Learning how to make animated videos can dramatically change the way you approach content? Learn how to make video animations in our free guide!
A human and a goldfish.
What do these two things have in common? Pathetically low attention spans. But who has the lowest?
Well, a goldfish clocked in at 9 seconds. A human, on the other hand?
8 seconds.
That’s right. Humans are more distracted than a gulping, bulbous-eyed, pea-for-a-brain bowl dweller. That spells doom and gloom for the future of written content.
That means you need to harness the power of animated video production to make your marketing strategy succeed in the 21st century. If you want to learn how to make animated videos, then it’s a good thing you found this article.
Time to put pencil to paper, harness your inner Walt Disney, and read on!
- How To Make Animated Videos
- What Sharing Platform Will I Be Using?
- Keyword Research
- Crafting a Brief
- Writing a Script
- Create a Storyboard
- Animation Process
How To Make Animated Videos in Denver For Your Business
In 2000, the average human attention span clocked in at 12 seconds. That sounds bad enough, but imagine what the years have wrought on that?
Now, the human race has dropped to 8 seconds, a full 25% drop! Will we be at 4 seconds in another 20 years? That means that the march of the digital age is rolling fast towards your company.
If you don’t embrace it and adapt, it will steamroll you, flattening your business.
So, let’s crack open how you can avoid the same sticky fate and achieve the sky-high conversion rate that video marketing can provide—up to 80%!
Before you do anything, there’s one vital question that you need to ask yourself.
What Sharing Platform Will I Be Using for my Animation Video?
You don’t want to begin creating your video from scratch, make it all nice and pretty, then leave out one tiny detail that will blow your project to astral dust.
Just ask the engineers of the Death Star.
With the dizzying host of platforms on the market, including the upstart Tiktok, there are two things that you need to factor in when building an effective animated video, from 2D animation videos to creating animated explainer videos.
Why Animated Explainer Videos Are Effective(Opens in a new browser tab)
Dimensions
If you want to conquer the millennial market, then Facebook is an excellent portal to that audience, zapping you into the feeds of millions of 30-somethings and beyond! But it comes with its own rules regarding how large the dimensions of your video should be.
This is vital because you want to ensure that your animation video is optimized for specific formats. For example, Instagram supports a landscape ratio of 16:9.
But, if you wish to deploy your video onto their carousel function, you’ll have to do it at a 1:1 ratio.
So, do some research on the various dimensions, as that will be vital to the staging of your animated elements. For example, grand wide shots will be hemmed in by a 1:1 format.
But dimension isn’t the only critical factor to plan for.
Animated Video Length
You did it! You produce the slickest animated videos on this side of the galaxy, and you head off to your social media channels to upload it.
The ultimate explainer video runs a comprehensive 12 minutes and tells listeners all they need to know about your company and services.
You go to Instagram and try to upload. Only, you can’t. Your head cracks down onto your keyboard, sending your hot morning joe spewing and burning into your skin.
If only you knew that Instagram TV (IGTV) only allows uploads of 10 minutes on how to make animated videos.
You could upload to Facebook, as that allows users to upload massive productions of up to 240 minutes! But it’s a lesson in how you need to prepare for the platform you want to target. If you’re going for the younger crowd, just know that Facebook isn’t the “scene” for that demographic.
So, if you want to appeal to that hip crowd on Instagram or Tiktok with an animated video, then plan for shorter online video animations so that you can, at the very least, upload your masterpiece.
Here’s a rundown of some of the standard lengths:
- Facebook: 240-minute maximum length
- Instagram: 10-minute maximum length (IGTV), minimum of 15 seconds (IG Story)
- Twitter: 140 seconds maximum length
- Tiktok: 10 minutes maximum length
So, pick your head off of your busted keyboard. Because for your next animated video, you now can make it the perfect blend of dimensions and length.
How to Create a Video: Ultimate Guide to Video Production in Denver(Opens in a new browser tab)
Keyword Research
No matter how optimized your masterpiece is, it’ll flop without the proper keywords.
Let’s peel back the layers of this vital step and have you identifying keywords faster than Rey mastered the force in Star Wars—pretty quickly, right?
Why It’s Important
Without keywords, Google, Youtube, Tiktok, or any other social media platform will not know how valuable your content is.
If it isn’t valuable, it’s not going to push your animated videos out to the eyes of content-crazed viewers who gulp down content like goldfish in a bowl.
Keywords are the terms that people search for, especially when they have a question about something. By including these keywords in your video, either through the description or the content itself, you can signal that your animation video brings the goods to the platform.
Pro Tip: (Don’t) Keep It Simple, Silly
We’ve all heard the acronym KISS. If you haven’t, then the chances are that it has smacked you upside your head more than once in your life.
Keep it simple, silly (KISS).
However, we shouldn’t keep it simple when it comes to keywords. For example, if you want a used car, you don’t type in “used cars.” You type in “cheap used cars near me” or “cheap used red cars.”
By being specific, you can reach customers that are more interested in buying and less interested in browsing.
Yet, a creative keyword strategy alone can’t save your animated videos from the depths of attention span forgetfulness. This next step is vital to making sure that your video beats the attention span of the goldfish.
Crafting a Brief for Your Video Animation
No, we’re not crafting some boxer briefs for your depleted closet. A “brief” in the marketing and production sense is a clearly defined set of goals and objectives for your project.
