higher educaon or corporate training have a tendency to
be more academic and formal. It is important to pick and highlight just
the key points in the animated lessons. Despite this step, the lessons sll
convey a large number of knowledge in form of charts and numbers.
Then the right type of videos for those courses should be fun to impress
learners and informave enough to guarantee the course quality.
More formal design: Contrary to the vibrant color of K-12 courses,
higher educaon and corporate training instruconal designers oen
choose a more neutral scheme. Pastel and Pantone palees are good
examples. Those colors create a more formal and serious vibe.
More text: Informaon can be conveyed by voice-over. Voice-
over is highly recommended for educators to enhance the human
connecon and reduce the self-paced learning isolaon of online
learners. However, this doesn’t mean text should not be included. In
fact, texts make the lessons more easy-to-follow and help students
idenfy the important points.
F.Team Suggeson: Moon graphics, Infographic Animaon, and
Typographic Animaon.
Both infographic and typographic animaons opmize the movements
and arrangements of texts and icons to aract the audience. These 2
types of animaon are best at presenng complicated informaon like
charts or numbers. Moon graphics also do this funcon beaufully
with an addion of storytelling ability.
Subjects with facts, charts, and numbers
Animaons play an important role in enhancing student’s learning
experiences. Subjects like science require a great number of facts,
charts, and numbers. Consuming all informaon could be overwhelming
to learners, leading to a loss in their interest and movaon. Educators
need teaching materials like animaons to explain the topics in a new
fun and informave way.
F.Team suggeson: Moon graphics, infographic animaon, typographic
animaon and whiteboard animaon.
All of above types do best in presenng complicated ideas with number
elements. Whiteboard animaon is an aordable choice.
Viral video from AsapSCIENCE
10
What are you teaching?
HOW TO CHOOSE AN ANIMATION STYLE FOR YOUR COURSE?
White-board animated video records an arst drawing on a whiteboard
to present a topic or an idea. It is so simple that anyone could do their
own whiteboard animaon. It requires lile details with mostly black
and white color, sck gures would work as long as you have quality
content. Moreover, it has both the power of storytelling and informaon
conveying.
However, the whiteboard animaons could look a lile bit slobby and
not everyone is a fan of moving hand on screen. The other animaon
styles give you a more neat and professional look. It requires specic
designing skills that you may want to seek for professionals.
Fine arts and music
In terms of subjects like ne arts or music, you want something with
a more arsc vibe. All menoned above types could indeed present
the ideas well. There is no rule saying that you cannot teach music
with whiteboard animaon. However, hand-drawn animaon is best at
inspiring learners.
F.Team suggeson: Tradional hand-drawn animaon.
Hand-drawn animators illustrate the movement by a series of images
drawn frame-by-frame. This type of videos requires the producers to
master both skills in animang and designing, which obviously requires
lots of me and eort. However, it results in such a beauful and
inspiraonal animated video.
Informaon Technology
IT is a complicated eld with high demand for concise details. Therefore,
the best way to teach IT seems to be screencast animaon, in which
learners could observe and follow how things work exactly. However,
it is not just as simple as recording the computer screen. There are
various free tools to get such work done. To produce a movang
and inspiraonal videos for IT students, you may need to contact
professionals. Animators could add graphics to the animated videos,
making them more engaging and completed.
F.Team suggeson: Screencast animaon
11
1
BRIEF
The rst step of creang an educaonal animaon, whether it is a product of your internal or external producon
team, is the brief. The brief idenes the learning objecves, primary audience, animaon style and video
messages also. This step is vital in giving you the overall direcon of the animated videos, which aects the whole
course in the long run. Proper me and eort should be invested to gather informaon. However, since it is a
brief, it would be best to stay under two pages.
BRIEF
BRIEF
The rst thing you need to include in the brief is learning objecves. The
learning objecves are the specic knowledge or skills you want learners
to achieve aer compleng the course. Designing an online course with
consistent objecves will give you an overall look on how to organize the
materials to gain beer outcomes. Therefore, they could help you build
a great structure of the educaonal video content to best reect the
goals.
Let’s start by asking yourself:
What do you want to put in your course?
