Are you putting off creating animated videos because they cost thousands of dollars to produce?
Many companies have spent a lot of money creating animated videos – and good luck to them – but you don’t need to spend that much any more.
How does making your own animation with GoAnimate for $80 sound?  In this article, we are going to take a look at GoAnimate and go through how you can produce high-quality, animated videos at a low cost.
What is Animation Software?
Here is an explanation of what animation is, from Google:
“Stop-motion animation is used to describe animation created by physically manipulating real-world objects and photographing them one frame of film at a time to create the illusion of movement. There are many different types of stop-motion animation, usually named after the medium used to create the animation.”
So, basically, you compile pictures together to simulate movement. You can also add sound.
What is GoAnimate and how can it be used for animations?
GoAnimate is an online, do-it-yourself video animation software program where you create your own animations using templates, characters, voice recordings etç.  For a monthly fee, you can be up and running at a very low cost and produce one-off or regular animated videos.
Main Features
- Library of characters, props and scenes – You pick and choose the characters you want included, the scenes for the characters and the props for the scenes. Â It’s all drag and drop and you can build it up, scene by scene.
- Create your own character – You can select a character from a template and then customize the character according to your requirements.
- Add Voice –  You can add voice to your animation, selecting from a range of accents and languages.  You can also record your own voice and use that instead.
- Import what you need – You can add your own logos, pictures etc.
- Add music – Add background music to your scenes. This can be your own music or you can choose it from a library.
- Publish – When you’re finished, you can export high-definition videos that you can then embed on your blog or upload to YouTube.
When would you use animated videos?
There are many possible uses, for example, to:
- Create an introduction video explaining your product or service.
- Create funny videos to share on social media channels.
- Create an animated video for a presentation (e.g. at a speaking event).
- Produce videos for training.
How do you create animated videos using GoAnimate?
There are a couple of options for creating the video.  If you want something up and running very quickly, you can use the wizard.  If you want to customize it and you have more time on your hands, you can use a much more tailored approach.
The wizard approach
Using the wizard, you can create something pretty quickly.  Here’s an example:
I’ve created a video of myself, explaining what Hootsuite is about.
Step 1 – Â Pick the type of animation.
In this example we are picking the second option, which is to use a business template because we want something up and running quickly.
You start off by choosing a setting, and there are various options to choose from.  We picked the following one, where two people are sitting at a table in the office, though there are lots of different styles of video available.  For example, you could create a whiteboard animation video where the images and background are drawn as the video is created.  There are lots of cool ways you can build the video, but for now we will focus on this one.
Next, you choose your character.  There are a selection of characters available, and also different accents for people from different countries around the world.
Note: Â If you want to customize the character, you can also do this here.
You then just type in your dialogue, or you can record your own voice.
You will find that, when you play back the recording, you may need to adjust some words to make sure pronunciation is correct. Â For example it didn’t pronounce ‘webinar’ correctly so I changed it to ‘web in ar’ and this sorted it. Â But that’s only a minor issue; 95% of it was perfect.
Your video is now complete. Â Yes, it is that easy! Â When you get used to the functionality, the hardest part is coming up with the script!
Creating the video from the ground up
As you get more experienced with GoAnimate, you might want to customize your animation a lot more to make it really stand out.  So, there’s another option where you build your animation from the ground up, like a story board.
Here’s an example of a scene that does not involve any characters. It’s a series of animated charts that are customized and put together in an animated sequence.
There is so much flexibility with what you can do.  For example, in the following video, I am adding an image with a clickable link on the screen, and this text will be panned in like you pan in with a camera.  You could put this at the end of your animation.
In the image above, I have highlighted two areas.  For the top part of the image you can choose from the following:
- Scene – Select the scene background based on the template (e.g. business background, whiteboard animation etc.)
- Character – Pick the character(s) you want to use
- Props – Pick the props you want to add to your animation (e.g various icons/images)
- Text – Add in any additional text to any particular scenes (e.g. speech bubbles)
- Music – Add music or sound effects.
At the bottom, you can adjust the scenes that you have built up.  You are able to easily adjust the length of time a scene will play out for, drag and drop scenes etc.
How to Promote Animated Films
You promote an animated film like any other video you promote.  One trick is to put a click-to-tweet link at the end of the video to allow people to share it.  If your video is funny or really interesting, people will want to share it, so make it easy for them to do so!
Summary
GoAnimate is a really powerful tool for creating video animations.  You can use the templates and have an animation ready to go within minutes, or you can build a more customized animation that will take more time but be more unique.
Have you tried GoAnimiate or other animation tools? Â Would you make your own animation?
I’d love to hear your opinion!
Reel image via Shutterstock