It’s not easy to tell the quality of different animations, especially if you are not some insider in the animation industry but a clueless instructional designer.
Before we jump off to the technical details of animation, you must understand that different types of animation have different standards. You cannot judge a whiteboard animated video is poor in quality due to lack of details in it.
As long as the videos stay consistent with the learning objectives, and types of animation would benefit the learning outcomes.
A person working for this profile will be responsible for the management of all the processes, procedures, outputs, and deliverables through the production while ensuring that the department’s outputs are aligned with the production schedule and budget, as well as the creative vision of the production.
We need to take care of a few key factors that determine the quality of an animated explainer video.
An explainer video consists mainly of 4 parts viz.- Script, Voiceover, visual illustration/storyboard, and animation.
Before we begin with the video animation creation process, here is a pro-tip – the core of every impactful video is smartly catering to the needs and vision of your client.
Besides, the first is divided into two major tasks:
-Gather as information from the client as possible
-Find out whatever you can about the industry and audience
Make sure you clearly communicate with the client regarding their expectations and if they have a precise vision for the video. We can get on a quick call with the client to understand the project and to make sure that we are on the same page.
Script: It should contain and convey a clear message of the business and brand.
Let’s look at a few pro-tips to keep a note of when writing your video script:
-- Keep the length of your video between 1 to 2 minutes. Approx 125 words for 1 minute is enough.
-- Avoid creating a wordy script, as it takes away from the visual experience you are trying to create
Make sure the script has to be precise with all the information from the client’s end such as website link, what problems are their target audience facing and how does your service solve them? a brief description of product/service
Voiceover: The narration quality is the soul of the video. You cannot see it but it gives life to an animated explainer video.
Noisy and unclear voice can make the whole video poor even though it may have the top class graphics and animation.
Make sure you have a vision for the ideal voice of the video that makes your characters come to life with the right tone, pitch, and pace.
Visual illustration/Storyboard: A storyboard is actually a visual script of the video. This step involves the creation of graphics. Well-created graphics have a close resemblance to the idea/identity of the client’s entity.
Uniqueness combined with creativeness generates amazing graphics which could give a very appealing element to your video.
Let’s see a basic example of an error that has to be kept in mind while creating a storyboard.
As in this example, we can see that it’s written “loyalty Card” which is not a correct way to write it. We have to apply sentence case for such purposes wherever there are headings, etc
So, in this case, it will be written as “Loyalty Card”.
spacing/padding/alignment of text and visuals, these are the various points that can help you to 
Animation: Animation moves, pauses, perspectives, etc are what that ultimately bring life to your video. How the characters are moving, how the background going, how elements are coming and going in a scene, transition among the scenes is going smooth or not, VO sync with the visuals, are the colors/font according to the brand guidelines, and so on, decide the quality of the animation.
Some additional key points to remember:
1) Another thing that you need to take care of the resolution of the video.
- Web-large: 1920*1080px (full hd)
- Web: 1280*1024px
- Insta size: 1080*566
2) Everytime you create a storyboard/video, make sure you put a webdew watermark/draft on it. The deliverables will not be shared with the client without the watermark on them.
3) Make sure the videos on the youtube portfolio must have an intro and outro template of webdew, so when you share the portfolio link with the client it has to be there.
However, animation is a time-consuming process, so make sure you provide your animator the creative space they need.
For Live action videos- the stock footage has to be relevant (according to the voiceover), has to be clear (not blurred/pixelated), the sound effects/background music has to be soothing or according to your client’s need. Make sure the music volume is not high so that the voiceover is clear.
Here is an example of how basic testing of animation is done.
In this recording you’ll see 2 tabs which I may be switching to, one is for the video link and the other one is for the storyboard/Visual illustration which was provided by the client along with the animation description.
We’ll check if the spacing/padding/alignment of text in the box is the same from all sides or not, if the animation description follows, make sure you don’t miss anything.
- So, we’ll start from the title of the video, here you can see that text is in the middle of the box with all the same spacing from top/bottom/right/left, which is good.
- At 0:20- here as it was written in the provided storyboard that icons must pop out from behind the computer but in the video, it was not the same.
- In this video, we were asked to make all the dotted lines moving (trim path effect) to make the scene dynamic and not static, so as you can see that this instruction is typically followed.
- Also, there has to be subtle animation in the background too, as in this video dots are blinking, gridlines moving, etc.
- 0:50- the animation of the question marks was too fast. Instead of this, we can draw the question marks slowly.
- 0:55- in this scene the icons will appear/drawn first and then the text below them appears one by one, Right now icons and text are coming at the same time.
- 1:18- here the colored boxes have to shift left in the same scene instead of making a transition and continue shifting in the next scene.
These are the basic things by which you can create a good video.