How are the learners expected to learn from it?
Why do they need to learn it?
To make sure that you are on the right track, it is important to give above
quesons clear and achievable answers.
Be specic
The learning objecves are supposed to be specic. It would be
confusing if you come up with mainstream things like you are building a
course to help people understand things. It is obvious that, for example,
a watercolor course is supposed to teach learners how to paint. This
simple fact is unable to show how you can help with the art skill or
why they need to learn it anyway. Then it would be beer to go into
more details with parcular tasks or acons learners perform. Go back
to the watercolor course example, you could describe the objecves in
sub-categories like helping students learn how to select the materials,
decide on the color properes or apply paints with dierent techniques.
However, two pages of learning objecves are unnecessary. Just keep
them short and straighorward so that your team would understand
the full context. Then we could produce animaons with appropriate
content to keep learners focus on important elements.
Be measurable
The objecves in some aspects could perform as the KPIs of the course.
If you write them clear enough with measurable metrics, they would
help you in evaluang the eecveness of the instruconal design.
The most important thing is you could use these informaon for the
development of the course.
ELearning professionals could use various methods to measure the
success of the course. A quiz could test how students convey and apply
the skills or knowledge. Feedbacks and surveys are supposed to reect
learning sasfacon. Other data like compleon rates could also tell
how online students are engaged to the content.
What’s about animaon?
A quick way to test if they work for you is leng students watch the
videos. Geo Lawton – the founder of Permaculture Design Online
Course gave his online learners a sneak peak of his course by sharing
a clip on Facebook. Vois la! The 90-second animated video resulted in
over 140.000 views and 3200 shares. The posive reacon proves that
animaons are such a great tool for his permaculture course. Then if you
want to test if animaons are such good investment, just publish a demo
on a forum or your social media fan page!
14
Learning Objecves
Request a free animaon demo
BRIEF
Everything of the video, including the content and styles, should
strictly follow the viewers’ tastes. You cannot expect a fresh graduate
to understand a leadership training video for senior employees, and a
musician is less likely to enjoy an animaon explaining business model.
The dierences in tastes could come from dissimilarity in individual
backgrounds and lifestyles. One’s age, gender, occupaon or living
environment could have signicant inuence on their video preference.
Then if you idenfy the learners’ personas with concise and accurate
insights, we could produce high-quality animaons with relatable
content.
To start, these are main quesons you need to ask yourself:
Who is your primary audience?
Is there a secondary audience?
How do they expect the course to become?
The descripon of the learners should be more demographically
detailed.
What is their average age?
What is their gender? Men, women or mixed?
What is their educaonal background?
What is their culture, race and naonality?
These informaon could give your team an overall view of the
audience’s taste. It would be much beer to go further researching
on their psychological traits. Since everyone is unique, personality is
not something that could be answered with a few quesons. However,
the general character of the learners could have great impact on the
instruconal design. For example, kids are more interested in courses
with silly humorous videos in vibrant colors. On the other hand, the
adult, especially corporate employees, may prefer formal, short and
sharp teaching materials.
In fact, we need much more data to produce a detailed audience
analysis for an online course. They are the technical ability of learners
or their existed knowledge and experience. An instruconal designer
may take great me and eort to collect these informaon. A survey, an
online community or an interview could be eecve tools to collect the
insights.
However, it is utmost important to get your team understand the
demographics and psychographics factors of the audience. Those
points could help you decide on the appropriate tone and style of the
animaon to best t the tastes of viewers.
To decide on the appropriate length of the video, let’s start with the right
content. Whether you are building a full video-based online courses, or
you are using animaons as addional materials, a good educaonal
video should be short and sharp.
You should only sck to one single point in a video. If you keep the
video concise with highlighted key points, it would be easier to track
and follow the main ideas. If a video contains too many things without
stress on the important elements, then it could cause confusion from
informaon overload. The learning content could be broken into smaller
ideas. Instead of creang one 10-minute video with ve concepts, create
ve 2-minute videos covering one concept each.
