Anyone that’s ever been given a shopping list, only to come home and be told they bought the wrong type of cheese, will know that some terms can be very general and cover a wide variety of things. Animation falls into this category; it has a massive range of styles and uses ranging from blockbuster movies to niche comedy skits on YouTube. So, what type of animation is whiteboard animation?
Whiteboard animation is a type of animation used to share information, explain ideas and tell stories. It combines scripts with illustrations that are typically drawn in black pen and an accent colour on to a white background. Animation, voiceovers and onscreen text are added, and the final result is a type of animation which uses storytelling and a multi-modal approach to make information understandable, memorable and engaging.
What is whiteboard animation used for?
The ingredients that make up a whiteboard animation allow it to add value in many settings and industries. We’ll mention a few here but there are a lot. This blog on whiteboard animation uses has a longer list. In all our years of creating whiteboard animation videos, we haven’t yet found a situation they don’t work in.
Educational videos
Whiteboard animated videos have their roots in education and they offer a lot to students young and old as they navigate their way around new ideas and subjects. The Chinese University of Hong Kong did research into the effectiveness of whiteboard animations in an educational setting, looking at students studying science. We go into more detail about their study in this blog on whiteboard animation and education, but just some of their findings include:
86.2% of the students agreed that learning materials in the form of whiteboard animation are more interesting than lecture videos
92.1% of students who watched the animations said they were helpful in gaining knowledge
86.8% of students said the animations were helpful in tutorial studies
Product and service explainers
Whether your product is rooted firmly in reality or is a little more abstract, whiteboard animation provides a great way of explaining and showing how it works. In part, this is due to the creative freedom that comes with whiteboard animation - the only limit is your imagination - and in part this is due to the way ideas and information can be layered and connected.
This means you can show almost anything on the screen and give all the information and detail you need while making it engaging, entertaining and memorable. This engagement is a game changer, Google found that 46% of global viewers use video content to learn something new - making product and service explainer whiteboard animated videos a great way to share what you do and how you do it with a big audience.
Bringing talks, meetings and webinars to life
How do you make complex or dry subjects more understandable, memorable and watchable? This was the question that the RSA asked as they thought about how to make their series of lectures more popular. The answer they came to was whiteboard animation, and working with our founder Andrew Park, the RSA Animates series was born.
The whiteboard animation technique supercharged the content. For instance, the ‘talking head’ version of Sir Ken Robinson’s lecture has had 546,000 views but the whiteboard animation version has had over 16 million views. It isn’t just high concept ideas that benefit from this approach. Whiteboard animation can increase the impact of meetings and webinars as well. By turning ideas and key points into layered illustrations, charming references and visual metaphors, information can be made engaging and entertaining.
This allows you to leave a lasting impact on your audience whether it’s a groundbreaking idea, essential new working practice or a key point in the webinar.
How does whiteboard animation work?
At its heart, whiteboard animated videos combine storytelling with engaging illustration and animation designed uniquely for the message to make information understandable, memorable and entertaining. There are several qualities within whiteboard animation videos which make them great at this, and an ideal choice for making important information enjoyable, accessible and shareable. Here are those qualities at a glance, and we go into more detail in this blog on how to make a whiteboard animation.
Script - this is where everything starts. Messages and key points are stitched together in one flowing narrative that is timed to the length of the whiteboard video you want to make. The tone and language in the script also sets the style and feel for other parts of the animation.
Visual thinking - this is the process of transforming the script into illustrations and visual ideas that will explain and share information in a way that gives it impact and appeals to the audience you have in mind. This thinking is the backbone of the visual storytelling. It can take the form of pure individual illustrations, bigger illustrations used as set pieces, visual metaphors and icons that highlight points in the voiceover.
Onscreen text - visual thinking gets a little help occasionally from onscreen text. This adds or emphasises key information and aids understanding. Alongside the visuals and voiceover, onscreen text provides an important stream of information.
Animation - animation has two important roles in whiteboard animated videos. On one level, it brings the illustrations to life, boosting audience engagement and increasing the explanatory power of a whiteboard animation video. At a more fundamental level, animation guides the viewer through the video while framing scenes and drawing attention to important details.
Characters - embodying the narrative even further, well designed characters allow you to build added emotion and empathy into a whiteboard animation while also helping you to tailor the storytelling even further to you, your message and your audience. Characters are bursting with storytelling potential, from who they are to what they are doing how they are dressed.
Voiceover - making use of your script once more, a voiceover brings your words to life as it works with the visuals to explain your message. Voiceovers are another great way to tailor your animation to your brand and audience, adding to the energy, tone and feel of the whiteboard video.
Our golden rule
All of these qualities come together to make a whiteboard animation video that explains, entertains and connects with viewers. There is one golden rule that applies to them all and is a complete must if you want your animation to be memorable and have lasting impact, and that rule is to think about the audience at all times.
One of greatest strengths of whiteboard animation is that it can be tailored at every level to be exactly what you need and to appeal to your audience, so thinking about your audience as you write your script, pick your voiceover artist, draw your illustrations and create your characters is a must!
What makes whiteboard animation so special?
These qualities are all well and good, but why choose a whiteboard animation over a ‘talking head’ or vector graphic video? We’ve compared different types of explainer video here, and each has a use, but for us whiteboard animation is the best type of explainer video when it comes to explaining an idea, engaging a viewer and leaving a lasting impact.
There are a few reasons for this, and one we have touched on already is the use of multiple information streams. This is a biggie; it allows you to communicate a lot of information in a short space of time. The combination of visuals, voiceover, onscreen text and animation also means that a whiteboard animation appeals to our multi-modal way of learning. We learn something thanks to the combination of these things, and whiteboard animated videos allow you to make the most of these different streams.
We love whiteboard videos because they are versatile. They can tackle any subject thanks to the creative freedom of whiteboard animation, but thanks to visual thinking techniques like visual metaphors, they are able to make complex ideas seem simple and dry content feel interesting. Being a video format, they are also very versatile when it comes to devices. They’ll look just as good on your smartphone or your smart TV.
Our love of whiteboard animation led us to be curious about it and the way audiences respond to it. So, we teamed up with Professor Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, to take a closer look at what was going on. Together, our whiteboard animation research compared a ‘talking head’ video with a whiteboard animation that used the same voiceover. The findings shocked us:
Viewers were 66% more likely to share the whiteboard animation
The whiteboard animation resulted in a 15% increase in information retention
The whiteboard animation was 33% more entertaining
Using whiteboard animation software vs using a whiteboard animation company
Whiteboard animation software vs using a whiteboard animation studio - it’s a big question. Whiteboard animation software can offer some benefits on price and allow you to take full control of the production process. We don’t think these benefits are worth it however, as by using stock images and templates, you lose the creativity and originality that makes whiteboard animation such a powerful way of communicating.
Working with a studio has added benefits. The creative team work in line with your feedback and have a career’s worth of professional experience to draw on as they create a bespoke and tailored animation that is unique to you and tailored to your story and audience.
What type of animation is whiteboard animation? We hope we have shown you that it is an engaging, effective, memorable and versatile type of animation that is perfect for explaining and sharing ideas or information - no matter how complex or dry.
Whiteboard animation is our passion and we love using visual storytelling to supercharge stories and information. If you have a story or message you’d like to share with whiteboard animation, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us today!
Creating a successful explainer video takes detailed planning. Done well, they supercharge stories and messages, giving them a lasting impact and high engagement rates.