Skip to main content

PowToon - Upcoming Player in Budget Business Animation

GoAnimate isn't the only service that has noticed business presentation animations can be expensive and difficult to make without user friendly tools like GoAnimate's Studio. PowToon is a new online business presentation and animation service that almost anyone should be able to use.

The service is still in beta test at the moment and, not being a beta tester myself, I haven't had the opportunity to try it out so this article is what I've learnt from their promotional video embeded below.



The PowToon studio is kind of like Power Point with a lot more features and a library of pre-made animations. You create your presentation as a series of pages which you simply drag and drop your content to from the PowToon component library.

That's about as much as I know for the moment. It's got some interesting components like writing hands making it easy to create whiteboard style animations. The demonstration animations I've seen thus far are as good as any I've seen made by professional studios.

Since this is a product intended to solve the problem of expensive business presentation animations with a low cost alternative I'll be interested to see how PowToon's business model works so they can make money.

As an animation studio it doesn't appear to be quite as versatile as GoAnimate but it does seem more than capable for it's market. Will be watching to see how they deal with preventing all their animations from looking too similar in style.

PowToon's company blog, although new, contains some great articles and examples of presentations made using the software. One well worth a read is How we came to create the best presentation software on the planet. Without using the software that claim is debatable but it does look pretty darn good.

That said, no matter how good a piece of software is, there will always be a need for people who know how to use it well. That's where I come in.  I'll be watching with interest - and maybe will add this into my animation for business services.

For more examples of presentations made with PowToon visit the PowToon Youtube Channel.

Comments

  1. Hi David
    Thank you for the post - we would be happy to invite you to use Powtoon in the coming soon Beta stage. Just register at www.powtoon.com
    How did you come to know about Powtoon?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Ariel, already registered as soon as I discovered the site.

      Someone on fiverr.com was offering to make business animations with Powtoon. Having never heard of it I did a search and found your site.

      Delete
  2. You can join now http://www.powtoon.com/specialinvite/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for Blogging about PowToon!
    We wanted to let you know that we launched a contest on our Facebook page with the theme
    "The Imaginary Sport I'd Like to See in The Next Olympics" where participants can get win PowToon memberships (and get immediate access to the PowToon Beta).
    Here are a couple of Presentoons that were already created for the contest:
    http://youtu.be/VbwEIXf_pqc
    http://youtu.be/oLDXqwflXxs
    We would love to see you Blogging, tweeting and sharing the contest using the http://bit.ly/PowOlympics link.
    Stay awesome!
    @PowToon

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the article, have you had chance to go back and try it since its full release?

    I currently use a competing tool for explainer videos and Whiteboard Animation in my business but I am pretty close to taking the jump and expanding with Powtoon to bring in more clients.

    Some of my Whiteboard Animation here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have looked at it since it's full release but I'm not much of a fan I'm afraid. I don't really like the limited whiteboard style animation. There's really very little in it that I can't already do with GoAnimate just as easily.

      Delete
  5. I really appreciate your professional approach. I would like to thank you for the efforts you made in writing this post. I am hoping the same best work from you in the future as well.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

This blog is monitored by a real human. Generic or unrelated spam comments with links to sites of dubious relativity may be DELETED.

I welcome, read, and respond to genuine comments relating to each post. If your comment isn't that save me some time by not posting it.

Popular posts from this blog

Eight 2D Animation Apps For Your Phone or Tablet Mobile Device

M obile productivity apps have become so capable that they can be great alternatives to their PC/MAC equivalents or serve as great tools in their own right when you're away from your desk. While some apps simply mimic their desktop counterparts, others offer well thought out, touch-friendly interfaces that are easier and more fun to use. Every so often I check out what's available for 2D animation for Android devices, since that's what I use, that can complement my workflow with Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5. Some may be available for Apple devices as well. Below I've listed six free (F) apps (with optional paid (P) upgrades) on the Google Play Store that you might want to explore. Some are just fun apps on their own while others may be useful as part of your workflow on bigger animation projects. Not all are exclusively animation apps and could be used on any production. JotterPad (F/P) The name JotterPad makes this sound like a notepad application but it's ...

Infinite Monkey Theorem Animated Short - Part 5

Scene 2 from my storyboard, Infinite Monkeys. Work on my Infinite Monkey animated short is definitely back on track since my last update and my previous part 4 post . To get things moving again I've decided not to spend time creating a final draft storyboard that uses all the actual props and characters. This is something that you'd generally do if you were planning to show the storyboard to someone else for feedback. At this point I'm not planning to do that so I'm going bypass it and create and animate each scene as I go, saving a bit of time.

