So you’ve decided to create a bespoke animation to support your training or education package. But where do you start? Whilst there is a range of software out there that allows you to create your own, working with a professional animation studio is advisable. They’ll be able to make recommendations, offer advice and trust us, speaking from experience, this can make all the difference.

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Where to start when creating an animation for education?

1. Establish Your Audience

The first step in creating an animation-based learning video is to research and understand the audience that will be viewing it. By recognising their level of knowledge, you’ll be able to pitch the message accordingly. Do you have multiple audiences of different ages? In that case, you’ll need to tailor the language to suit them. Speaking of languages, animations can adopt relevant voiceovers to suit the audience if your animation needs to accommodate more than one dialect. Make sure any cultural differences such as clothing and background settings are correctly depicted, though.

Once you understand your audience, you’ll have an idea of how to present the information; there are many different animation styles. For example, suppose you are educating young children. In that case, the kind of animated content you’ll make should be a style they can relate to.

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2. Scriptwriting

It’s essential to spend time writing your script; this is one of the most critical stages. Working with specialists within the field of the subject on which you’re focusing is crucial. It’s important to have experts checking facts as you’re developing your script to ensure information is correct and not open to misinterpretation. You may go through several drafts before deciding on the final version. Your script will then need to be recorded as a voiceover to give extra information and a human touch. We recommend using a professional voiceover (VO) artist – the audio element is just as important as the visuals if you want a polished result. Again, think about your audience and subject matter when selecting your VO artist. Do you want lively and fun or a more serious tone? You may even need multiple voices for different characters if you have a complex subject to explain; this can help keep the viewer’s attention.

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3. Creating the animation

Now you’re ready to begin the creative stage, where your vision will come to life. Firstly, based on the script, a storyboard will outline the visual structure of the animation. Then the detail of characters will be created, backgrounds etc. A draft voiceover is often used here to make sure the visuals roughly align with the audio. Once the storyboard is agreed, comes the technical part of animating and bringing the final voiceover together. It’s at this stage special effects are added to really bring your animation to life.

Read our animation process blog here if you want to understand the technical process.