15
Primary Audience
Video Length
BRIEF
It would be best to maintain the
engagement with short under-2-
minute video. We could make it up to
4 minutes if you think students need
more informaon to understand the
ideas. However, there is a signicant
decrease in engagement if a video is
longer than 5 minutes.
The same concept is applied to the
Permaculture Design Online Course
of Geo Lawton. The course conveys
a huge amount a knowledge that is
divided into thousands of live-acon
and animated videos. How many
animated videos did we produce
for Permaculture? We created 330
animaons for the whole course. Each
video is short, sharp and focuses on
one single point only, which makes it
much easier to manage and track.
16
AVERAGE ENGAGEMENT VS VIDEO LENGTH
Average Engagement
Video Length (minutes)
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
123456789 10 11 12 31 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Source: Wisa.com
BRIEF
Instruconal designers are supposed to make sure every students
including ones with disabilies have equal access to the learning
materials. In eLearning, the tables of content, headings, hyperlinks or
visual design could be opmized for beer understanding and clear
navigaon. For mulmedia content like animated videos, a proper
descripon, transcript, and capon would denitely help learners with
audio or visual problems.
Transcript and capon are the most common ways to get the video
content accessible. They are most useful for people with audio
disadvantage. Audio disadvantages here are not only those with hearing
loss but also anyone with a broken speakers, and people who are not
uent in the language the video is in. If people have dicules in
understanding the video without sounds, then we use text to help them.
Capon
Capons are the text represenng the spoken words within the video. It
appears appropriately at the same me the audio is available. Capons
can either be closed or open. Closed capons can be turned on or o but
open capons are always visible. For eLearning videos, closed capons
are more recommended since it would cause less distracon for people
with full hearing accessibility.
Transcript
Transcript is an easier way for video makers at the beginner stage.
Compare to the previous tool, it is much less a maer. Capon requires
a specic set of skills in using the soware uently to match the text
and the audio while with transcript, all you need to do is write down the
voice-over. Further informaon like video descripons, explanaons or
comments could be added to help the audience understand the lesson
beer. However, its largest throwback is that viewers have to go back to
the video to access the visual content. It could become less convenient
experience when capon allows them to read at the same me watching
the animaon.
Video descripon
Video descripon provides online learners a short summary of the
lessons, making it much easier for them to follow the lessons. A good
descripon should be short and informave enough for students to
take note the key points, and it should be engaging enough to movate
students watch the whole video.
You can use one among these tools to help online learners reach the
video content, or combine all to maximize the accessibility.
17
Accessibility
2
SCRIPT
You don’t need a professional writer to create an animaon that works. Wring an educaonal video script is
much dierent from those for movies. The script doesn’t need to be too formal unless you are pitching it to a
producer. The main point is to express your ideas to your team members and yourself also.
SCRIPT
SCRIPT
The script is a good start to know how things work together. It may seem
like an easy step to skip but you will be surprised by how much me and
work you can save later in the producon process. Especially if you are
collaborang with a studio to create awesome animated resources, the
script helps you avoid misunderstanding or error in the visual content.
Not everyone is e-learning professionals though. Producers can consult
you on what types of animaon work for online courses, or how to
produce the best quality in budget but they are no beer instruconal
designers than you.
Where to start?
There are various stages of wring a simple script that seems
overwhelming to most people. To make it easier, let’s go back to your
brief. The brief idenes the learning objecves, primary audience,
animaon style and video messages also. It helps you with the overall
direcon of the animated videos.
Write down
If you are a teacher or an instructor, then the work is easy. Let’s make
a dra voice-over for your animaon. Imagine yourself teaching a class
like usual, then write down what you need to say. Please remember
to eliminate all the unnecessary or distracng informaon to keep the
videos on the point. This is similar to the common self-recorded video
courses in the MOOC world. The instructors need to break down the
lesson into bite-sized videos, and it should be no longer than 5 minutes.
The ideal length of the video ranges from 1 to 2 minutes. If you have
experiences in producing live footages like that, then bravos, the voice-
over is a piece of cake now.
