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 ...

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...

The Ultimate Independent Animator's App and Resource List - Animation and Video Life

Image created with Cartoon Animator 4. Being an independent animator is not like a studio animation job. There's so much more to do that is indirectly related to the actual task of animating. Over the years I've sought out many apps, tools, and services that can help me achieve that one single task, expressing myself through animation. Below is my Ultimate Independent Animator's Resource List for 2024 (last updated Oct 2024). It started out as a list of free or low cost apps that could help you in every stage of producing either 2D or 3D animation, and then just kind of grew from there. You may not have been looking for a Time Management App as much as you needed something to get you started in 3D animation but when those commissioned projects start coming in you'll have a head start on maximizing your time. All the apps and services on this list had to meet two main criteria: They had to be useful and relevant to an Indy Animator/artist. The base app/se...

Moho 14 Released - Still the Best 2D Animation Software for Indy Animators on a Budget

Moho 14 Released. Regular readers know I am a Reallusion, Cartoon Animator advocate through and through. Hands down I would recommend Cartoon Animator 5 first over Lost Marble's Moho 14 to anyone who is just starting in 2D animation, is a team of one, or just needs to animate as quickly as possible. However, feature for feature, Moho is, arguably, the best 2D animation software for the rest of us who can't justify a Toon Boom Harmony , or Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (and even with their applications Moho is very competitive on features). You can get started with Moho Debut for just USD$59.99 which is a cut down version of Moho Pro but it still has the most essential features needed for 2D animation. While Moho Pro is a whopping USD$399.99 (Cartoon Animator, which only has one version, is just USD$149.00) upgrades to new version numbers come down to a quarter of the price at USD$99.00. Even though Reallusion just released features like Motion Pilot Puppet Animation and...

OpenArt Versus Dzine: AI Consistent Character Training Compared

TET2d Avatar Image created with Dzine . R egular readers of Animation and Video Life will be familiar with my alter ego, 2D avatar character, TET, who is both the face of The Lazy Animator Cartoon Animator Tutorials, and is currently part of my Resident Dragon joke cartoon series. It is my goal to use him as an animated avatar for both my Lazy Animator video courses and my Cartoon Animator tutorials that you'll find on my @AnimLife YouTube channel . Unfortunately I don't have the time to animate him for every single project. Even with Cartoon Animator's time-saving workflow I wouldn't be able to produce animated content quick enough. Which is why advances in AI animation is something that is increasingly more interesting to me each day. Consistent Characters Before we get there I have to overcome one of the biggest hurdles in AI I've come across... reproducing my art style consistently. I don't want an approximation of my characters, I want my characters looki...

XP-Pen Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Drawing Tablet Review - Portable and Robust Quality Ideal for Sketching on the Go!

XP-Pen's Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Tablet. I've been looking for a more portable drawing solution for a while to work with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A, 8 inch, Android tablet, which is why, when XP-Pen invited me to collaborate on an animation project, I asked about trying their Artist 12 (2nd Gen) Pen Display Drawing Tablet . Does It Really Work With Android Devices? Having heard many of XP-Pen's mobile drawing displays could be connected to Android devices I, incorrectly, assumed wide compatibility. Unfortunately this isn't the case. There is a list of specific Android devices that work with XP-Pen's Pen Display tablets and none of them are any of the three Samsung devices I own. XP-Pen could definitely improve the compatibility of their displays with more Android devices if they're going to promote that as a feature (or make it more clear to check their device compatibility list before you buy). Also note the additional USB-C to USB-C video cable, needed to...

Krita AI Diffusion - Generative Image AI For Krita is Seriously Useful, Powerful and Free (If You Can Install it Locally)

Generative AI sequence of a woman in a business suit. From sketch to refined image using Krita AI Diffusion - by TET G enerative image AI, where you describe an image with a text prompt to an Artificial Intelligence model and it produces a new image based on your prompt, is gaining a strong hold as a tool for many artists. Krita AI Diffusion brings generative AI image tools right into your favourite free and opensource, graphics editor, Krita. Not only that, if you have a computer with decent specs (and at least 10GB of hard drive space), Krita AI Diffusion is completely free. What If I Don't Have a Powerful Computer? If you're in my situation, with a computer that was around before anyone in the mainstream had even heard of generative AI, you can still access Krita AI Diffusion for free, using a cloud based AI server, Interstice  and 300 tokens, to get you started. Once your initial tokens run out, purchase 5000 more for 10€ (approx US$11.00). Tokens never expire. I would...