Animated Video Production: A Step-By-Step Guide to Get Started

In the early 1800s, animated video production first began when simple sequential images were shown. Today, it has evolved into an engaging and entertaining video style. which means that animation has gone a long way. This article will introduce everything you need to know to start creating your animated video.

No doubt, you have already heard about the benefits that animated videos can offer to organisations and the outcomes that they may generate. Over the years, animation techniques have progressed from hand-painted celluloid to sophisticated computer-generated illusions created using design tools. But naturally, they have common re-preparation steps. 

Despite improvements, creating animations might still feel challenging. Many companies’ marketing strategies don’t use animations because of the difficulty of making an animated video.

Therefore, in this post, we will reveal some secrets about how to build an animated film in simple steps, as well as how to utilise some web tools to generate an animated video in under 10 minutes (however, don’t anticipate a highly customised video. It can be a quick option if you’re in tight money and budget!)

That’s how many companies can leverage their mass appeal to grow their business or brand. Let’s define animation and discuss what constitutes an interesting animation before we go to the editing phase.

What is the Animated Video?

Animated video production is visually created with original designs, illustrations, drawings, or computer-generated effects that have been coming together to move in an eye-catching way using software and a number of artistic styles. 

However, These 2D animated videos might integrate live-action videos; they don’t require live recording to display an idea or story. So, what does it entail?

By placing still pictures in a two-dimensional setting, the 2D method gives the impression of motion. Using vector drawings, it develops storyboards, characters, and scenes. Typically, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and After Effects are the tools of choice for professional designers.

What Makes Animated Videos More Engaging

To begin, the best-animated videos are sharp, story-driven, and packed with information that is easy to understand and put into practice. When creating animations, keep certain commonalities in mind:

Make it Light and Brief

An animated video’s length and emphasis should be optimised for maximum viewer engagement. Make them between 45-90. You want to find that sweet spot in your animation production where you can show off all your good stuff without losing your audience.

Add Subtitles

Since more than 90% of social media users watch videos without sound, it’s a good idea to caption any animated content you share. Including subtitles in your videos encourages more interaction and keeps viewers from skipping over them in the on-mute mode.

Use Eye-Catching Images to Entice

Think back on the last moving cartoon you watched. They were visually stunning. Using high-quality, eye-catching images increases the likelihood of producing engaging videos by keeping the viewer interested and fostering an emotional connection.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of making captivating animated videos, let’s go further into the process.

How Do You Start Animated Video Production?

This phase often involves several animation processes, which we shall categorise into seven distinct stages. We will go over these steps one by one, providing you with a detailed overview of each of them to understand what you will go through before starting.  

Researching and Gathering Information 

Don’t miss the most important early step: knowing the project and the organisation through and out will provide the groundwork for a fantastic animated video.

Now is the time for a video marketing agency to have a conversation with a customer in order to establish reasonable goals for the production of the film. Create a comprehensive, creative brief and deliver it to the customer for them to complete.

Before you start, here is something you should be aware of— the foundation for a great animated video is to understand the project and the company well. 

What is a Creative Brief?

It’s an animated video production questionnaire to help your client get out all ideas from their head, giving you a direction when establishing the video.

This brief encompasses product features and benefits they want to highlight, the video purpose, quick elevator pitch, target audience, the desired action they want the viewers to take after watching, and so on.

A meeting or online chat might be scheduled later on to go further into the project’s meat and potatoes. Directors and scriptwriters are invited to collaborate in this phase of animated video production.

Here is an example of the creative brief we use at Profiletree. It’s free for you to use in your future project.