You want to be prepared for anything to create Denver animated videos that apply to your customers’ needs without the noise of any fluff.
How do you ensure that you don’t go missing things like Danaerys missed the Iron Fleet?
Define Your Animated Video Background and Objectives
We don’t just wake up one day and decide to craft a viral marketing video that addresses the needs of clients willing to cosign on a service.
It takes knowing what you want to achieve it and, most importantly, what you want the customer to do. For example:
- Subscribe
- Buy
- Share
Your video’s tone will be much different depending on the goal. If you want to push your customer over the edge into making a purchase, you’re talking with someone deeper into your sales funnel.
That’s why we dislike salespeople. They show up unannounced and unwanted when we have no relationship or knowledge of who these stuffy, grinning individuals are.
And then, they have the gall to sell us something?
That’s why you will rarely get conversions by trying to sell something on social media channels. Usually, the conversions will come into the form of subscribers, and you’re trying to wave and bang as many things as possible to draw their attention.
Target Audience
No matter the lights you wave, or the pots you bang, you’ll only be noise to a teenager if you’re selling tents, grills, or retirement accounts. If you don’t sing to the right audience, they’ll ignore your act.
No matter how pretty you sing.
So, put some time and effort into this crucial step.
Key Messages
What are you trying to say in your video? If you don’t give us a message and tie your video around it, your audience will start drooling on their desks like the boredom-induced students in Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.
This key message should become apparent within the first few seconds of your animation, or your video production will fall victim to internet oblivion.
Tone of Voice
Sounds dark, doesn’t it. Well, if the tone of your video doesn’t match your brand, product, or service, the audience you’re appealing to, and the goals of your animation, you will find yourself plummeting to those same crushing depths.
So, is your video light-hearted or serious? Is it professional or casual? You can create a consistent video by nailing down the tone, making it a hit with those goth-lurkers, bouncy Generation Z’ers, or clean-cut Baby Boomers.
Other Elements
You should plan out the project’s logistics, from your timeline to your budget. How long will it take to make and how much capital you need to throw at it will determine several essential aspects of the video content.
But before we get into the production magic, you need to break open your notebook and click open that pen.
Writing a Script
Eight seconds isn’t a lot of time to do things by the seat of your pants. For that reason, you need to plan out what you want to say.
Now, this can be as detailed as you want it to be. With animation, you must lean to the detailed side of things.
Why is this? Because the script can provide some vital elements for animators to begin planning for, from movements or how the character’s animation will react to sounds.
For that reason, animated scripts are usually the most detailed.
AAAA Formula
Don’t be distressed, and start pulling your hair out. Because here’s a straightforward formula that you can use to build out your script.
It’s called the AAAA formula:
- Attention: Reach out, and yank your viewer into the video amimation
- Agitation: You want to rub dirt in their wounds
- Activity: Show the viewer how to clean their wound
- Action: Show the viewer how to get the cleaning supplies
Now, you don’t want to go about slashing your viewers because your viewers will already come with wounds! Everyone is cut and bleeding by something in our lives. It’s your video’s goal to solve their problem—low finances, loss of love, unhappiness, these are some of the most potent issues that people face.
It’s not about the inability to find the right camping gear. Instead, it’s about not being able to escape from the city or be happy, for once.
It’s not about having a broken phone. It’s about not being able to enjoy the freedom of information.
It’s not about hair loss. It’s about not having the confidence to step out into the world again.
You can connect to your customer in unique and inspiring ways by tapping into these wounds.
Pro Tip: Be conversational in your script. If you come across as directly speaking to the viewer, they’ll want to hear more from you.
If you’re stiffer than the guards of the Queen of England, then your video will only be fish food for attention-spanless goldfish.
Create a Storyboard
Video animation is a visual medium. If you don’t plan out the scene, it will make the actual production phase a mish-mash of crazed guesswork.
That’ll only bring budgeting hell upon your business—and missed deadlines. By taking the time to stage out your scenes through storyboard sequences, you can save time and money down the road.
You have the goals, messaging, script, and storyboards; everything looks set for your new video.
It’s time to animate!
The Video Animation Process
With all of the prep work you have done, you’ve set yourself up well to avoid production mishaps. Although we attempt to avoid “Murphy,” he always manages to impose his law upon us during the video animation process.
Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
By planning out your storyboard, you’ve provided a roadmap for the first step of the production process.
Modeling, Rigging, and Asset Production
Calm down, construction aficionados. Before you leap out of your seat in joy, this is about laying the groundwork for:
- How your animated characters will move (modeling and rigging)
- The objects in the scene (assets)
With the joints and backbone of each scene laid down, you, your in-house team, or our fantastic group of animators, can start the professional animation process. The resulting cuts can be spliced together with a video maker or video editor. Just be sure to watch your video, critiquing it as you go.
Afterward, be sure to inject some world-beating soundtracks as background music that plays to the tone of your video style.
Check this out for more information on the ins and outs of video marketing production!
Don’t Be a Guppy
Start exploding beyond the diving attention spans of the human race by crafting killer content that snares your viewers. In your quest for how to make animated videos for your Denver company, you don’t have to go it alone.
Stop swimming with the fish.
Contact our video production company today to reduce those keyboard-shattering moments of rage and boost engagement from your audience.