An Easy, Step-by-step Guide for Beginners

Whiteboard style animation videos are usually something that starts off with a blank white canvas on the screen followed by a number of soundbites, animations and more. The whiteboard explainer and animated videos usually cover a hand that will start moving across the background or an animation that will move along the canvas.

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The style of whiteboard presentation is a really impactful way to explain a particular message. The audio and the animations will work together to help you convey important messages for the future. They can even be considered a better learning tool than going through a large article or publishing a blog post on a particular subject.

If you are interested in leveraging this type of animation or creating a video like this even for free, you have definitely come to the right place.

In this guide, we will cover:

Part1. Draw Your Own Whiteboard Video: A Dead Simple Beginner’s Guide
Part2. Create Whiteboard Video Using Animation Software

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Part1. Draw Your Own Whiteboard Video: A Beginner’s Guide

There are many brands that often turn to whiteboard animation studios and professional film studios to publish their content. The problem with turning to one of these whiteboard animation Studios is that it can often be a very expensive solution.

Cognitive media for example is a company that regularly performs animations for TED and RSA animate and many of their videos can be up to $30,000 just to book the company and its services.

Studio prices for a number of other studios generally started around $4000 for just 60 seconds of content and this may be outside of the reach of the average startup business.

You can easily take this process into your own hands and build up a whiteboard animation project all on your own.

The big advantage of taking this on is that it can be much cheaper than working with a professional, the equipment is readily available and you can build a very natural looking video for services or a complex subject that you know a lot about.

The only disadvantage to creating a whiteboard video on your own is that the most impressive whiteboard videos really require a talented artist to capture the most attention. Some of the simple tools that are available also don’t come with the option for zooming or panning and this can limit the total options you have with a whiteboard video.

As you are drawing your own whiteboard video it’s likely that you’re going to need a program where you can have some preset templates or at least some experience with drawing. Using preset templates and animated objects you can build up a whiteboard video with almost no drawing skills.

Because you can control everything in the timeline, you decide roughly how fast the animation moves and how quickly you will advance the various topics especially with a voiceover.

How do you draw any whiteboard animated video?

To get started with creating a whiteboard animated video you are going to need:

• A DSLR camera(or use your cellphone) that is mounted on a tripod.
• You will also need access to a marker or whiteboard
• Simple Video Editing software (Windows Movie Maker or iMovie)

This is the best way to set up for the non-digital whiteboard style animation.

To begin:

1.   Plan out

Be sure to plan out the timeline for your video and where each of the transitions is going to occur. Taking short 10 second clips of the drawings that you sketch out or time lapse clips of you drawing out the images on the board can be a great way to start. Have a frame of reference close so that you can work on planning out the drawings sequentially.

2.   Set up lighting and aesthetics

Setting up your lighting and aesthetics is very important this can often mean moving around a few lamps and even minimizing some of the shadows that might be cast on your whiteboard. Making sure that the whiteboard is extremely secure will also help to make sure that there’s no accidental movement as you are drawing on the board.

3.   Set up the camera

setting up the camera and beginning the process of drawing is another important step. It can take some practice to actually get your camera settings dialed in and to make sure that you are using the right speed for timelapses/image capture.

4.   Post production

Getting ready for postproduction editing often means taking the raw footage after you finish drawing and placing it into some type of software to edit your timeline. Using video editing software can help you to flip the video, crop out edges, speed up or slow down the video and more.

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Part2. How to Create a Whiteboard Video Using Animation Software: A Step-by-step Guide for Beginners

Whiteboard videos and their popularity have actually resulted in a number of software companies creating new pieces of software that are specifically designed for crafting whiteboard videos. These pieces of software often rely on a number of preselected images and templates that have been drawn by digital means.

Working in this type of software can be much easier especially over going to a design studio or drawing out the entire project yourself. These type of whiteboard animation software solutions can save you extra time and money.

Pros:

• Working in software like this can help you complete whiteboard animations much quicker and without any type of drawing skills. There’s no need to set up a special scene or pick up any type of special equipment as the pricing plans for these types of software are often scalable.

Cons:

• The only disadvantage to using some of these systems is that the handwriting and other computer generated solutions can often look a little bit unnatural over time.

