Animaker is the eponymous platform from the company headquartered in Palo Alto, that enables beginners, non-designers & professionals to create Animation and Live-Action videos for every moment, featuring drag-and-drop editing, a character builder, a catalog of stock images and videos to use, and templates to ease video creation.
$20
per month
VideoScribe
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
British company Sparkol offers VideoScribe, a video editing application supporting whiteboard style animations and presentations.
Animaker is best suited for short projects that are well-defined. We have found it very useful for developing our explainer videos, concept illustrations for pitching new product functions or iterations, and also for creating content quickly and easily. For an illustration of bigger and more complex projects, they might be less adequate and more difficult to execute seamlessly.
If you need to spice up your presentations but don't have the money/budget/team for full video production or animation, this software is for you. In skilled hands it can also look as good if not better than productions that would cost 5-6x more, including turnaround time. I think the basics of video still apply here, you want to have a story, a narrative, some storyboarding and an idea of where you want to go, but the tools this software provides will help you achieve that (and edit it later) quickly and efficiently
It's fast and customizable! You can import your own vector graphics and PNGs to utilize or take advantage of their huge library of resources, from graphics to icons and sound
You don't have to have a background in animation or graphics (though it doesn't hurt) to utilize the program, really expanding who in your company can take advantage of it
The support and resource documentation is amazing. From multiple series of videos to text-based help and I believe if i remember correctly even emails when I first signed up, it's hard to feel frustrated or lost with how to start with all the support available
Some of the vector rendering for imported pieces could still use work, I've discovered a workaround for adding a stroke to images to help smooth the edge but this can be tiring
The PNG rendering often seems to be under a super heavy compression and can pixellate even higher-res images that are brought in. I utilize almost exclusively custom created graphics to use in this program so seeing that fixed would be great
It would be nice if there was a super-basic audio editor in the program, even something that didn't do much but let you edit the start and end of clips
Every video or graphics program has its own purposes, VideoScribe is very specifically for taking images, moving them around with nice visual transitions and having something come together quickly. I've also used it to animate infographics in far less than half the time it would have taken me in Premiere. It definitely has serious limits in the type of animation you can do, which is important to be aware of, but if that works within the framework and scope of your budget, then it's incredible.
Remember - the only limits to how sophisticated you can make this look are how creative you are, to begin with. I did things with this program I don't think I'd seen in any of their samples, simply because I have a background in it all and had a new set of tools to play with.
Ever since we switched from using only actual demo videos to adding animated explainers, our conversion rates have increased significantly.
Our productivity when creating presentations and materials for client engagement has more than tripled since we started using Animaker. We can go from storyboard to final output in 3 days or less. Previously, each output took at least 2 weeks to complete.
Creating projects in Animaker is just way more fun. Team members no longer dread having to work on a new concept. And our outputs are a lot more engaging.
Won over $300k+ in new biz by changing from an old PowerPoint deck to a short (4-5 min) video and reframing how we shared the information
Modified the same deck to be shown at annual conventions as a less "pitch" and more "informational" way of educating the audience, and never saw as many people visiting our booth for information. Likely could attribute additional new biz leads to this effort as well
Got to save a LOT of money in the time and production of the deck which was then able to be utilized instead on other things to make future decks better, like a new microphone and better monitors. Seriously I can't believe how inexpensive this program is
