Introduction
When thinking of creating an animated video for a project, we want it to be perfect in terms of the style as well as the quality of the animation itself. But the first challenges start to arise immediately: if the development of the style of illustration is an attainable step, what to do with the style of animation?
Sure, we can go with complex character animation or even 3D, but that probably won’t be viable in terms of budget, especially if we need to produce large amounts of content. For such situations, whiteboard animation can become a perfect bet since it can get you great-looking videos on a budget you can afford.
So, let’s check some of the benefits of whiteboard animation video in online learning, and see what makes this type of animation so special and why 🤩
Summary:
- What is e-learning whiteboard animation?
- Benefits of Whiteboard Animation for E-learning
- Consider Blue Carrot Your Trusted Partner
- Final Thoughts
What is e-learning whiteboard animation?
Let’s recall simple videos we all probably have seen where the teacher stands next to the board drawing schemes and graphs to support their explanation of a new topic or subject. This is the type of presentation from which the term ‘whiteboard animation’ gets its origin.
Whiteboard animation videos give you the same feeling but on a more advanced level, i.e. here you see a hand ‘physically drawing’ illustrations on-screen. So, while it might seem that this is a real process, the entire animation is in fact automated. Meaning you don’t need to spend hours drawing all the shots physically.
Today there are a lot of tools that allow you to automate the creation of the best whiteboard animations in online education. At Blue Carrot we’ve created our own custom whiteboard animation bank that includes 1500 photos. This helps us speed up the production of whiteboard animation videos in e-learning without compromising the quality of the final result.
When to use a whiteboard animation in e-learning
Whiteboard animations for e-learning and other types of projects are normally used when you need to show detailed illustrations or ones that look realistic. Aside from that, whiteboard animation is often used for situations when you want to attract the viewer’s attention using bright illustrations full of bold colors and design elements.
Whiteboard animation doesn’t put any limitations as to what can be presented or drawn on-screen. Such videos work perfectly for branding purposes or when a company wants to develop a unique visual style or a mascot for a marketing campaign.
Benefits of Whiteboard Animation for E-learning
Now that we’ve cleared up what the e-learning whiteboard animation is, let’s explore three main advantages of using the whiteboard animation style for e-learning courses.
Budget-friendly
Whiteboard animation is known for being one of the most affordable types of animation. The videos produced with whiteboard animation typically cost up to 30% less compared to videos that come with cutout or 3D animation or include animated characters.
What’s more, when it comes to e-learning, the budget efficiency here becomes extremely important as such projects usually include hours of produced video content. This means that the price per minute of a produced animation should be kept at affordable levels.
👉 More information about whiteboard animation pricing can be found here: Explainer Video Production Pricing: Different Video Types and Costs.
Very versatile
In the same fashion as it is with a teacher explaining the lesson topic through chalk-drawn schemes and illustrations, with whiteboard animation you can portray anything. It doesn’t matter how complex your subject gets. With whiteboard animation, you can always find a way to explain it to your viewers in a clear and understandable way.
With that being said, let’s be realistic and not confuse the complexity of the concept with the complexity of the object. Whiteboard animation still has its own limitations when it comes to detalization of the physical objects. It means it can work great for explaining how jet engines work, but may not be the best choice when you need to show the realistic jet engine wiring in greater detail, for example. Here, 3D animation would be a better fit 🎯
Effective across different levels of understanding
Aside from the complexity of a subject, there’s also a concept called the depth of learning which defines the degree to which a teacher wants their students to grasp the topic they are presented to. Here we have six main levels of understanding: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create.
As the names suggest, each of these domains focuses on its own learning area, and thus, should be treated, presented, or explored differently. What’s interesting about whiteboard animation is that it can work effectively across all these levels and deliver the knowledge to the extent defined by the project.
In our Educational Video Production Guide, we have reviewed different levels of understanding in detail, so if you want to know how to make a whiteboard animation video, and are interested in learning more about cognitive categories, make sure to check it out.
Consider Blue Carrot Your Trusted Partner
In 2014 we started Blue Carrot as a whiteboard animation studio and since then our expertise has evolved to cover other video production techniques. However, whiteboard animation stays among those niches in which we have the most experience. During our 8+ years journey, we have delivered dozens of whiteboard drawing animations in the e-learning category, and here are just a few such projects:
🔹 IRI
At the request of IRI (International Republican Institute), our team produced 50+ minutes of whiteboard animation (11 videos in total) for the learning course on democratic society development. Two main challenges of this project were a tight timeframe and the course subject itself.
Despite the fact that IRI needed us to fit an amount of work that would normally require us to spend 3X more time on, we successfully delivered all the videos on time by expanding our team. 24 specialists were involved in the production process in total: 1 project manager, 1 art director, 5 motion designers, 5 artists, 2 scriptwriters, 2 vectorizers, 2 sound designers, 2 operators, 2 actors, and 2 voice over artists.
Since the learning course had to explore numerous aspects of political theory, another challenge for our team was getting familiar with the difficult terms and definitions, and making them easy to understand for the course viewer. So, to do that, every day our team had to spend half of the work time studying the course subject and turning complex course blocks into digestible chunks of information.
The entire scope of work included the production of 34 minutes of whiteboard animation, 5 minutes of live shooting, 24 minutes of animation overlays, and 26 illustrations for books.
🔹 Infoskill
Whiteboard animation video that we created for Infoskill, a company that provides security and IT services so businesses can take that burden off their shoulders and focus on their core objectives instead. When working on the visual style for this project, our main task was to establish a balance between creativity and business objectives to make sure that the target audience wouldn’t get lost in a bright story and can clearly see the benefits of the company’s services.
For Infoskill, we managed to create video in a unique style, all according to the client’s expectations and initial requirements. The guys at Infoskill were completely satisfied with the outcome of our cooperation and provided 5-star feedback to our team.
Final Thoughts
Whiteboard animation remains one of the most popular types of animation used for marketing campaigns. Its affordability and relatively easy production process make whiteboard animation a perfect fit for e-learning projects.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the best type of animation out there. In fact, there is no such thing as a good or bad animation technique. However, the ‘value for money’ that whiteboard animation delivers makes it quite an attractive option. Especially in the educational market, where you need to:
- produce large amounts of content with a high level of detail,
- within a short time frame, and
- on a limited budget.
That’s pretty much it about whiteboard animation in e-learning.
If you are looking for a professional video production agency to help you get your project off the ground, or simply are looking for more information regarding whiteboard animation production for e-learning, contact our team by filling out the form below. We’d be glad to provide further assistance and more information about our services 😉