Creating an animated video with the help of this software can make it simple to select various images from the app, add in your animated touches and then eventually export the video to a host of your choice. Creating one of these videos really takes less than 20 min. and this can be a huge departure from the process of setting up a traditional whiteboard video.

Step1. Choose the Right Tool

There are many pieces of software available that can help you create videos: Video scribe, Powtoon, Go animate and more are some of the most popular on the market right now.

We did some testing on some of the top 20 tools available and narrowed our choices down to the six that offered the best features and value.

Tools	Type	Free Plan	Pricing	Preloaded free	Design Quality	HD Quality	Remove Watermark
Videoscribe	Software	Yes, 7 day trial with most features	from $29/mon	Access to all images excep premium images	Excellent	for Paid only	for Paid only
GoAnimate	online	Yes, 14 day trial	from $39/mon	3	Excellent	for Paid only	for Paid only
Powtoon	online	Yes, with basic features	from $1/mon	11	Average	for Paid only	for Paid only
Biteable	online	Yes, with basic features	from $8.25/mon	200	Average	for free or paid	for Paid only
Moovly	online	Yes, with basic features	from $9.95/mon	8	Good	for Paid only	for Paid only
Animaker	online	Yes, with basic features	from $9/mon	9	Good	for Paid only	for Paid only

Through these apps, Videoscribe was our favorite not only because it was one of the most popular tools, but because it had excellent features.

• The user interface for this program is very intuitive and less cluttered than its competitors.
• The program is extremely simple to use over time.
• There is a substantial image and audio library available for use.
• It’s simple to import various custom media and in highly compatible formats.
• They had some of the most natural hand motion animations.
• There are a number of export options that are available for video formats.

Step2. Install and Setup the Software, Make Your Animated video, Save and Export

1.   Download and install the software

If you don’t have the software, go to videoscribe.co, and then download a free trial:

Once downloaded, go ahead to install and run the program. Now you need to enter your email address and password you used when you registered, click the OK button to enter the interface.

2.   Getting to know the interface.

Once you enter software, click the plus icon to create a new project.

This will lead you to the main editing screen:

3.   Adding Image Elements to the Canvas

To add an image, click the first image icon in the toolbar. You will see an image library pops up. Types in a keyword to search for an appropriate image you want to use in your video.

When you find an image you like, just right click on the image, and then click “Preview image” to get an instant preview of how exactly this one is going to be drawn.

Videoscribe knows automatically how to draw all these images. The hand will come in and draw it for you, so you don’t have to worry about that at all.

Once an image is selected, you can further resize or reposition the image on the canvas. In the meantime the image thumbnail will appear on the timeline below, which you can further arrange the orders or further go back to select and edit this image later.

4.   Adding Text Element to the Canvas.

To add a text, click the second Text icon in the toolbar. After click on that, you can immediately type in the text you want. You can further change the font and color from the editing panel.

Like images, you can further resize the text or reposition it on the canvas.

5.   Adding voiceovers and sound effects to the video

There’re various options you can use to add voiceovers to the scribe. The most recommended way is to record your voiceover first using either Videoscribe, or other tools you want to record your voiceover and then import it into Videoscribe.

After it’s done, you can further build your scribe to fit in with that voice over:

The other way would be build your scribe first, and then play it and record voiceover while you are reviewing it.

To add soundtrack to the video, just click the Sound icon from the toolbar. You will see a sound library pops up. You can choose any sound effect track from the built-in library. There are hundreds of different sound tracks to choose from.

Here we also have the option to import from local computer or from the web.

6.   Preview, Save and Export.

Once the project is done, you can preview the final results by clicking the Preview button in the upper right corner.

To save the project, simplly click the Save button in the upper left corner. There are various ways to save your project. You can either save it to local drive, or save it to online cloud, or save as a PDF document.

To export the final video and share, click the Export button right next to the Preview button:

You can either save it as a video file locally, or directly upload to YouTube or Facebook, or even create a PowerPoint presentation:

Videoscribe makes it quite simple for you to create some top whiteboard animations and without having to be an expert in animation or a skilled illustrator. Working on whiteboard animations isn’t something that requires a studio thanks to the tools of today!