As the business world moves into the new year, now is an excellent time to appraise and reassess your company’s methods of communications for both internal and external audiences.
When speaking to either an internal or external audience, studies show that visual communication is processed by the brain up to 60,000 times faster than written text. In fact, an astonishing 83% of human learning occurs visually.
Enter Video Animation
If visual communication is the way to go, then video animation is one of the very best ways to excel at that. Video animation distills your message, makes it move (literally!), and gives it maximum impact, driving home a message (often termed a “call-to-action”) and encouraging a direct action, next step or result.
Traditionally, animation has been a very expensive medium, with custom video services often costing in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. For many businesses, these sums are astronomical, and so, video animation as a communication tool has often been out of reach for them.
Fortunately, we’ve found a happy medium between overly expensive animated video production and low-quality unoriginal animations from freelancers you might find on UpWork or Fiver, or DIY services that put all the burden of video production on the client.
Here are the top video animation services you should consider for enhancing your communication efforts in 2022 and how The Sketch Effect can help you accomplish them.
Whiteboard Animation
One of the simplest types of video animation is whiteboard animation. Whiteboard animation, sometimes referred to as animated explainer videos, consists of clips of a human hand (generally assumed to belong to a talented artist) sketching visual art on a dry erase board, whiteboard, or other type of canvas. Often, these clips are sped up via time-lapse editing, and they may be augmented with additional visuals, color overlays and/or other animation techniques.
The end result can be used to explain things, convey ideas or advertise products or services, to outline various uses. Whiteboard video animation is captivating because it creates the mesmerizing effect of an “artist” creating genuine, one-of-a-kind pieces of art as the viewer watches. Everyone loves to watch an artist make their art on the fly, and whiteboard videos capture that magic.
If you’ve had difficulty effectively explaining a specific topic in your business or organization, whiteboard video animation can help you break through.
2-D Animation
In contrast to whiteboard animation, 2D animation is likely much more familiar to viewers. This is because it’s typically reminiscent of a comic or a cartoon, utilizing character-driven images that recall classic film animation or the “funnies” in a newspaper.
With 2-D animation, 2-D images are digitally animated in conjunction with each other using computer animation software. The 2-D images are usually drawn in a raster (pixel-based) image-editing application like Adobe Photoshop and then animated in a secondary application, such as Adobe After Effects or Toonboom.
2-D animation is an effective style for narrative-based animation and offers a unique and familiar way to connect with audiences.
Motion Graphics
Motion graphics videos use shape-based images typically created by a vector-editing application like Adobe Illustrator. These types of images work well for motion, dynamic transformations, and large-scale, full-screen transitions.
Motion graphic video animation often has a look that is akin to clean and polished infographics or visual diagrams you might see in a newspaper or magazine. This makes Motion Graphics videos particularly suitable for audiences and brands that expect more “buttoned-up” or serious types of presentations.
Uses of Video Animation
Regardless of the type of animation created, there are a wide variety of applications.
For internal communications, it can be used for corporate or employee training, rollouts of new processes or services, change management (reorganizations, introductions or dissolutions of company departments or other structural changes) and explanatory guides.
For educational or demonstration purposes, video animation is excellent to explain complex concepts, guide a viewer through lengthy or difficult-to-explain topics or stimulate interest in an internal program or project.
Externally, video animation can be applied for marketing and sales purposes, brand awareness or brand-building, recruiting, or prospect/customer education. It can be used to integrate into ad campaigns, to excite prospects, or to introduce new products and services.
Video animation performs particularly well on social media channels; in fact, studies have shown that visual information is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than non-visual information, leading to better retention and even conversion rates.
Video animation delivers efficiency, entertainment, comprehension and retention — four key qualities that are invaluable for communications both inside and outside organizations.
Work with a Leading Video Animation Company to Create Corporate Videos & More
The Sketch Effect offers animation video production services that create custom animation at a reasonable price, with a money-back guarantee.
Customers can expect professionally- polished productions that are more cost-effective and easier to produce than a traditional live-action video. Our work is easily shareable via websites, emails, and social media and contains “calls-to-action” that direct a viewer to do something (buy a product, sign up for a service, enroll in a training program, etc.).
There’s never been a time in history when society has been as visually literate as it is today; most people have grown up communicating and sharing ideas via pictures and videos. Video animation is a way to take advantage of this and appeal to the widest possible audience. Contact The Sketch Effect today to find out how you can leverage video animation for maximum impact, boosting your organization both internally and externally.