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 2 - Inochi2D Session)

In part one of my deep dive into the free VTuber software, Inochi2D , I focused mainly on Inochi2D Creator, which is used for rigging your character avatar in the correct file format for use with Inochi2D Session, the puppeteering part of the software. The two sides of the software are still very much in development and the documentation, particularly for Session, is very thin on the ground. To the point where I don't think I could even do a comprehensive tutorial because I'm not sure I'm even doing things right, and the software could change significantly in a single update. As a result, in this part of my Inochi2D deep dive I'm changing tact from presenting my finished Cartoon Animator TET Avatar, and will be summarizing my experience of getting Session up and running using OpenSeeFace as the recommended webcam motion capture software. To do this I will be using  the TET avatar I created in my review of Mannequin , since that can be exported as a full, ready to go r...

Inochi2D - Free Open Source 2D VTuber Avatar Rigging and Puppeteering Software (Part 1)

Inochi2D Creator - Free Open Source VTuber Software. If you've been looking for a way to live perform as a 2D cartoon avatar on camera, whether it be for a live stream or for pre-recorded content like educational videos, then VTuber software is a low cost (or even no cost) option worth looking into. In my previous post, How to Become a VTuber - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar , I took a brief look at the relatively new but completely free and open source Inochi2D  which I thought showed great potential for my own needs of creating a live performance character rig for my own TET Avatar that I use for all my promotional materials. While it is possible to live perform my character using Cartoon Animator itself, Reallusion's MotionLive2D capture system isn't great - with lip sync in particular. More importantly though, I can't exactly teach people how to use Cartoon Animator if I'm using Cartoon Animator to control my Avatar. What is Inochi2D...

Prome AI Sketch Render Tool - Your Tradigital Clean Up and Colorist Artist for Character and Background Design

Random character head, Biro sketches drawn by TET (left). Render by PromeAI (right) using Prome's Sketch Render tool set to 'Comon:Cartoon, Render Mode: Outline'. W hile I don't do New Year Resolutions, one of my plans for the year ahead is to do more of my own art. Specifically character design drawn in an actual, physical sketchbook.  To that end, I have been spending the last half hour of most days drawing a page or two of random biro sketches in my sketchbook and posting the pages to my Instagram account  (this link will take you to one of my posts). These sketches are mostly practicing my skills because I don't really draw regularly anymore. Here is a tip, if you do this kind of sketching, and push yourself to keep doing it, you will see many drawings that could be taken further, even if you don't have anything they're suited for just at the moment. Which is where my second favorite AI Image Tool (after Leonardo.ai )  PromeAI comes into play. PromeAI ...

How to Become a Virtual YouTuber (VTuber) - 2D and 3D Software for Creating and Controlling Your Avatar

Young TET VRoid Avatar in VSeeFace. In a previous YouTube video I demonstrated how you could use a webcam, Cartoon Animator and its MotionLive 2D Facial Capture system to create a virtual avatar that you could perform live during a live stream. Unfortunately the motion capture performance of this system is very average to say the least, and is even more expensive if you want to add hand motion capture via a Leap Motion Controller . This lead me down a rabbit hole of seeing what other solutions are out there, where I bumped into the world of the VTuber or Virtual YouTuber (creators who puppet and voice an on camera avatar instead of appearing on camera themselves). Specifically VTuber software, which has been a real eye opener for how expensive and far behind Reallusion's upper body motion capture system actually is. The VTuber world is heavily entrenched in the world of Anime so you'll see a lot of 2D and 3D avatars in this style. If fact, if an Anime avatar is your thing, y...

Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 Released - Not So Crazy Anymore

If you're the kind of 2D animator that needs to get high quality work out fast then you should be taking a serious look at Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4 because that is the key feature that informs almost everything this application is capable of. Formerly known as CrazyTalk Animator 3, the release of Cartoon Animator 4 (CA4) reveals an application that goes out of its way to make high end 2D puppet rig and motion graphic animations easier to create quickly, and as intuitively as possible. That's not to say there isn't a learning curve but another great strength of CA4 is that you won't get lost in a sea of icons, tools, menus and more. The initial user interface is less complicated and more logically laid out than one may have used to put together a powerpoint presentation.