• What products, services, offerings, or website do you want to cover in this video?
• What is the core message of the video? (provide only one)
• What is the duration of the video needed?
• Do you need a voiceover? (determine the gender of voice and if there is any preferred accent)
• What is the quick elevator pitch of your company? (write only 2 sentences about your company, service, or product)
• What is the story of your company, or why do you exist? (sum up the vision and mission of your company and any inspiring message you want to convey) 
• What are three (at least) key benefits you’d like to highlight in the animated video? (it’s necessary to list benefits, not features, because people buy benefits)
• What are the solutions you provide, and what sets you apart from competitors? (in other words, what makes you different? Why should people purchase your product or service over anything else?)
• Any idea for a video script you have? (provide a link)
• What is the target audience of this video? (determine some specifics such as country, group, community age, and gender)
• If you want your target audience to know one thing about your product or company, what is it?
• Do you want something serious or more light-hearted and funny?
• What is the call to action or sales pitch at the end of the video? (for example: order something, sign up or call us)
• Do you have any reference videos or styles you want to emulate in this animated video production? (please leave a link)

The answers to these questions will give you a clear idea of your client’s perspective, and if you need additional information, don’t hesitate to communicate with your client to ask for more details.

Choose Your Style 

How you go about making your video will be determined by the nature of your company, the core of the message you wish to convey, the target audience, and the type of product or service you are offering.

That’s why, before you even start writing the screenplay, you should decide on a video style so you can reframe the information structure. For instance, if you want to show off some key metrics about your company’s expansion, an infographic animated video would be a good choice of medium.

Deciding on a video style can also help you organise your content for a more compelling presentation. So, how many distinct approaches are there for animated video production?  Let’s check it out:

1- Infographic Videos

Infographics with moving images are a great way to break down difficult concepts and draw attention to the most important ideas. Using this kind of video, your company may transform massive amounts of data into meaningful visualisations or narratives, such as charts, graphs, and GIFs.

That’s how you can hold your viewers’ attention better than other types of animated videos. A good example of an infographic video:

2- Kinetic Typography Animated Videos

These films are made by changing the text’s look in many ways, such as the font, the pace, and the colour palette, to create the illusion of an animated image. Because they convey the necessary data and keep the user interested even when the video is muted, they make an impression.

Brands use typography videos to create “how-to” tutorials or make bold statements to focus the viewers’ attention on specific important problems. Take Kayak’s video, for instance, which uses typography and images to explain what happened in travel during the pandemic:

3- 2D Animation Videos

Because of the time-saving benefits of these movies, educational channels and corporations frequently employ them to convey information about their services and products. In addition to increasing authority, brand awareness, and search engine results page (SERP) ranks, these videos have a high level of interaction.

Here is a typical 2D animation clip

Creating a Compelling Script 

An animated video’s script is its backbone. As a business owner, you get to pick what goes into the animation. However, instead of writing a script yourself, it’s better to hire a freelance scriptwriter or a digital marketing agency.

As a video creator, you must communicate with the scriptwriter frequently to ensure everyone is on the same page. Though this may appear daunting at first, with a little bit of preparation, you may find that it’s actually rather simple.

To write a solid brief, your script writer can rely on the creative brief, which answers many questions about the business objectives, target audience, and core message.  Also, you need to determine your video’s central theme after finalising the research phase and setting the project’s scope. 

Writing an animation script is not like creating a regular blog post; It’s important to remember a few essential points:

1- Brevity Should be Your Best Friend

It’s your greatest ally to have a perfect animated video. Whether it’s a video explainer or an ad, it should be short. Remember, you don’t have time for jargon, fancy terms, or cute turns of phrases. Got to the point directly when scripting animations.

2- Simplicity is Paramount

Whether you’re trying to establish your brand, want to attract perspectives to use your service, or trying to encourage consumers to buy your product, a clear script is key. A viewer needs to understand what your brand is about or what your service or product offers. So, a convoluted script is a recipe for disaster.

3- No Need to be Formal or Stiff

A consistent tone should lie between your animation and your script. For example, your animation can’t be quirky and cute if your topic is serious or formal, and vice versa, because this possible mismatch will put off your potential customers. 

And here is another excellent question: how long your video script should be? We’ve established that an animated video should be between 45 and 90 seconds; this translates to a script length of 50 to 225 words.

