You’ve just learned about the advantages of explainer videos. Great! Or you’ve seen a few explainer videos and are impressed. Cool! Now you want to make an explainer video for your own business. Awesome! But how to choose from all the different kinds of explainer videos out there? Are you spoiled by choice? Or just can’t figure for the life of you how all these different categories differ from each other. Well we’re help to shed some light on it. So sit back and let us explain your options when it comes to making an explainer video.
Explainer educational video production company can be categorized into different types based on the objective and method of production.
Based on the explainer objective following are the common used explainer videos
Overview
Overview videos are popular because they fit most businesses’ needs and produce the best results in terms of driving more sales. These videos usually introduce a product or service and highlight the features, and how the audience can benefit.
How-to videos
As the name explains, these videos are great for explaining certain processes or instruct the viewers on the usage of a particular product or service. For example you can explain how to sign up for a service that has lots of steps to make it easy for your clients to follow the process.
Demo videos
Demos are great for wowing your audience and show them actual usage of your product or service. These can include live clips of product being used or animated demo.
FAQ videos
If your product or service requires some additional guidelines to be followed, or you anticipate questions on usage, or you want to clarify things that frequently confuse your customers, an FAQ video can save you a lot of time in customer service and solving common issues.
Educational or advertisement
Your explainer video can either educate your audience on your services or actively advertise your products and aim towards driving conversions.
In terms of production style the video can be either live action or animation. Animation is by far the most popular explainer video. So here we’ll focus on the different styles of animation.
Animated video styles:
Basic motion graphics
This is the simplest most basic type of animation. However simple does equate to being ineffective. This type of explainer video can be successfully used to present data and facts in a visually appealing manner. The main difference from other styles is that motion graphics do not include animated characters and use a combination of shapes and text to present your ideas. This type of animation works well for scientific, healthcare, and tech industries.
Cartoon motion graphic
Similar to basic motion graphics cartoon motion graphics also lack characters. But one step further from basic motion graphics, cartoon motion graphics go beyond the basic shapes and use animated cartoon style drawings of objects. This style is preferred by retail and manufacturing to highlights products in addition to companies in the financial, healthcare, and tech sectors.
Kinetic typography
This type of animation is simple yet fun to watch. It uses text as way to capture attention through different sized text and interesting typography to highlight key words and phrases. If graphics, colors, and fonts are used correctly it can make for an impactful explainer video. It’s also light on the pocket.
Whiteboard/chalkboard animation
This is a very popular style of animated videos. This style shows a hand drawing pictures and scenes on a whiteboard or chalkboard accompanied by voiceover narrating the scene. This type of animation is easier to create and uses time-lapse or stop-motion style of animation.
One benefit of this type is that it’s very interesting to watch which makes it engaging. Another is that it costs less which is always a compelling reason to choose in our opinion.
This type of animation is commonly used to explain difficult concepts and break them down into easy bite sized pieces that build up. It’s often used by the e-learning community and IT sector for describing software usage and features.
Stickman animation
This is very simple type of animation and easy to create. Used properly it can add levity to a dry subject. If you’re looking for something simple with a bit of humor thrown in, this type of animation can work well for you.
Jibjab
Using a combination of simple animation and images (usually a human face on a cartoon body), Jibjab style of animation was popularized by the JibJab entertainment studio after a viral animated video of 2004 presidential candidates singing. This style is mostly used for entertainment purposes rather than as a marketing tool. But if you’re looking for a way to make your audience laugh it can be the thing for you.
Comic cartoon animation
This type of animation mimics the comic book feeling with minimum movement of the characters. The characters look cut out from a comic strip and action words like “boom” “splash” “bam” appear on the screen.
This type though not very common is preferred by the professional services industry for certain types of marketing campaigns.
Cut-out animation
Cutout animation is a type of simple animation which uses that look like cutout characters or stickers and are accompanied by a hand that places the cutouts on the screen. Because the characters are like stickers they can only move back and forth and speech bubble and text can also appear as cutouts. These videos look unique and are interesting to watch. Easy to create so they are on the lighter side in terms of cost.
2D cartoon animation
This is the most common type of animation style used for explainer videos. These are widely used by all industries. 2D animation is a step up from the above mentioned styles and allow the animators to be creative and engage the audience through animated characters. These look more lifelike compared to the characters in simpler styles of animation.
This medium offers more flexibility and involves a range of movement on the screen. This can be further categories into a basic cartoon and a full cartoon animation that differ in the level of detail and complexity.
3D animation
This is the most advanced style of animation. As the name indicates the characters and scenes in this style look much more realistic. Because of the level of detail involved these types of videos take longer to create and involve more effort. And therefore this type of explainer would cost more than other types.
This style is commonly utilized by the tech as well as financial sectors.
Animated screencast
Screencast animation includes high resolution screen recording and some animated elements thrown in. This works well for demo videos and the how-to videos mentioned previously. It can work for a variety of industries but mostly used by science and tech as well as professional services industry.
Combination of live action with animation
Live action explainer videos feature real people and objects. Animated elements are often included to make these videos interesting. The combination of live-action and animation can make for a powerful tool to explain your big idea and create an impressive result.
Now that you know all about the different types of explainer videos available to you, it’ll be easier to decide which one would work for you. We recommend selecting an option that matches your needs and budget.
If you’re still not sure simply send contact us and team Madmation will be happy to help you out.