If you are not sure about the length of the clip, you could use this basic
word count p:
45 seconds – 90-110 words
60 seconds – 120-170 words
90 seconds – 200-250 words
2 minutes – 250-300 words
Create a story
When you have the basic outline ready, use your own imaginaon and
creavity to create a story. You could break the script into dierent
scenes. Then set the meline, match the voice-over and add texts for
each.
A story with characters:
A script oen contains three basic acts. Act One introduces viewers the
set-up and the tone of the story. Act Two presents the problems the
characters meet. Act Three is the resoluon. Wring an educaonal
animaon script is dierent from the entertaining ones. However, we
could use this structure to make the videos more engaging and easy to
understand. If you have trouble with story ideas, then think about the
examples you give learners in every lesson. They are reality-based with a
clear scenario, which would make great suggesons for your story.
A story without characters:
Lots of the me we create videos explaining some processes or facts
without any characters.
19
Why should you do your own script?
How to create an awesome animaon script?
SCRIPT
The key to engagement to these types of videos lies in the design. Just
visualize all the informaon in your mind rst with images or icons. We
are supposed to go into more visual details in the storyboard, however,
you can note down these ideas in your script to make it easier later.
Make it fun
Make sure you add humor factors into the script. Learning should be
fun! These small addions to the courses could make big dierences in
the learning outcomes. We don’t need to be silly to have fun. The fun
elements lie in the character design (if you have any characters, and you
should have!), the dialogue or the video tone.
For example, if you are creang an online course about the markeng
strategy for beginners, instead of explaining the forever long theory,
you could make it into a dialogue! The scene could be a conversaon
between a struggling shop owner, and his friend who happens to be
a markeng consultant. A simple story like this could teach learners
markeng basics in an easy and engaging way. The content is not new
but the revoluon lies in the way we approach and improve it.
Format the script
You can format the script whatever you think that makes sense. Many
of our clients use a table to write the script for animaon. This is an
unocial way for script wring but it works, and it is easy to read also.
However, you could follow these basic rules to have a decent script.
Font: Courier 12. This is mainly because one script page in Courier
12 is about 1 minute of lm.
Heading and character name: caps
Music, scene direcon or transion: italics
Or long story cut short. You can download a template here.
Revision
The script would hardly come out perfect the rst me. You should either
clear your mind by leaving it for a few days or give it to your colleagues
to approach new perspecves. Your teammates with decent knowledge
about the project could give you the best instruconal design advice.
Animaons could become a good visual supporng tool for your online
courses. You don’t need to be too formal in the format or the structure
of the script. The utmost important thing is to get the ideas through
your team and follow strictly your learning objecves.
20
3
STORYBOARD
Storyboard is essenal for a good animaon. We can’t just redo a scene if something goes wrong. It would cost
too much me and eort for any revision. Minor amendment in video lter or sound eect could be less a maer,
but a change in the script or video angle could cause more trouble than you thought. Then, the best soluon is to
edit the video before it is even produced. There we have the storyboard.
STORYBOARD
STORYBOARD
If you are an instruconal designer then storyboard must be a familiar
term. The storyboards for animaons are prey much similar to those
produced while designing a course. There you have the project tle, the
text, the audio and also the graphics. Basically, it is the visualized version
of your script that includes everything the learners are going to see on
screen with extra informaon for your team members to work it.
Storyboard is utmost important in producing animaons for eLearning.
The main purpose is to get your team on the same page. Your colleagues
or producon partners would have a clearer vision of how the content
is going to be developed. Then it would be much easier for your team to
review and restructure the video if needed.
The rst storyboard ever came from Walt Disney studio. Animator
Webb Smith has come out with an idea of drawing dierent scenes on
separated sheets of paper, then he pinned them up on a bullen board
to tell a story. This sll works nowadays. You can do it roughly with a
pen and paper, or you may use various storyboarding tools to create a
proper digital one.
Get yourself a template
This is easy. You can google and welcome yourself to a huge source of
templates, or maybe you could check out our free template here. This
simple template shows you exactly what you need in a storyboard that
works.
Project le, scene, acon, vo, and FX.
