— Our blog —

Humans. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em, can’t read this blog without being one (hyper-intelligent dolphins aside). We’re a weird animal who finds meaning in pondering our own existence, and joy in watching unreal events display to us on very large or very tiny boxes of metal and wires. But why do we love to watch videos with an almost voyeuristic enrapturement, and what joy do we get from seeing stories unfold that we have no part in?

By understanding the philosophy behind why we watch videos we can better cater to those deeper needs with our own video content.

Having a truly addictive web video on your hands is a gold mine for two reasons. For starters, an addictive video is a rewatchable video, which adds to the view count and visible notoriety of the video. Secondly, an addictive video is more often than not a highly sharable video, making the viral spread of your content its own form of self-perpetuating advertising. For these reasons, it’s a solid investment of time and money to look at ways your web video, explainer, or advertisement could be more watchable and more sharable to potential viewers. Let’s take a look at 5 things that commonly make for an addictive web video in 2019:

Hold onto your explainers, optimise your search engines, and blank your blanks because we’re taking an epic look back through our back catalogue of fascinating Explanimate blog articles and dammit, we’re bringing you along for the ride. Remember the time we profiled successful examples of brand videos? Or our epic two-part A to Z guide to digital animation technology? Ooh, we just bet you don’t. Thankfully we’re here to give you the ultimate cheat sheet: 10 of our best explainer video blogs (but also the others are pretty good) condensed down into one handy little quiz!

Motivation: it’s quite literally why we do what we do. In an ideal world we’d have unlimited motivation to achieve our realistic ambitions. But for all us suckers here in the real world, that ain’t the case most of the time. Even when we’re fully aware something will improve our lives – like quitting added sugars or going to bed earlier – the motivation to actually take the steps to do it can be difficult to find.

Likewise, even though many company heads, brand owners, and agencies know that explainer videos are an effective way to engage new and existing audiences, finding the motivation to develop a script or even a basic idea of what you want can sometimes feel like pulling teeth. Don’t worry though – we’ve all been there before, and luckily we’ve got some top tips for getting those motivational vibes flowing.

It’s easy to think that creativity in the workplace is a luxury only afforded to those working in artistic fields. Heck, here at Explanimate our whole thing is to show off the creative side of your brands and organisations. But even those of us who work in the arts can get bogged down by the monotony of the nine to five grind. Creativity is found both in day-to-day business practice, company structure, and in advertising for the business – but how important is it to purposely work creativity into promoting your own business practice?

Our findings? Very. But it’s reasonable to ask: what exactly is it about a creative flair that helps a brand grow, attract new customers, and develop more useful ideas? Here are our top thoughts on the topic of creativity:

So you wanna’ jump on that mobile app bandwagon. Maybe you want to expand your brand image, or you have a cool new idea for a mobile-based service. Whatever your intentions are with developing an app, the one thing that’s absolutely vital to understand is your user experience design. Yeah, it can feel a little pretentious to start whipping around terms like ‘UX Design’, but the crux of the idea is to create an overall beneficial experience for anyone using your app.

This leads us to the question: what design choices make an app more intuitively useful? And how can we best take advantage of existing animation techniques to give the best user value? Today we’re looking at five ways animation is commonly used in mobile apps to enhance user experience.

The association between animation and kids is strong. Many of us grow up watching cartoons for entertainment, and some of us were sat in front of the TV as youngsters for the mildly reviled ‘educational cartoons’. But the uses of animation for education are far more wide-reaching and a lot more entertaining than many realise, finding modern applications within work, hobbies, and new technologies, while still holding the power to teach much younger audiences the basics of life.

I mean, it’s a fair question to ask yourself. It’s not like money grows on trees. Perhaps you’ve searched for ‘free explainer video software’ or ‘free explainer video maker’ in the hopes that an app maker has developed the perfect program for you: click a button, put in some details about your brand and boom, pixels appear on screen with a bouncy tune to boot, effectively and engagingly explaining what your company does.

Maybe you remember the days of clipart fondly and are looking for a click-and-drag style animation program, where icons slide on screen while you pay a voice actor a sweet five bucks to narrate copy about your company. And perhaps, like many, you’ve looked at sites like Fiverr, Airtasker, and PeoplePerHour where a smorgasbord of specialty freelancers bid for projects and wondered, “Can I really get an explainer video made that cheaply?”

Here are some things to keep in mind when considering if you should get your explainer video made through a freelance bidding website or a professional production company:

Let’s be honest here: when someone tells me they don’t watch, don’t like, or don’t have anything to do with animation, I can’t help but look at them with a little side eye. You know, that sidelong squinty-eyed glance of distrust? Yeah. Then I feel a little bad because, hey, it’s not like everyone works as an animator, writes about animation, watches animation in their spare time, and had dreams of creating their own animated series from the age of twelve. If a person doesn’t actively seek out animated content then how can they be expected to ever appreciate it?

The truth is that animation weaves through our daily lives in more positive ways than many of us realise. Whether it’s knowingly on our televisions or behind the scenes of our social and scientific advancements, animation affects more than just those of us who work with it. Check it out:

Do you find you just can’t sit still when trying to learn something? Do you pick up more information from audiobooks than books? Or do you, like me, sleep at night amongst a big pile of graphs, maps, and pie charts? Whether or not you recognise it by name, chances are you’ve probably encountered the VAK model.

Yes, VAK. Sounds like an Invader Zim character, is actually an acronym for three learning styles identified by psychologist Walter Burke Barbe and fellow colleagues. VAK stands for Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic, and refers to three identified strength areas when it comes to learning new information. Most of us would claim to have a preference for learning by one of these methods (watching, listening, or doing) though research shows a mixed approach is generally gets the best results. With so many different learning styles how can we create something that will be memorable for all types of learners? How can animated video reach across the whole VAK audience?