Creating engaging and informative content is key to successful educational videos, and animation can bring that content to life. If you’re wondering how to make animated educational videos, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll walk you through 5 simple steps to help you design and produce professional, captivating videos that enhance learning and keep your audience engaged.
Why Should You Use Animated Videos for eLearning?
The critical benefit of incorporating animation into eLearning is that animation is the ideal bite-sized piece for eLearning activities. Online learners can learn the eLearning animated videos whenever they like, even when making their daily commute or taking a break.
The use of animated training videos makes eLearning digestible easily, as it simplifies complex ideas by visual representation. For instance, employees can see how the cartoon character performs a work-related process and interacts with the customers.
If you’re considering how to employ animation in eLearning, there are a few steps you can take to ensure a positive outcome.
5-Step-by-step Guide on How to Make Animated Educational Videos
#1: Work on Your Video Script
To a scriptwriter, deciding what will happen in your animated training videos is the most important. Just as a blueprint is the foundation of the construction of a building, so too is the script for your animated training videos. While this seems intimidating at first, things become very easy with a little bit of homework.
Write a Brief: To Have a Clear Direction for Your Video
Before writing a video script, you should write a solid video brief, and this will help determine your objective, targeted customers, and the message of your video.
Basically, before scriptwriting, you should have clarity on:
- Why are you making this animated video?
- What does it need to achieve?
- Who is your targeted customer?
- What action are viewers expected to take after watching your video?
- What is the message of your video?
Convert Your Message into a Simple Story
Animated educational videos have one core message you want to bring to your audience. The challenge lies in converting that message into an engaging, simple short story.
Make sure your story has the following 3 elements:
- The hook: is the most crucial part of your eLearning animated video script. It is the first 8-10 seconds of a 1-minute video. It decides whether your viewers will stay or bounce. It will help to give them some compelling reasons to get hooked.
- The patty: the main part of your eLearning animated video. This is where the viewers get to the main part of your video. Make sure that your patty lives up to your hook.
- The CTA: the final part of your educational animated video. If your hook and patty are both great, you will get many viewers to reach the CTA part. This is when you lead your audience to take some action.
These steps have helped our videos outperform our competitors’ videos very easily. We also offer a detailed guide on how to write an animated video script for eLearning projects. We are confident that it will help you do that, too.
#2: Develop Your Storyboard
The next step is to transfer your written word to a storyboard visual medium. A storyboard is a visual outline of your animated educational videos. You may want to visualize the scenes with a storyboard, but you’re wondering how to make a storyboard that touches on everything happening in your finished piece.
The storyboard can be regarded as the graphic novelization of your video script, whereby each panel depicts a key moment or a new camera angle in action. Despite its importance, the storyboard is sometimes ignored. Drawing and formatting fears, technical and animation limitations – there are multiple reasons to avoid storyboarding when making a video on your own.
But you don’t have to be stressed as you can learn to create an animated eLearning Storyboard for Educational Video in 5 steps or switch it out to an animation studio.
So Why Is A Storyboard Important?
Here at F.Learning Studio, we’ve experienced making animation storyboards for eLearning for a long time. We’ve learned why the storyboard is crucial on many levels.
It plays a part in planning work which is critical for pre-visualizing your project. It’s a collaboration catalyst that puts everyone on the same page so that they can all see what the studio is proposing at a glance. We figured out that the only wrong way to storyboard is to skip this step.
The storyboard also includes a description of what will happen on screen. It answers questions like:
- How do things move?
- What appears first?
- How long do they stay on screen?
It’s helpful to make these decisions before creating animation.
#3: Choose the Appropriate Animation Style
The next step in creating animated videos for eLearning is to choose a style. As you begin work on the video, consider the available resources, timeline, and stakeholder expectations.
- Different types of animation take a different amount of time and effort.
- Different formats will lead to different kinds of knowledge sharing. So it’s vital to bear in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each format.
Below are the five best types of animation and guides to choosing the right one for your eLearning projects. Take a quick peek into each type and choose the most suitable one to work with an animation studio for eLearning.
