Whiteboard Explainer

Over several years we’ve created numerous whiteboard explainer animations in all their variations for global clients. It’s still a very popular and effective way for large organisations to communicate messages internally. Often that messaging needs to be understood instantly, by illustrating them comprehensively and seeing the visuals appear in sync with the voiceover. A well considered and carefully planned image can make a faster and more memorable impression than just spoken text. That’s the basis for a whiteboard! Here are some key benefits:

  • Whiteboard animations turn complicated processes into simple explanations
  • They benefit and support information retention
  • To see and hear something explained improves understanding of it
  • It is great for multi-market, multi-language support – simple to convert
  • An animated whiteboard video can boost your business sales by 150%

Different Styles

Whiteboard animation can be produced in all sorts of different styles, and you don’t need to stick to a black line drawing against a white board. Colours, brushstrokes, backgrounds, drawing styles all can bring a distinct look to your whiteboard animation. And, helped by technology, a few minutes of a whiteboard animation can be created in a number of days, once the visual content has been designed and agreed on and the script is signed off.

Our first whiteboard animations really were created by speeding up the filmed footage of a drawing, created by hand, under a live camera, like this project with Aspect Communications for the luxury travel experts, Kuoni. Completed over a 2-week period, we were responsible for the storyboarding (based on a supplied script), filming the sequences at our studio and editing to a voice over. Each drawing is created under a live camera on a whiteboard, the recorded footage is then manipulated at our editing suit.

Click here to book your 15-minute consultation, to see how a whiteboard animation can deliver proven results to your business

“Thanks so much for producing such a lovely piece of work as the Universe video, it looked great and received instant applause.”
Jeremy Warbrick – Senior Producer
Aspect Communications

Digital Process

Soon thereafter we began to also create our whiteboards digitally. Here, the illustrations are pre-prepared and the illusion of the drawing being created happens in the edit with an animated hand being animated along with it, digitally. This way more diversity can come into play, as the client can choose different skin coloured hand models to draw out the messages. The illustrations can be easily reused and prepared for print and other marketing material. It also gives more options on the background used.

In this whiteboard animation for the globally leading agriculture company Syngenta, the image is drawn onto an iPad and then mixed with traditionally animated 2D animation.

In another whiteboard animation for Syngenta we even mixed the whiteboard with some live action. As conveying the anonymity of the character was important in this compliance video, the protagonist places his Syngenta cap down on a desk before starting to draw. This leads nicely into the hand drawn whiteboard part of the video as it makes it clear to the audience that Carlos himself is narrating and drawing his story. Later, when communicating the actual compliance process, we transition into a traditionally animated 2D style

A whiteboard can feature all different types of characters or just minimal iconography, with a brush stroke feel – We’ve drawn yoghurt cups as characters, highly stylised or cartoony human characters all depending on the requirements and the tone of animation.

What does science say about the effectiveness of whiteboard animated videos?

A renowned psychologist and scientist named Richard Wiseman decided to test the effectiveness of a video animation company. In 2012, Richard made two versions of the same video, in the first one, he was speaking and in the other video, it was a whiteboard with the audio of the first video. With both versions, he was able to conduct a memorization study on a small population to determine which of these was the most impactful and memorable for them.

As a result, there was a 15% improvement in people who viewed the whiteboard video. Those users stated that the key was that they felt engaged during the video, thus stimulating their retention capacity.

If you are unfamiliar with the whiteboard animation production process, this blog post might serve to help you. It provides a complete guide on how we typically approach our whiteboard projects, from concept to final delivery. Or simply contact us with questions if you have a project in mind.

Drawing on a Sketchbook of a Man Holding Compass and Thinking About Growth
drawing of rail engineers sat around a table for a whiteboard animation
hand drawing diagram for a whiteboard animation for internal comms

We create bespoke explainer animations, virtual reality experiences, and e-learning content for effective and engaging communication campaigns.

If you have a project you would like to discuss, feel free to get in touch via the link below.

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