When planning animated video production, what is the proper screenplay format to use? You’re free to make up your own, but most stories fall into one of two broad genres:

4- Solving the Issue at Hand

At this point, you can begin writing the script by thinking about the issues that are likely to be of interest to your audience. After that, you can introduce your product or service as a possible answer to a problem, focusing on how it will solve that problem. To put it simply, this method is highly recommended.

5- Separate Narrative Structure

This one is used when you’re introducing a completely novel and innovative product to the market. The essence of this phase cannot be emphasised enough because your script will serve as the backbone of the upcoming stages of your animation process. Nevertheless, weak, directionless, and poor writing will never result in a great outcome. Fair enough! 

Craft a Storyboard

It’s another step of animated video production, building the storyboard. Simply, it’s a visual version of the script, just like a comic book-like format. First, a professional artist will illustrate a keyframe of the video; then, you can add the caption or the script’s narration under each image to reference.

Most business owners who want to create an animated video production overlook this step. Please, do not! It’s one of the most valuable tools to cut off any possible hassle, prevent mistakes, keep edits to the minimum, and ease animated video production. It also helps everyone realise how your future video will look.

Record Voiceover

Alright, you’ve created an excellent plot with an important moral. Without the correct voice, though, it means nothing. That’s the next stage when building your animated video strategy. 

Find the ideal artist for the job by considering the script, the idea, and the brand’s overall vibe. Drop a message below, and one of our video marketing team will get back to you.

The correct rhythm and mood are essential for making an impression on the audience. Here is what our animation marketing artists recommend:

Time: make sure people have adequate time to take in what you’re saying without making them bored.

Tone: your voiceover artist can lighten up and have some fun if your brand is personable and casual. When recording, however, a neutral and authoritative tone is what you need if your service or product is serious and full of facts and features.

In a nutshell, a good voiceover demands following the correct pitch, taking a breath at the right place and stressing the right words. 

Move Your Elements 

The moment we are all waiting for! Once the skilled artists get your approval on all previous animation phases, they set out to bring illustration and other animation elements to life.

Using advanced and sophisticated software, they add movement to the characters and anything else that appear on the screen. Indeed, the whole animation process culminates in this phase. 

To no one’s surprise, this phase is one of the most time-consuming and complex parts of the 2D animation process, so don’t expect to receive your videos in one day. It takes time to complete. This process is highly technical and dependent on so many tools, programs, and techniques.

However, some basic steps are crucial if you want animated video production to come out appropriately. These steps include:

• Natural movements

Movements are a critical part of animated video production. They give animation life and human spirit. Getting object and character movement right will decide whether your animated videos will be high-quality. If you create janky movements, you will ultimately kill your animation’s appeal. 

• Lighting

Lighting is a cornerstone of animation production. Lighting will influence the mood and style of the video, which objects are out of focus, which things are in focus, and much more. Some animation studios have lighting artists. While they’re slightly unnecessary for commercial animated ads, they show how important lighting is to get your animation right.

• Relatable transitions

Seamlessly and appropriately transitioning from one scene to another act like the glue that binds the video together. Many tricks and techniques can be employed here, but what matters is that the transitions should work for the animation video.

If you hire a professional artist to set up your animated video production, get involved in this stage to ensure that everything meets your expectations. 

Add Sound Effects 

Finally, we’re almost there! The visual part of the video is done and over by now, so what’s left is to buckle down and add some vibrancy to the video by focusing on the audio.

In this stage of animated video production, the video marketing team edits and synchronises the sound effects, the voiceover recording, and the music with the visual counterpart. 

And don’t sell this process short because the audio and music can make or break your animated video, so pay close attention to getting the best outcome possible.  After the animation process is over, all we have to do is to adjust the video to your liking. But wait, there is still something you can do!

Bonus: Use Online Tools

The methods mentioned above might be expensive if you’re looking forward to a small project or a personal video animation to share on your social media platforms. DIY apps should be your go-to when you’re strapped for cash yet need a high-quality animation video badly.

Don’t expect that you will have a killed animation video! But something quick and practical. And YES! You don’t need anyone’s help to get this done. Moreover, you don’t need so many skills to do so! Just a PC and an internet connection. 