Whiteboard Animation
The whiteboard animated video includes hand-drawing illustrations on a white background. With a nice narrator voice and a pretty good illustration, you can simplify the explanation of multiple complex concepts, including medical lessons.
Motion Graphics Animation
This is by far the most commonly used animation style. Our clients love it because it excites the audience and simplifies explaining complicated concepts. This style fit topics that require many types of chart, process. For example, logistics, finance, blockchain, accounting, etc.
Character Animation
Early character animation is often associated with Walt Disney Studios, where artists created characters with particular traits and characteristics on screen.
In recent times, character animation has evolved along with 2D and 3D animation. Today’s character animation includes elements such as character rigging and the formation of object-oriented frameworks for creating character sequences.
For example, below is the animated educational video of ChildFund Vietnam organization, providing information about the Swipe Safe project that guides children on how to use the Internet safely and efficiently.
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Hand-drawn Animation
This kind of animation is similar to traditional cartoons that you’ve watched on Cartoon Network. In general, hand-drawn animation is regarded as ‘high-quality and luxurious animation’ as animators need to draw every frame of the scene and thoroughly do the movement for each scene frame.
Stop-motion Animation
Although stop-motion animation isn’t trending now, it still shows its power in education, especially in eLearning animated video projects.
3D Animation
More luxurious, and more premium than hand-drawn animation, it’s 3D animation. In short, it is an upgraded version of 2D motion graphic animation that visualizes the concept in the 3D environment.
In short, animation can assist your projects for many purposes, varying from animated instructional videos to superb eLearning animation videos.
#4: Animate Your Video
Deciding how to animate your video can be a challenge as there are too many options to choose from. All options have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Below are some ways for you to animate your videos:
Do It by Yourself:
This option will suit your brand if you plan on making just a short video and don’t want to waste a considerable marketing budget. However, there exist many factors to consider when you dive into the world of animated video production. It takes a considerable amount of skills to make sure it’s professional.
It would help if you acted as a scriptwriter, an illustrator, a voiceover artist, and an animator. Unless you’re highly talented, it’s hard to do all of those things on your own. The solution is to hire an animation video. You may think that you have to spend a huge budget on great animation. However, we’re here to tell you that you won’t have to!
Outsource to an Animation Studio:
Outsourcing will suit any of your options, whether you plan on a sole video or an eLearning animated video project. There comes the debate of choosing the proper animation studio and how much they will charge.
First, you need to consider the timeline for your project and your budget. The quicker you need your video, the more budget you will have to spend when it comes to outsourcing. One of the essential things is writing a clear and concise animated video production RFP and sending it to animated studios.
In this situation, the quality of your video depends on how well you communicate your idea to the studio and how well they understand your brand. Follow these guides to evaluate great animated learning videos.
Here’s the list of the best animated educational video companies you can reach out to and raise your needs:
Read more: Top 10 Leading eLearning Companies in USA 2024
#5: Review Process
Now, we have reached the final step in the “How to make animated educational videos” guide: the review process. You and your studio need to keep the project on track and ensure that everything is going according to your plan.
There exist some matters like there are changes in content and timeline, an effective tracking system for projects, etc. They all need to be tracked efficiently from the pre-production stage to the production, and the pro-production stage. Consult with animation studios to see how they work with clients to control the review process and select the most suitable for you.
Conclusion
By following these 5 simple steps, you can effectively create animated educational videos that captivate your learners and simplify complex topics. From planning your content to refining the final product, animation brings a dynamic and engaging element to educational materials. Whether you’re teaching students or developing animated training videos for employees, mastering how to make animated educational videos can significantly boost learning outcomes and make your content more memorable.
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Sean Bui, the founder and creative director of F.Learning Studio, is a respected leader in the e-learning and multimedia production industry. With over 10 years of experience, he has dedicated his career to helping organizations create engaging and impactful learning experiences.
Under his leadership, F.Learning Studio has grown into a trusted partner for organizations in the education, healthcare, and corporate training sectors, producing over 2,000 minutes of educational animation.
