Story telling cartoon

7 Awesome Visual Storytelling Tips for Animaker

Saurav - June 5, 2018 - Leave your thoughts.

Animaker, Animated Video Making, startup storytelling, storytelling, video tips, visual content

As ideas evolved over time so did the art of storytelling. Now we are heading towards a future where visual storytelling is the only way forward.

But the problem is, with so much visual content being shared daily, people won’t bother having a second look if your visual story doesn’t make a mental impact.

So it’s very important to ensure that every second of your Animaker video makes an impact. If one doesn’t do that, people won’t even blink twice before moving on to the next piece of online content. Below are 7 super creative visual storytelling tips to up your Animation game and get your message across with a bang.  

1. Let your visuals speak for you!

It’s never a great idea to have your character narrate the story verbally when you have access to features that can help you create visual awesomeness.

So, why stick to the verbal narration when your visuals can speak for you?

Instead of narrating the story verbally, use animations that can give life to your storytelling.

Having a character just blabbering on and on about his experience can be a really boring experience.  

After a while your audience might even go to sleep! Make your visuals speak for you.

See how scared this guy is! This is how you effectively convey the gravity of the situation.  

2.

A story usually revolves around the main characters. If you don’t want your main characters to be lost in the crowd you should make sure that your character gets all the focus and attention.

You can achieve this by keeping your character in the spotlight. Try not to have a situation where your audience has to search for the main character. Show them, who is the hero.

How does that look? Hmmm. Not that great!

It is because you are making your audience search for the main character in a crowded room.

Now that’s how you can make your character stand out.  

3. Set the mood right!

Even the best of scripts can become visual disasters if you don’t set the mood right. Cool animations, relevant backgrounds, and apt music are a critical part of any great video.

It helps your audience understand the context of a particular scene.

In this scene the sky is clear, the weather is good but the boy is scared! So why the hell does he look scared?

There is a good chance that your audience may think that the kid is just goofing around or worse they may not even understand the context of the scene.

The second scene, with its bats and graveyard ambiance makes the audience feel the jitters along with the children. Having such eye for detail while building scenes can make your visual storytelling more impactful.  

4. Go for Anthropomorphism!

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities like animals or objects.

In conventional storytelling methods, you can only use humans and animals showcasing their natural behaviour. But in the animation world, the rules of conventional storytelling don't apply anymore. You can humanise the animal characters on Animaker with their actions and expressions.

This scene doesn’t grab immediate attention as it only shows animals doing regular animal things

But in this scene, the situation changes completely. The viewer instantly gets glued to the scene. This is one of the reasons why movies like Zootopia and Madagascar went on to become instant hits.  

5. Declutter with Focus

As I have mentioned above, you can focus on your character by keeping him in the spotlight. But what if there are so many things that require a spotlight?

The pro tip I would like to give here is, don’t clutter one scene with lots of details. Even if you want to add other details, try to focus on the important part of the scenes.

There are so many things in this scene that you cannot figure out what is happening.

But see this scene, how simple it is now to focus on the characters of a scene as compared to one in which there were lots of details.

By focusing on the right part of the scene you are making it easier for the audience to understand. Have mercy on your audience, they are also humans. Don’t confuse your audience by throwing everything the same time. Lots of detail means loss of attention.  

6. Make smooth transitions

Transition refers to how one scene of a story ends and the next begins. Transitions animate the entry and exit of your scene. Adding transitions can act like icing on the cake for your visual story. For doing this you can add animations like fade effect, blur effect when you go from one scene to other.

See this scene. Doesn't it look so bland?

Now have a look at this! Isn't it more lively? This is how with transition effect you can make a boring scene interesting  

7. Use special effects to spice up your visual story

Many people start off with a great script but sometimes they fail to make an impact because their storytelling lacks the spices needed for success.

Wow your audience with the help of special effects. When you are making an explainer video, every second has to be impactful. If you are introducing a new character, then the entry of that character should be enthralling. For instance, a character can just enter the room or blow away everyone's mind with the tornado effect.

By adding simple special effects like the tornado effect, the scene turned into something that is way more striking than the original.  

Conclusion

90% of all information transmitted to our brains is visual. Moreover, People remember 80% of what they see and 20% of what they read. So why not give your audience what they can remember easily for a long time. Strike their mind with a video made on Animaker and mesmerize them with your visual story.

Story-telling in animated commercials (Why it Matters for Your Business)

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The Importance of Storytelling in Animated Commercials (and Why it Matters for Your Business)

We live in a world made of stories: from childhood bedtime tales to soap operas, TV news, and even business proposals, stories are everywhere. Some go as far as saying that even personal identity is a story, a tale we tell ourselves about who we are that we constantly write and re-write. What does this mean for branding agencies and business owners? What is the role of storytelling in marketing and brand development? Do stories matter, and why?

