Skip to main content

How to Get the Best Out of PowToon

PowToon and other similar drag'n'drop animation sites can be quite challenging to get good results from, for your animated business explainer video, when you're restricted to using just the characters, props and backgrounds available in their site's theme libraries.

You won't get an animated explainer video that looks exceptional if you simply launch PowToon's editor and start dragging and dropping without a plan. How do I know? Case in point. Watch the unfinished video below that I started work on as described above.

I wanted to make an explainer video advertising my Animation 4 Business services. I had the script ready and went straight to the studio.  Keep in mind, I've been making animated explainer videos professionally with GoAnimate for three years to this point.



As you can see it starts out okay and probably would've been an okay video if I'd had kept at it but to me it lacked energy and looked too much like I was settling for whatever I could find. Not too mention it was taking forever just to drag together each slide as I tried to find suitable components.

Then I had a minor epiphany. I should storyboard my animation independently of PowToon, with no consideration as to whether the site even had the graphics I needed to make it happen. Instead of trying to make my script fit what PowToon has to offer I should work towards making PowToon fit the vision I had for my script.

I will add a slight disclaimer to this approach. You do need to have at least had a look through all PowToon's theme libraries to see what's there. It'll help later on when you're trying to build scenes that have no obvious props available.

So I went away and, using Springboard, storyboarded my script which you can see below.


If you compare it to my finished video below you'll see the key scenes are pretty much what was in the storyboard. The real challenge was bringing them to life with the backgrounds and props available.

For example if you look at the first frame of my storyboard you can see I planned a front on mid shot of a young business woman sitting in front of her laptop computer.

In the final video this scene is more of a three quarter view of an older business woman because PowToon didn't have any front views of characters in the theme I chose to use.

I also went for a completely different character to what I had in mind in the storyboard because a week or so earlier I read an article outlining actress, Gina Davis, plan to increase the number of good female roles in movies, simply by replacing male characters with females and not changing anything else.

Taking Gina's concept I thought, why not apply it to my animation and choose a character that I might not have thought about otherwise. I really liked the look of the business woman I chose and I feel she gives the role I put her in some credibility whilst still being a fun character.

I won't go through every frame of my storyboard. The key point you should take from this article is to plan your scenes for what you want to see in them, then try to realize each scene using what's available in PowToon's library. If you can't find exactly what you need then see if you can come up with a compromise (such as my first scene described above).

Don't stick to one theme either. Choose one theme that you like for your main look and try to create your storyboard as much as possible with that. This will give your animation a uniform style through out. Search other themes when you can't find what you need in your main theme.



I think you'll agree my finished video is much better right from the get go than my initial unfinished version that I first showed you.

I'm guilty of going directly into site's like PowToon and storyboarding with the actual content that will become the final animation. It is something of a trap though. Sure you'll get okay results but you may find you do better work by actually planning your storyboard completely away from PowToon altogether.

Comments

  1. When I first watched this over in FB I really enjoyed the character you used, so it was cool to learn here why you decided to use a women. Fun article! I also liked reading the narration in your storyboard.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gina Davis approach makes a lot of sense, not just for increasing the number of female roles but also is a good way to look at any character type you've chosen and ask "Would the character be more interesting if I made them a ________ and didn't change anything else?"

      Reading through my article again I should have highlighted panel 14 in my storyboard as it's probably the most different to what appears in the final video. However the compromise I went with, I feel, is actually better than the original plan.

      Delete
  2. thank u i love creating and learning animation. thank u very much for your useful info.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,
    Do you happen to know, how I can make my character walk? It walks but does not move from one point to another. I hope you know what I mean.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As near as I can tell there is no way to make a character walk from one point to another within the same scene. I'd recommend reworking your scene so that seeing the character walk is not essential to the scene.

      Delete

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...

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...

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...