Powtoon remains one of the most popular online animated video software tools through its ease of use. As a simple animated tool, the program can help a business create a professional video for their marketing campaigns in just a few minutes.

Striking videos can be created in the drag-and-drop system throughout Powtoon. There are a number of very eye-catching designs and premade animations that can be found inside the system. The program can also be tailored with its menu style to suit the individual needs of a business.

In this article we are going to go through some of the basics of using Powtoon and its drag-and-drop system to build up the best in animation for a company.

Part1. Get Powtoon & Software Layout Overviews
Part2. Start Creating Animation Videos in Powtoon from Scratch
Part3. How to Add Music and Voiceover in Powtoon
Part4. How to Use the Powtoon Timeline
Part5. Save and Export


Part1. Get Powtoon & Software Layout Overviews

To get started, first go to the PowToon website and then sign up for a free account. Or you can directly login using your existing Gmail or Facebook account.

When done, you’ll be directed to your PowToon Dashboard, there you’ll see a few types of video templates to help you get started, as well as a list of history videos you’ve made, if any.

Here is the main dashboard:

powtoon dashbroad

If you start a project from scratch, the final editing panel will be like this:

powtoon dashboard

Working within Powtoon is actually very similar to the idea of working in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you’ve ever used a program like PowerPoint before it’s likely that you will adapt to using Powtoon quite easily.

  • The left of the column is where you can see thumbnails of your canvas and what is going on with your design.
  • The middle area is the blank canvas of what you’ll be designing
  • On top, there’s a text field to name this video file into something more relevant to your video. There’s also an Undo and Redo button beside it. Use these buttons to revert or reapply the last change made.
  • On the right column, you’ll have the different resources and elements you can use for your video.


Part2. Start Creating Animation Videos in PowToon from Scratch

There’re three ways to start creating a project. You can either continue editing your history project, or choose a type of video, like “Presentation” template to get started, or you can click the plus icon to start one from scratch.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a Powtoon starting from scratch. Once you master this, you will have no problems to create Powtoons by utilizing pre-made templates.

powtoon pre-made templates

Step1. Choose a Look for Your Powtoon

After you click the “Plus” icon to start a project from scratch, Powtoon panel will pop up a look selection window. To get started, you can select a look you like for your project.

powtoon types

If you select Whiteboard, all the resources and elements available for you in the following steps will be black and white whiteboard style. Likewise if you select Modern edge look, the elements available will be changed.

There are typically 5 types of looks: Modern Edge, Whitboard, Cartoon, Infographic, and Real.

Step2. Select a Scene

No matter you are going to create an animated video or slideshow, there will be different scenes in your projects, such as intro, situation, outro, call to action etc.

The very first thing you should do is to navigate to the right column, where you will find all the editing tools. On the top you will find the Scene tab. There you can select Intro template to start your Powtoon slide.

Step3. Choose a Background Template

Next, we are going to choose a slide background, this works pretty much the same as the slide background in Powerpoint.

You have three options:

  • Upload a background image to the Slide
  • Pick a background Color
  • Choose one from the built-in background image library (Select one and double click on it to apply)

Step4. Add Elements and Resources

#1. Add Text.

Switch to the Text tab on the right column, now you can add plain Title, Subtitle, Body text to the Canvas.

Or you can add pre-designed text offered by Powtoon instead. You can select a text look and then double click to apply.

Once a text effect is added to the canvas, you can further customize the text content, color, font, and rotate it.

#2. Add Characters.

Likewise, switch to the Character button will bring you to the built-in Characters library. There you can select a character to add to the canvas.

Once a Character is added to the canvas, you can further customize the size, position, move, poses etc.

#3. Add Props, Shapes, Specials

Props, Shapes and Specials are a library of different elements or objects you can add to your animations.

In the props library, elements are categorized into a bunch of different looks, such as Tech&Web, Business, Office, Crypto etc.

Shapes library includes many different shape elements you can use, including graphs and charts, which are useful to create data infographics.

Specials library feature many holiday and events elements. They are quite helpful if you want to create a holiday video or a family video.


Part3. How to Add Music and Voiceover in Powtoon

With Powtoon, you will be able to upload your own background music or voiceover, or select a music track from Powtoon’s built-in music library.

Powtoon has one of the most extensive royalty free music libraries of any application I have worked with. There are hundreds of clips of various genres.

Adding a sound track also turned out to be simple. Simply press Use button, which will bring up a sound control editing panel. You can further edit the volume, add or record voiceover.


Part4. How to Use the Powtoon Timeline

Timeline gives you full control over any objects, entrance and exit effect time on stage, and overall length of each slide. After you master timeline, you can create your Powtoons with Pro level confidence.

In this part, we are going to show you all about the Powtoon Timeline.

#1. Add or Remove seconds with each slide.

The default duration for the slide is 10 seconds, but you can add or remove seconds with the plus and minus buttons here:

#2. Let Character or Other Elements Enter at a specific time.

The triangle above is a playhead. Drag it to the 3 second point, and then add a character to it, you will see the character has been added to the timeline, entering at 3 seconds, right where the playhead was positioned.

The blue area represents the object’s duration on stage. You can grab the left or right edge of the blue area and drag it to where you want it to appear or disappear.

#3. Customize Entry and Exit effects.

The arrows on the timeline show how the character or element shows or exits. Click on the entry arrow or exit arrow, you can choose from the Enter Effects library or Exit Effect library to customize the entry or exit effect.

#4. Add Hand effect

Hand effect is super popular for explainer videos and whiteboard Powtoons. In this part, we will show you how to add Hand effect to your video.

Click “Add Hand”, and then select a hand effect:

There you go!


Part5. Save and Export

When you’ve finished making a PowToon presentation, you can save the final project in 3 ways:

  • Directly upload to video sharing websites like Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare
  • Save to an included hosting area called My PowToons.

Note: By using PowToon you will get one extra benefit. This is the only way you can get an embed code, which can be used to put your finished animated video on a web page. Every time you update the video file, those updates will automatically appear on the target web page. However with all other export options, you will have to render the final project again and then reupload it.

  • Export it as an MP4, PDF, or PPT file
  • Share it via Twitter, Google plus, email etc.

Conclusion

Powtoon offers an incredible value for a free service. The possibilities that it offers as a creation wizard for animated videos actually delivers more than what you might expect from a typical animation studio. You can easily share your message with the help of Powtoon and it is incredibly fun and easy to learn.

We hope that this tutorial has helped you master the basics of digital animation using Powtoon. If you are curious about trying out this system for yourself be sure to sign up for an account and build your own Powtoon today!

Powtoon Tutorial: How to Use It (2020)
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Hey, My name is Paul – nice to e-meet you 🙂 I’m a freelance video editor who has over 4 years experiences of making all types of videos. I founded this website to provide step-by-step and easy-to-follow instructions to first-time editors or beginners like you who want to start their journey in video editing.

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