Why does storytelling matter for businesses?

The biggest challenge in commercial copywriting is getting your audience to care. The average consumer experiences more than 1500 ads daily, and the fight for attention is in full swing. How do you get people to pause and pay attention in the midst of all this chaos?

Enter storytelling.

A gripping story is a key to transforming a bunch of boring facts no one cares about into a coherent narrative that instantly immerses your audience and engages them emotionally. Science has shown storytelling to be the most powerful form of human communication. Every brand wishing to establish a genuine connection with customers must master the art of storytelling. A good story can make or break your business success, so take it seriously.

So Storytelling matters. But why animated commercials?

You can have a brilliant idea for your 3d animation and a gripping script but still, fail to get customers to care.

Why? Because a story is only as good as its execution. 

If you have a well-developed script with charming and relatable characters but fail to narrate it properly, your audience will quickly forget you. The key to being remembered is emotional engagement, and this is where animation production comes into play. There are many reasons to choose an animation for promoting your brand, but here are five narrative-related reasons you should choose to tell your story.

If you want to see real-life examples of how we use storytelling in video ads, check out our commercial animation studios page.

1. Animated commercials are engaging.

The perfect story makes you forget it’s a story at all. We become so engrossed that we forget the distinction between the virtual and the real world, and video marketing does precisely that: it immerses your customers in a unique, charming little universe exclusively built for your brand.

2. Animated commercials make us listen.

The light-hearted nature of animated commercials makes us let our guard down and open our hearts more readily to what we’re watching. For many of us, animation is associated with the good old days of childhood. We think of animation as fun rather than an advertisement, so we’re more inclined to listen to the story it’s telling. You can make anything engaging and relatable, as long as you wrap it in a charming little story.

Do you think it’s possible to get people to care about the downside of illegal streaming? It certainly is, if you use the magic of animation. Here’s how:

3. Animation makes the most complex concepts understandable.

Explainer animated videos and whiteboard animations are a marketer’s dream: they can get the audience to care about the most abstract, far-fetched concepts. Why? Because they give these concepts a tangible form and make them relatable. Animated commercials are becoming the standard form of explainer videos because they’re better at doing the job compared to their live-action counterparts.

4. Animated commercials are perfect for just about any business. Just take a look at each of the videos below to see how diverse commercial animation is.  

Animated commercials work for all businesses and industries. Whether you’re looking for a way to explain your services through whiteboard animation, or you want to promote your product in an animated TV commercial, animation’s flexible nature allows you all the freedom you need. The sky is your limit: if you can dream it, you can animate it, not to mention the different 2D and 3D variations at your disposal.

5. Animated commercials work.

Let’s be honest: in the end, it all comes down to whether animated commercials can get the job done. The numbers show us that they can: having a video on your landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more and success stories are ubiquitous. For example, an animated explainer video helped Crazy Egg increase its conversion rates by 64%. Video marketing is the future, and animated commercials will only thrive.

From Idea to Script: the journey of the Story creation in 3d animation

You’ve understood the importance of storytelling. You know that an animated TV commercial or a motion graphic is just what your brand needs. Meetings with an animation studio have been made, hands have been shaken and your video marketing journey is about to begin.

So what’s next? How is a story developed in an animation studio? What journey does a raw idea go through on its way to becoming a professional script?

Coming up with the idea, writing the story, and developing the script are three of the earliest stages in the 3D animation pipeline. Let’s see how each step works.

1. The Idea: where it all begins

Every great story begins with an amazing idea. At animation studios like Dream Farm Studios, a professional, creative team of experts start by asking questions about the project. The goal is to make sure that the idea we come up with is not only captivating but right to the point. It is essential to start with the end in mind, asking questions such as:

• Who is the audience for this animated commercial?
• What message do we want our story to send?
• What do we want the audience to do after watching this?

After answering these questions collaboratively with the client, the creative team gets to work.   They brainstorm, play around with ideas and get feedback until they find an idea that is a perfect fit for this project.

Learn more about how to come up with great ideas for 3D animation

2. The Story: once upon a time…

This is the step in which the heart of the animated commercial is born: the story. Which world does this take place in? Who are the characters? What is the conflict? How is it resolved at the end? The story takes shape when your idea takes on flesh and becomes more three-dimensional.  A well-developed story polished by a dedicated team of scriptwriters is the key to emotional engagement.

Don’t forget how much brand characters matter in the world of storytelling. Commercial videos usually use the power of mascots with a combination of a perfect story for advertising goals.

3. The Script: ready, set, write

The script is the formal, written form of the story. It contains everything that’ll happen in the animation production including time, place, action, movement, and dialogues. A professional, well-crafted script paves the path for storyboarding and gives animation studio artists a vivid idea of the world they need to bring to life. Read more on how to write the perfect script for 3D animation.

