The Best Animated Explainer Video Styles for Business

Animation has become one of the most effective practices to increase the audience’s loyalty and set emotional bonds with a brand. It helps grow customer engagement and create a buzz around products, services, and companies in the online world. Are you looking to create an animated explainer video for a business and don’t know what animation style to choose? Then, you’re in the right place. Here you can consider the top seven most popular animated video styles.

#1 Cartoon Animation

Cartoon animation is a perfect choice for companies that want to take a more amusing and entertaining approach to their advertising. It drives maximum fun and turns a promo video into an exciting animated story. Before you start producing a video, it’s advisable to research a customer persona to understand a target audience better. It helps craft an animation that will resonate with these people. 

Many companies create characters that reflect the peculiarities and interests of real customers. In cartoon animated videos, such heroes often face the same problems as real customers and solve them using the brand’s products or services. It may sound too obvious and straightforward. However, this approach works best in cartoon animation for business. Here is an instance of cartoon animation created by Explain Ninja.

#2 3D Animation

Thanks to the increasing popularity of 3D movies like Toy Story, 3D animation has become frequently applied in business. It involves creating characters and objects in a 3-dimensional environment. The most significant advantage of 3D animation is that characters and objects can rotate around and in any other direction. 

3D Animation is one of the most complex types of video styles and it requires more time to produce. Still, it may be worth the effort. Three-dimensional videos have depth and can catch a viewer’s eye by offering realistically-looking characters, environments, and other elements.

Moreover, three-dimensional videos have a great advantage over other types of animation videos as they open up wider ideation opportunities. 3D videos offer much more freedom and creativity than other animation styles. This type of video allows your imagination to fly high, as there are no limitations for moving objects and creating visual effects. An excellent example is a 3D animated explainer video produced by Explain Ninja for Swiss Fin Lab. 

#3 Whiteboard Animation

Although it looks so simple, whiteboard animation is at the top of the animation industry today. It’s a versatile animation video style that suits absolutely all types of businesses and industries. Whiteboard animation is usually easier to produce and cheaper. However, it still is as powerful as the two previous styles. It usually looks like creating illustrations on a white background with a hand appearing to draw them. 

Thanks to its minimalistic design, whiteboard animation helps keep the viewer’s attention on the key information without distracting potential customers from the main brand message. Appearing one by one, illustrations help transfer even the most complicated business concepts in such a simple form that seems even a kid will understand them. A great example of whiteboard animation is a video produced for Toyota.

#4 Screencast Videos

You can guess what is a screencast explainer video directly from its name. Yes, a screencast is a video recording that demonstrates how a digital product works. Mostly, this type of video showcases only a user interface without adding any graphics. Screencast explainer videos are often applied in advertising and promotion of SaaS businesses and mobile applications. They work as an excellent sales tool that demonstrates all the software product’s benefits and competitive advantages. We liked how Video at Click has done it for Skillpowerment.

#5 Rotoscopic Animation

Rotoscope is one of the most advanced animation styles. It implies that the animator traces live video footage frame by frame, applying digital tools to make the movements look more realistic in the final explainer video. This technique allows you to create a more realistic and distinct video. However, due to the longer production time and more effort involved, it may be significantly more expensive than other of different styles of videos. The end result is worth it, although it’s less popular than other styles due to the price factor. Below, there is a cool rotoscopic animation example created by Delia Hess.

#6 Motion Graphics

Motion graphics is another popular explainer video style. Commonly, it looks more mature and serious than a cartoon animation. That’s why many businesses that want to preserve a serious and authoritative image prefer motion graphics. This animation style is the most widely used by financial institutions, healthcare providers, blockchain companies, security organizations, etc. 

To make an explainer video look even more persuasive and attractive, you can also try combining different video styles, for example, 3D animation, character design, and motion graphics. Here you can see an example of a motion graphics video (it’s a bit weird, but still very cool).

#7 Stop Motion Animation

Stop motion is also loved by brands from various industries. It’s made by capturing short movements of the hero or any other object. These photos are later merged into one film that imitates the real motion of objects in the space. Due to the many efforts involved to produce stop motion animation, the price is higher than other styles. However, if you’re looking to create something that will stand out from competitors, then stop motion is a great option. 

Tips for Choosing an Animation Video Style

If you’re still searching for ideas and can’t pick the best option for your videos, here’s a quick checklist that may help make up your mind and choose among a variety of animation video styles:

• Think of your target audience. This will help you not get carried away and make a video appropriate for both your potential and existing customers.
• Decide on the tone of voice. It can be formal or more relaxed. Try to match it with different animation styles.
• Plan your budget well. This will help you see if you can afford to create more complex videos like 3D or rotoscopic ones.
• Hire a professional team to help you out. Having a team of experienced specialists can greatly facilitate both ideas generation and their execution. It will help you match your business needs with the most suitable animation style, pick the top references, and provide a detailed price breakdown.

Closing Thoughts

Here are the seven most popular and widely loved types of animation for business. They are a great way of introducing, advertising, and explaining your business and what it does. Even if you decide to go with simple animation styles, you can still make informative, catchy, and funny videos. Do you want to produce engaging 3D explainer videos or 2D explainer videos that will intrigue your customers and boom conversions? Choose one of the styles mentioned above, and you will be at the top of the competition game. The question is only your business goals, personal vision, availability of a professional animation team, and budget. Hopefully, this article has been useful for you and helped you choose the right animation style for your project.