“Animation” simply means to give life to something, be that physical objects or drawings. So this very broad definition means that stylistically, animated video can be many things!
Character Animation
A character animation puts characters at the centre of the narrative. They are great for building empathy with an audience and telling human stories – even if the characters themselves aren’t actually human. We use character animations for clients who have a customer-focused business or organisation – usually service providers.
One client of ours who used character animation is the charity the Prostate Project. They wanted a campaign video to raise awareness of the PSA blood test that’s available for screening prostate cancer in men over 50. Approaching a sensitive subject with a demographic not well-known for talking about their feelings, the use of character animation is perfect for talking about awkward or embarrassing subjects and approaches a difficult topic through light comedy.
Motion Graphics
Where character animations centralise characters, motion graphics focuses on text as the major component – put simply, motion graphics are animated graphic design. A compelling visual feast of colours, shapes, text and images is a great way of communicating information in a succinct way. Adverts, title sequences and educational video content are all about getting across key messages in a short amount of time.
This video we created for Go Reply is a great example of how a message can be conveyed through text and embellished through motion, with simple graphic shapes and icons.
Icon Animation
Icon animations also qualify as motion graphics, but as icons are a good short form for visual communication, text is often less heavily required. Alongside a voiceover, icon animations are easy to follow and enjoyable to watch for an audience. They are less involved than character animations to create as they don’t require an environment to exist in, and are often less detailed and complex to animate. This makes them a really cost-effective style to go for.
We find that icon animation is good for communicating concepts that aren’t physical or tangible. Viewers are used to seeing icons in everyday life and are very good at interpreting them. Symbols on signs are the best example of this, or buttons in software applications.
Process Animation
Human brains love a process and find them reassuring. Process animations are a really good way of upgrading that flow chart in your PowerPoint presentation. Taking the viewer through your process step-by-step is a really effective tool to enhance understanding of how your business might operate. They can be used to help customers learn how you work and what the stages of your service are, or they can be used as training resource for new staff who need to get to grips with the structure of your organisation.
This process animation formed part of a longer pitch video, explaining the application of their new technology to potential investors and end-users.
Typography Animation
Typography animations are an engaging way to get your message out when your message isn’t particularly visual. The main focus of the animation is text, packaged in a graphical way, adding emphasis to keywords through colour, font and animation. They also double-up as being perfect for silent viewing, as the whole script can be read while the video is playing without the need for the viewers’ device sound to be turned on.
Morph Animation
In a morph animation, the assets for each scene morph shape to make the next asset – remapping the path that creates the image to make the new image. This means that transitions are connected from scene to scene, and the flow of the animation is very satisfying to watch.
The process of creating this type of animation is a little more labour-intensive to produce, as the storyboarding needs to be well planned and the transitions nailed down prior to animation. It also puts a lot of the asset production into the animation software, as this is where the path morphing takes place. Although the process might take a little longer than other styles of animation, the payoff is well worth it for a high production value animation as the end result!
Stop motion
Stop motion is one of the earliest forms of animation, and you’ll recognise the technique from well-known characters like Wallace & Gromit. Stop motion animations are made up of a series of photos where the subject has moved a fraction between shots to create the illusion of autonomous motion. As traditional filmed footage uses a minimum of 24 frames per second, you can quite quickly see how time-consuming stop motion can be to produce! For every 24 photos taken, 1 second of video would be created. For this reason, stop motion animators often work at 12 frames per second.
Stop motion animation has playful magic to it that engages and delights viewers. This technique, though time-consuming and more of significant investment, would really make you stand out from the crowd with your video marketing. This example from The Body Shop is a great example of stop motion in product videos.
The Body Shop – Coconut Body Butter from Picturesmith on Vimeo.
3D Animation
You’ll be incredibly familiar with 3D animation at a very high level from the likes of global giants such as Pixar and Dreamworks, but there is a place for it in the corporate video too. 3D animation varies from 2D animation by the environment and the objects having a Z axis. This in turn means that you can move a virtual camera around all sides of the digital object, and have it interact with light and space in a far more complex way. It is also a lot more time-consuming than 2D animation and requires a lot of processing power from the computer you are working on.
One of the best corporate video applications for 3D animation is in engineering product videos, where you might want to explain how you’re machine works, but the mechanism is cased in and hard to film.
2.5D Animation
2.5D is a term used to describe a mix of 2D and 3D animation, where 2D assets can be manipulated in 3D space. You can imagine this by holding a piece of paper in your hands – you can move it forwards and backwards but when you rotate it 90 degrees it becomes near invisible from the front – paper thin! Using a 3D camera to move around 2D assets in 3D space can really add interest and a literal extra dimension to your project.
Software Animation
One area that we specialise in is creating software animations for our clients who have a digital product. If you want to show off your web platform, app or programme it can be hard to do so without using screen recordings or giving away the exclusive content that users would have to buy the programme for.
Screen recordings have use in creating functional training videos or tutorials but they aren’t particularly sexy for promotional marketing content. They can also be overcrowded with text which can make it hard to focus on the specific features or benefits that you’re trying to promote.
We take a different approach where we recreate the software as vector graphics and streamline it so that unnecessary text is omitted and features can be pulled out, imitating interaction. This approach also avoids longevity problems with software updates, meaning your video isn’t dated.
At Square Daisy, we never take a one-size fits all approach to our client’s animation project, we listen to the brief and work with you to establish what kind of style will work best for you and your customers.