Check out our brand character service page to see how we are helping brands enter the metaverse using a brand character. 

Wrapping It Up

Animated commercials and storytelling are like Peanut butter and Jelly: they go together perfectly.

At the heart of every effective commercial, video or otherwise, lies an engrossing story waiting to be heard. On the other side, animated commercials are the perfect vehicle for telling the story of your brand. Professional animation studios employ scriptwriters and creative professionals who turn raw ideas into fully developed, detailed scripts that will captivate the minds and conquer the hearts of your audience.

Arash Naghdi

Arash is the equivalent of Buzz in Toy Story when he goes to infinity and beyond, but never comes back! responsible for our blog and content marketing efforts, he always delights the audience with his tenacity and passion in creating the extraordinary.

"Mitchells vs. Machines" is a great cartoon that sincerely tells us about family values ​​- Movies and series on DTF

A wonderful cartoon from the writers of Gravity Falls, which tells how the ability to understand and accept each other's differences will help save humanity from the apocalypse.

6646 views

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

I would like to start the material about this cartoon from its final part - from the credits, in which viewers can see children's, family photos of the creators of Mitchells vs. the Machines .

In my opinion, this is a telling moment that is really worth stopping at - in addition to being fun to watch, this approach to creating titles also tells us how personal and important this cartoon was for the people who created it.

Well, or just a great idea that will touch viewers around the world and add a couple of points to his treasury of charm.

However, I will believe in the first (which, however, is not opposed). And the way the cartoon itself is made, as it seems to me, proves it well.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

Teenage girl Katie Mitchell has always thought her parents didn't understand her hobbies - making weird films about everything around her, including a police pug with a family pet in the title role. Therefore, when she entered a film school on the other side of the country, happiness knew no bounds. Katie could not wait until she finally got on a plane and flew to people who understood her, but the head of the family decided in his own way. Daddy Mitchell decided to organize a family trip, and now Katie will have to get to the university by car in the company of her parents, her younger brother and a pug. And it should have happened that in the midst of their journey, artificial intelligence suddenly starts an uprising of machines.

"Mitchells vs. Machines" , to my surprise, turned out to be a wonderful cartoon that tells viewers about the importance of the family in the life of each of us, about how to relate to the differences and characteristics of our loved ones, even if these same hobbies are not very much for us and close (sorry for the taftology).

And even though this cartoon is not as deep as the best works of Pixar, it is worth giving it its due - it does not try to seem more thoughtful than it really is, but at the same time it turns out to be much more thoughtful and smarter than most modern series and animated series.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

This is a simple story about the Mitchell family, in the center of which is the eternal conflict of fathers and children.

More precisely, father and daughter.

Rick Mitchell - the head of the family, a middle-aged man obsessed with nature and everything natural, who does not understand at all the hobbies of his beloved daughter, who makes strange films all day long and constantly disappears in a laptop. He does not know the word YouTube and does not want to let all these newfangled gadgets and social networks into his life. He is a man who is sincerely sad that at the moment when his whole family is gathering at the dinner table, their attention is most often drawn to the phone screens he hates so much.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

Cathy Mitchell - eldest daughter, unusual teenager. She is a creative person who is constantly in search of herself and her unique, creative style.

Her dream is to go to film school, her passion is cinema. She has little interest in nature, possum traps, or survival, which makes it difficult for her to understand and accept her father's hobbies, and even more difficult to accept the fact that he does not share what she likes at all.

They are two different worlds that do not want to accept and understand each other.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

But it so happened that the fate of the whole mankind depends only on them. From them and whether they will be able, in the end, to understand that everything around is much more multifaceted and wider than it seems at first glance, and even in the strangest things for you sometimes you can find a bunch of pluses, making an effort and putting aside their prejudices.

However, the Mitchell family is not only father and daughter. This is also mother Linda, in whom the hidden power of primary school teacher slumbers, and the youngest child Aaron, a lover of dinosaurs and the owner of an adult voice a beyond his years (at least in the original).

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

By the way, a few words about the fate of mankind, for context.

While we are being told about the Mitchell family and their difficult relationship, the world is experiencing a presentation of another artificial intelligence ... more precisely, its updated version.

Now it's not just a phone or a voice. This is a real universal robot: a vacuum cleaner, a dishwasher, and a thousand more ordinary, routine operations in one.

In general, the real dream of mankind, which will finally be able to completely shift the burden of everyday worries onto the shoulders of artificial intelligence and, apparently, become what we saw in the masterpiece from Pixar's WALL-E.

But, this turns out to be not to the liking of the previous version of AI, and it can be understood: who likes it when they throw you on the sidelines, replacing you with something newer, modern and cool. Yes, and creating it using your functionality.

Therefore, without thinking twice, an outdated version of artificial intelligence takes control of all the robots in the world, establishes a dictatorship and starts trapping all people on the planet, putting them in trendy, light green capsules, and preparing them for everyone to be sent into space in order to rid the earth of their presence.