Break down your script
Doing storyboard is just like creang a comic strip. You have a story
in your mind, then you illustrate it in lile rectangles. Storyboarding is
prey much the same. You also break down the script and choose the
most important scenes to ll in the boxes. Divide your script into several
parts, then note them down under dierent frames. The same goes
with the voice-over narraon. How many frames should you have? It all
depends on your story but one minute of animaon should contain 6-10
frames.
22
What is a storyboard?
How to create a storyboard?
STORYBOARD
Break down your script
Doing storyboard is just like creang a comic strip. You have a story
in your mind, then you illustrate it in lile rectangles. Storyboarding is
prey much the same. You also break down the script and choose the
most important scenes to ll in the boxes. Divide your script into several
parts, then note them down under dierent frames. The same goes
with the voice-over narraon. How many frames should you have? It all
depends on your story but one minute of animaon should contain 6-10
frames.
Start drawing
Do you need to be an arst to do the storyboard?
Should the storyboard go deep into the details with background and
color?
That would be good. However, sckman also works.
As menoned above, the main purpose is to bring the team together on
the same page and to edit the animaon before it is even produced. You
don’t need to be too detailed in the visual design. It is more important
to let your team understand the story progression rst. Just print out
a template, pick up a pen and start drawing. Then you would nd
yourself doing what professionals call a rough storyboard. This type of
storyboard concentrates on indicang the movements and the ow of
the videos. It doesn’t need to be clean. Why would you spend so much
me on something that could be rejected anyway? The sck gures with
simple arrow navigaons work as long as they illustrate the story clearly
enough.
Show it to your colleagues
Now it’s me to seek feedbacks and approach new perspecves from
dierent people. They will help you make sure that the animaons
bring beer engagement and follow the learning objecves closely. The
animaons are not something just to entertain, they must have clear
purposes as everything else in your course.
Upgrade
Pen and paper is the simplest way for storyboarding. It looks rough but it
works. However, with animaons that require a decent level of accuracy,
especially those explaining a complicated process like how a car engine
works, it would be beer to get an upgrade. This storyboard describes
the visual details much beer than the previous one. However, it is sll
a storyboard, you don’t need to make it look like screenshots from an
animaon short. Professionals could do that anyway, but they require
much less me to work.
It would be amazing if you have a good skill of design. If you don’t, leave
the work to an arst or use supporng tools like
Storyboardthat. This
tool oers pre-dened illustraons like characters with a basic storyline.
For example, if you want to create an animated video explaining how
a drone works, then it would result in a conversaon describing the
process. If you want to actually show learners how it ies, you need
professionals.
23
The answer is denitely yes. Trained voice-actors could do the job
professionally.
They have years of experiences in delivering the best audio quality.
They know how to interpret your script for the audience
They have various styles of vocal performance.
They could even edit your audio!
Yes, they are experts. However, great value comes with a price. If you
happen to be that eLearning instructor who wants to save some money,
use your own voice.
In fact, to hire or not to hire a voice-actor, it depends greatly on the
instruconal design. If you create animaons for a massive course
with clear storyline and characters, then it would be best to seek
for professionals. However, if you only use animaons as supporng
materials for the teaching resources, yes, ask the lecturer to do the
record.
So what’s the visual-supporng animaons? For example, you create an
animated video on basic emoons of human. The video is to describe
the process of how they are triggered without any plots. It is like giving
the students explanaon with animaons instead of some slides or
documents, a slightly amateur record would be ne. However, if you
plan to do something like Inside Out, hire a voice-actor.
Don’t just grab random people from your company into the studio. This
is not the job anyone could do. The best suggeson would be using the
lecturers’ voice. In fact, most video-based courses are designed with
the lecturers standing in front of the camera giving a class, or slides
being showed with their audio narraon. Then you don’t want to break
the ow by including some strangers’ voices. It is natural to include the
instructors’ speech in the animated videos. With years of teaching, they
could give you an appropriate voice-over with conversaonal tone.
Should you hire a voice actor?
When to use your voice actor?
VOICE-OVER
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Whose voice axactly?
Congratulaon! You have a brief, a script, a storyboard and a voice-over!
What le now is illustraon and animaon. If you are collaborang with
an animaon studio or freelancer, then all above materials are far more
enough for them to deliver the job with best quality. However, if you have
experiences in designing and animang, then you can do it yourself.
