There aren’t many things more engaging than our pets, they have a ROI that marketers dream of! They can be heart-warming, funny or soothing, and they’re full of personality! Whether we see them as companions, mostly agreeable housemates or more like our children, it is hard not to stop, watch them and get lost in the adventures they seem to be on.

They are, in effect, one of the best examples of characters out there. In explainer videos, characters play an essential role in helping us to tell and connect with stories. They might directly guide us through a narrative or bring to life the points made by a voiceover.

Why are explainer video characters great?

We love explainer video characters! They offer so much in terms of visual storytelling, and they bring messages to life. From the point of view of our illustrators, they are a joy to design and create, and from an audience perspective, they make messages and information instantly more relatable and engaging.

They do a lot more than this though. Characters in explainer videos can be a great way of setting the tone, reflecting your personality and making your video feel unique. They create the possibility for wonderful moments of charm, empathy, connection and humour.

All of this adds up in to a real game changer when it comes to the impact of your video and the way people engage with it. Characters play a major part in an explainer video’s power to convince us about an idea or product, making complex subjects understandable and making detail-heavy topics entertaining. So, getting your characters right matters.

How to create explainer video characters

Creating the perfect explainer video character is not only important as you plan the overall style of your explainer video, it can also be good fun and provide a window on your audience and brand.

Your message and your audience

Before you even think about your characters, you need to think about your video’s message and target audience. Every narrative and message is unique; this means the approach to sharing it needs to be bespoke. By using props and illustrations that are custom made for your project or topic, you can ensure your video explains them in a way which is impactful and accurate.

Then there are the needs of the audience. The more you know an audience, the more you can tailor those those custom props and illustrations to work for them as much as your message. This matters a lot; the more relatable and relevant you can make a video feel, the more engaging it will be. Engaging videos are better at holding a viewer’s attention and making messages memorable.

With both these things in mind, you can begin to think about character design and the ways characters will best serve your explainer video.

How will your characters drive the narrative of the explainer video?

Different messages will lend themselves to different uses of characters, and this is something that will, in part, be decided by your explainer video script. Some messages are best shared through character-led narratives. This works well for subjects that affect people directly, when you want your video to create empathy or build a strong connection.

When your video has a wider point to make, characters can take more of a back seat, appearing to create relatability and to back up points made in the voiceover. This style works well in videos that share an idea, policy or more general information. If your explainer is tackling a subject that is complex or detail heavy, you can take this use of characters to another level. By referencing well known characters, you can boost the effectiveness of explanations and metaphors, and make your video feel more entertaining and memorable.

Who are your characters?

By understanding the needs of your message and audience, and the role your characters will play, you can begin to plan your characters.

• Who are they?

• What will they wear?

• What will they be doing?

• Will they have props?

These questions have a big impact on the visual storytelling in your explainer video, and your answers to these can be the difference between an explainer video that leaves viewers feeling uninterested or bored and one that inspires your audience, connecting with them strongly.

Character options and styles

All this gives you plenty of options when it comes to your characters. You could create characters that you know your audience will connect with, or base them on real people. This second option is a must when you are dealing with sensitive subjects and information, or when a true-to-life approach is needed.

Of course, sometimes there is no need to create characters. The perfect character may already exist! If your brand is strong and resonates with your audience, mascots or famous members of the team can make great characters with a ready-made connection to viewers.

Depending on the type of explainer video you choose, you could go for a live-action explainer video and use actors or team members, or choose an animated explainer video or whiteboard animation and use illustrated characters. If you take this route, the style options increase a lot. You could choose:

• Cartoon characters - these are ideal when entertainment plays an important role in your video

• Realistic characters - realistic characters are the best choice when your topic is sensitive or serious

• Stylised characters - these offer a great way of setting the right tone and injecting emotion, charm or humour into your video

• Icons and simple characters - when your characters do not take centre stage, and are there to highlight points made by a voiceover, simple characters or those drawn as icons work well

Character emotions

The emotional tone of your explainer video plays a big part in setting the right feel and style. This is important; getting the tone of the explainer video wrong can cause a disconnect with viewers and actually put them off what you have to say. Your choice of colours, settings, props, onscreen text, fonts and voiceover can all help you set the right style and feel. One of the best ways of doing this however, is with your characters.

How much you are able to share emotion through your characters will depend to a point on how you plan to use your choice of actor or illustration style. At most levels though, characters allow you to add emotion in several ways. You can use facial expressions and body language, the way they are dressed or their prompts, and the style of their dialogue. If the character is voicing the explainer video, the voiceover as mentioned above, takes on an even greater impact.

It all adds up to an explainer video which understands its audience perfectly and gives them plenty of opportunities to understand, resonate with and engage with your message.

Explainer video character examples

What kind of explainer video do you want to create? Here are some examples that could help you decide.

This animation for author Dan Pink brings his book ‘When’ to life. One animation in a three-part series, it uses a cartoon style to make Dan’s insights feel engaging and entertaining.

Our whiteboard video for CCL Academy used more stylised characters, infused with charm, to make new financial conduct rules feel approachable and memorable.

Tackling a serious and sensitive topic that required accuracy, our style in this video for Janssen Pharmaceuticals needed to be true to life for both characters and illustrations .

Not all characters need to be people. Animals and even objects can tell your story perfectly. We used household items to show the horror of storage nightmares for Big Yellow Storage.

Some ideas and messages don’t suit a character-led narrative. In these cases, cameos from characters (especially famous faces) can help you make the information accessible and help you highlight key points.

Our animation for Professor Stephen Hawking used characters this way and features appearances from Professor Hawking, Albert Einstein, Darth Vader and Alice (in Wonderland).

We hope this guide helps you to create the perfect characters for your explainer videos. We’ve been creating whiteboard animations since 2004, and in that time we’ve had the opportunity to design many different characters! Like all our work, each character is created bespoke for every explainer video.

If whiteboard animation can help you share your message, we’d love to hear from you. By booking a discovery call, you can ask our experienced team any questions you might have and talk through how your message could look as a whiteboard animation.