Things like that.

Moral: it's time to change the main question of humanity from "To be or not to be" to "Is Wi-Fi Evil or not"

"Mitchells vs. the Machines"

So it turns out that only the Mitchells can save all of humanity.

The cartoon tells us about the importance of being able to look at things more broadly , about the importance of accepting the interests and hobbies of other people.

I really like the fact that he is not one-sided and does not take sides. After all, it is just about something completely different - about how important it is to be able to see the pluses in each side.

I love the fact that Katie Mitchell is not just a stupid teenager who burns her life on social networks, watching ten-second videos for hours on end, just degrading.

No, she is a creator - a passionate person with a dream who uses modern technology and means to achieve it . She studies, tries to find herself, her vocation and discover her talent.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

It's cool that the cartoon is talking to us about this. After all, it's really important to show what benefits technology brings to us, falling into the right, caring hands.

I really like the fact that Rick Mitchell is not just a psychopath driven by nature, as might seem at first glance: he is a person who sincerely loves his hobbies, who has many strengths, and who also uses them for the benefit of his family and others.

He is not an archaic, hopelessly outdated type of person who simply did not have time to jump onto the rapidly rushing forward step of the train called "Progress". He is just a person who has not yet learned to see the positive aspects in him, and who needs a little more time and a little help from the outside for this.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

The cartoon uses all the elements of the story of very well: it perfectly shows differences and misunderstandings as a starting point, and then focuses on the process of finding compromise and mutual respect through the stories and personalities of the main characters.

There are several moments at which it is difficult to hold back tears: the cartoon reveals to us the characters of father and daughter, and all other family members, in such a touching way.

The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a cartoon with a great story that really understands what it wants to tell us and how it's going to do it. Throughout the duration, the cartoon does not sag at all, constantly maintaining interest in what is happening on the screen.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

The cartoon also flirts with questions that relate to the dependence of mankind on gadgets and progress, but, admittedly, to a much lesser extent, therefore, it is not worth dwelling on this separately. This is most clearly expressed in a couple of successful topical jokes and phrases.

But what exactly is worth stopping at, duck is on the humor and visual component of the cartoon.

Both are made at the highest level.

The humor in the picture, if at first it seems strange, is revealed towards the middle. A few of the jokes, especially the visual ones, are just great and make you laugh out loud.

I like how some moments, scattered here and there in the plot (such Chekhov's guns) and at first not very clear, shoot at the right moment. The jokes are cleverly and creatively written, helping to bring out the characters or the on-screen madness.

That robots, which, due to a malfunction, begin to help the family of the main characters, that a dog / pig, closer to the middle of the cartoon, from “controversial and strange” go to the section “still strange, but so cool!”.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

The visual component of the cartoon is unusual and looks quite original. It seems to be, and not to say that the animation is made in some amazing or radically new style, but one gets the feeling that "Mitchells vs. Machines" is a little different from other similar projects.

It's hard to even say what exactly. Probably, people who are professionally versed in various animation styles and technologies can more accurately suggest here.

For my part, I want to note the characteristic features of the visual narrative : liveliness and elements of clip editing (let me call it this way, perhaps). Various special effects are periodically present on the screen in different scenes, as if it were a YouTube video.

"Mitchells vs. the Machines"

At first, this is even embarrassing - it seems that such visual effects seem superfluous and unnecessary, created only to keep small viewers at the screens.

But gradually, they become more and more inventive and unusual: thanks to them, excellent jokes are born , and the story becomes dynamic and lively. They no longer appear to be foreign elements.

It seems that all these effects help you look at the world through the eyes of the main character - a creative person , which sees everyday things in such a lively, unusual style.

This helps to immerse yourself in the crazy atmosphere of the cartoon even more.

It's cool, it's stylish, it's a real Rick Mitchell special.

"Mitchells vs. Machines"

In summary, I would like to say that "Mitchells vs. Machines" is an unexpectedly very pleasant surprise.

A kind, sincere, talentedly written and drawn cartoon that tells us about banal, but so important things in the life of each of us.

He is funny, dynamic, funny and dramatic.

It seems that lately we all lack such works - and it's great that they still appear from where, it would seem, you don't expect them at all.

"Mitchells vs Cars" is "Excellent" if it was StopGame or if I had a similar rating scale on the page.

P.S. So who is who, and Marshall Erickson would definitely approve of this cartoon.

...

Have you watched "Mitchells vs. Machines" and, if so, write in the comments what impressions this cartoon left you with. Or about whether you will watch it after reading this article.

And also, if you want more interesting materials and personal impressions (often in a more concise version) about movies, series, games and books, then subscribe to my telegram channel:

https://t.me/perfectpastime

Have a nice day everyone)

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