The following section will show you have to create your video by InVideo; however, feel free to use any such tool as Animaker and so. 

How to Use This Tool

Step #1: Join by entering your email address, or sign in and look under “animated video templates”. Use the search box up above to find a template for an animated video. Once you type it, you can find a world of options.

Just look through the available options until you find one that suits you, select the desired aspect ratio for your film based on the platform you plan to publish it on, then click the “Use This Template” button.

Step #2: When prompted, select “Upload Media” to begin the editing procedure. Insert media such as photos or videos into the editor. Just drop your own photos into the canvas, and they’ll take the place of the samples.

Step #3: Click “Replace” to change the image. It’s also possible to tailor the experience to your preferences by selecting different content types from the app’s pre-loaded library.  

Step #4: Simply double-click the text you wish to change, and it will be replaced in the template. Then, type the new text. The next step is to replicate this for each and every scene. 

Step #5: You may make the animations by using the stickers available on the platform. Select Stickers from the sidebar, then search for an appropriate sticker using the provided keyword. To add it to the video, simply click on it once you’ve located it. You may also resize and move the sticker by just dragging its corner.

Step #6: Liven up your stickers by adding animations. Choose an animation effect by clicking the “Animate” button on the upper left of the canvas. You can also choose the duration. Having given your sticker life and motion, you will have the basis for the opening scene of your animated video production.

Pro tip: add an animated call-to-action to your videos where you can tell the viewer what to do next after watching the video.

Step #7: It’s time to add some music to your video, so before you do anything else, be sure the template you’re using has matching music in InVideo’s library. If it isn’t necessary, select it in “Edit” and then delete it.

Step #8: Click the “Upload Media” button if you have any music or songs you’d want to add to the video. After the file has been uploaded, click the dots (…) and choose “Add as Background Music.” You may also use the in-app music store to add a track to your video.

To choose the perfect soundtrack for your video, click the “Music” tab on the left. After selecting a scene, you can add this track by clicking the plus sign.

Side tip: To change the volume, go to the “Edit” menu and pick the “Volume And Fade” option. The volume of the background music can be lowered to around 10% if a voiceover is to be added to the animated video production at a later point. Thus, it doesn’t overpower the main voice.

Step #9: Use the platform’s built-in text-to-speech functionality, or record your own voice to give your video a narrated introduction or conclusion. Simply select the “Automated Text to Speech” option to create a voiceover. Then, use the space provided to enter your text. Click the “Generate VO” button after choosing the language and voice.

However, you can record your voiceover by selecting the “Record Voice” option, speaking into your microphone, and pressing the record button. If you’re satisfied with the audio, you can add it to the video by selecting it and then clicking “Add.”

Step #10: You seem to have completed the video by adding in visuals, sound, and narration. Go to the “Download & Share” button and select the resolution before clicking “Export.”

However, these online tools don’t guarantee you have a customised video speaking to your audience and conveying your identity. It might help if you need a quick video for a limited purpose but don’t sacrifice your brand image by depending on these tools entirely.

How Can Profiletree Help You?

Our animated video production workflow does not differ much from previous preparation and installation steps. However, you can find many other aspects that set us apart!

For starters, our ultimate dedication to meeting our client’s expectations and needs; we truly listen and understand what you need. We believe this is the main ingredient of a powerfully customised animated video.

Our constant attention to detail also distinguishes our animation production. Indeed, we are obsessed with details, and we can’t help it! Our team is hardcore perfectionists who create each animation steps with a detail-oriented mindset.

In the end, we’re committed to satisfying you to the fullest. Hence, as part of the animated video production workflow, we’ll send a deliverable and give you a chance to inform us of what you’d like to change.

This round of changes can adjust until you receive exactly what you expect (we will certainly exceed our expectations!) And then you have it! A customised, high-quality 2D animated video that will make you stand out and outperform your competitors. Call us now!

SEE ALSO: Automatic Video Editing Software.