Illustraon
This step brings you further to the details. Remember what we have before
in the storyboard? Now imagine lling it with more images represenng
every characters and items. This is sure a lot of work. Whatever type of
animaon you choose, you should have everything in digital forms to
prepare for the animang step. Illustrate them with tools or scan and edit
all of the work you draw by hand.
Is this step hard? Not really. However, if you don’t have any background in
designing or illustrang, you should consider a professional illustrator to
do the work properly.
Animaon
Now all le is add movement in your work. Depending on your expectaon
and type of animaon, the movement should be smooth or slightly rough
like stop-moon videos. Then add a nal touch with sounds and eects.
ILLUSTRATION & ANIMATION
27
A short Cartoon Network standard animated video could take months to produce. It involves plenty of work including script wring,
storyboarding, designing, illustrang, and animang. All of them require dierent sets of skills that could take years to master. Obviously,
if you are looking for a way to upgrade online courses with high-quality animated videos, you should contact a professional studio to get
the work done nicely. However, if you want to produce it yourself, there are various tools that help people, with no designing background,
produce their own animaons
ILLUSTRATION & ANIMATION
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WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANY
SKILLS IN ILLUSTRATION OR ANIMATION?
1. Moovly
Moovly is a cloud-based digital media content creaon plaorm
which enables users to create engaging animated videos,
presentaons, and infographics. Moovly allows people to use
a huge library of pre-built, pre-animated and editable groups of
media objects with users’ own content to create stunning video
projects.
Huge royalty-free media library with over 500,000 videos,
illustraons, photos, sounds, and music.
Moovly Studio editor with a new and improved user
interface for more exible and intuive experience.
Video generator Moovly Bots automacally creates
content based on templates and user’s data.
Pricing: US$5/month or US$55/year
2. GoAnimate
GoAnimate is one of the best cloud-based animaon tools in the market.
It gives users easy drag-and-drop experiences with a large number of
templates in design and animaon. You could create your own high-
quality animated video in just 5 minutes with this tool.
Voice-over narraon is automac. Users just have to provide the
words then the tools would sync the character’s voice.
Various themes from all industries and occupaons are available
with more being added all the me.
Full character customizaon is oered with hundreds of color
shades and dierent styles.
Pricing:
US$39/month or US$299/year for Publish plan.
US$79/month or US599/year for Premium plan.
ILLUSTRATION & ANIMATION
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3. PowToon
With a mission “so everyone can animate”, PowToon is an intuive
animaon soware that enables anyone, even those with no designing
background to create engaging animated videos.
Huge library with dierent looks including modern edge,
whiteboard, infographic, cartoon, and corporate styles.
Various templates of characters, objects, backgrounds, and layouts.
Unlimited royalty free music
Export to PDF and PowerPoint is available
Pricing: US$19/month for Pro plan
4. VideoScribe
VideoScribe is an amazing soware specializing in whiteboard animated
videos. It enables users to achieve a cleaner look than the tradional
animaons where narrators record themselves drawing.
Full customizaon of font, images, canvas, hand drawing styles,
and music track
Enable users to upload and use their own content
Easily export to PowerPoint
Pricing: US$29/month
ILLUSTRATION & ANIMATION
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These tools are user-friendly and most requires no installaon. You could easily create your own animaons for educaonal
purposes with an aordable annual fee. However, it seems that these tools are best for general ideas or presentaon. The pre-
designed illustraons and animaons could limit users in more specic subjects. For example, if you are designing a drone training
course, you would nd it hard to create animated videos on how to use the controller.
That’s how you make animated learning videos for your online courses!
It is not that dicult.
Ok, the illustraon and animaon part may be overwhelming for you. You may
use cloud-based animaon soware or choose to work with a producon
partner instead. However, you can do the brief, the script, the storyboard
and even the voice-over! Just remember to always start with a brief. You
need a proper brief to work with your team, and to ensure that everything
has a purpose. Animaon is an eecve tool as long as it has clear learning
objecves.
Bring true values to learners, not distracon.
CONCLUSION
