Whether it’s our choice of pasta or holiday, budgets are playing an ever-increasing role in our lives. The same is true for companies and marketing teams. But creating an animation on a budget doesn’t mean you have to make sacrifices in quality when it comes to sharing messages and making explainer videos.
Whiteboard animation allows you to tell your story in an engaging, informative and memorable way - even when watching the pennies. Whiteboard videos and their production process are packed with opportunities to say more with less.
Capturing your essence well on a small animation budget
Even on a tight whiteboard animation budget, you can capture all your uniqueness and personality thanks to the creative freedom provided by whiteboard videos and working with a studio or team.
Branding
One of the most effective ways is embracing your brand guidelines. From the choice of font and colours, to the imaginative use of logos, you can put your visual fingerprints all over your video without building up a big bill.
Tone, language and voiceovers
From the VO to the visuals, scripts are the foundation of any whiteboard animation. By getting your script right, you can choose the perfect language, style and tone to communicate your brand and identity. Taking this to the next level, you can choose the perfect voiceover artist, or record the voiceover yourself. Illustrators will then use this style to inspire their illustrations.
Feature familiar faces and settings
A great way to capture your essence is to include familiar faces, projects and locations that audiences will recognise and relate to. The creative freedom of whiteboard animation means you can celebrate your team and identity by including references like these without breaking the bank.
How can Whiteboard Animation help create great videos on a budget?
Creating an explainer video can be an expensive thing. The cost of actors, sets and locations all add up, especially if your subject is more abstract or niche. Whiteboard animation can help you overcome these challenges though, providing you with a video that meets the same high standards on a smaller budget. It all comes down to the winning combination of a blank canvas and a healthy dose of creativity.
Storytelling
Storytelling is at the heart of whiteboard animation and its ability to deliver powerful explainer videos on a tight budget. It starts with a script, which gets transformed into visual storytelling through tailored and innovative visual thinking. Our brains are wired for stories, and putting storytelling at the core of everything we do supercharges the potential impact of your video.
The script writing process allows us to work with you and capture your message, key points and calls to action in a focused and effective narrative. Illustration and animation add a new dimension to your script, including added information, relatability and references to make sure your message lands well with your target audience.
All this is completed by a voiceover delivering your script that guides viewers through your whiteboard animation and message, ensuring the highest level of engagement.
You can say a lot in a short amount of time
By using illustration, animation, a voiceover and onscreen text, you are able to share a lot of information in a short amount of time. Not only is this ideal when tackling more complex subjects, it allows you to get your message across quickly and reduces the animation budget you need for the project.
Working with a creative team means you can keep the run time short and get in everything you need without compromising on quality, your message or audience engagement.
Make budget friendly style and creative choices
Everything in a whiteboard animation, from the characters and illustration style to the font and branding, is customisable. This is thanks to the creative freedom the medium offers, and it gives you the opportunity to choose a style that suits your story and keeps your whiteboard animation on budget.
The creative team you work with will be able to understand your vision and needs and will be able to advise you on what could work well.
5 Tips for getting the most from your animation budget
As well as working with a creative team, there are several steps you can take to make sure you get the most from your whiteboard animation budget.
Be certain about your message and audience: making changes to an animation once the illustration process has begun can add time to the project and increase its cost. Being sure about what you want to you to say to whom, and where you want to say it, can avoid having to make expensive changes later on.
Don’t make your animation too complex: while whiteboard animations are great at explaining complex or abstract ideas, they are also great at taking a simpler and everyday approach to your message. The simpler your approach, the smaller you can make your budget. Your creative team will be able to help you make sure your video still looks and feels great.
Avoid music and sound effects: the creative freedom whiteboard animation offers isn’t just visual. Using sound effects or music adds emphasis or impact to points and messages, and helps you make your animation engaging. The visuals are very effective however, and don’t always need these add-ons to have a powerful effect on viewers.
Don’t use too many characters: not only can too many characters be distracting, they can really add to the cost of the video. Creative visual thinking, such as visual metaphors and set pieces, gives you plenty of engaging storytelling and explainer options and can save you money.
Record your own voiceover: this can save you money, and make your animation feel even more on brand. It comes with a warning though, if you do record your own VO make sure it’s a high-quality recording. Bad audio can make a video hard to watch and reduce the impact of your message.
The We Are Cognitive Big Minute - high quality animations on a budget
While every whiteboard animation should be made with care, attention, creativity and tailored visual thinking, this doesn’t mean you can’t create a great explainer that shares your message well on a tight budget. To make this a possibility, we created the Big Minute. While it’s not suitable for more complex or abstract messages, the Big Minute is perfect for sharing your organisation’s story, a message or an idea you want viewers to discover.
Our Big Minutes combine quality, speed and value. We’d love to talk to you if you think it could help you share your story, contact us today or book a creative consultation.
Creating an animation on a budget doesn’t mean you have to make sacrifices in the quality your animation and message. By choosing clever and creative options, you can keep your costs down and stick to even a small whiteboard animation budget. You can read more about what goes into the cost of a whiteboard animation here.
Making budget friendly whiteboard animations is exactly why we created the Big Minute, and we’d love to talk to you about how your message could work as a Big Minute or any other style of whiteboard animation. Contact us or book a discovery call today!
When done well, the ingredients in an explainer video combine to create powerful animations that inform, entertain, inspire and stay with viewers. In this post, we look at how they are made.