Traditional animation videos
The flipbook, reinvented
What are traditional animation videos?
Traditionally, animations used to be created by hand, drawing each frame and sequencing them so they appeared to be moving.
This is how it was done before computers came along, but the information age did not eliminate hand-drawn animation. Rather, it helped traditional animation evolve into a distinctive style with its own unique appeal and purpose. Corporate cartoons have become a hugely popular form of video marketing, but there are a lot of other ways to use traditional animation to promote your business, project or organisation.
Why do you need traditional animation videos?
Hand-drawn animation works well to convey emotions, giving a lot of character to your video.
Character is the key word: this style lets you tell a story in a compelling way by enabling you to animate characters, drawn in a style that fits the topic.
And as you know, storytelling is among the best ways to get your audience interested and help them remember you. A corporate cartoon is also more likely to get shared on social media than a webpage or article containing the same information presented in a factual style.
Traditional animation will help your audience connect emotionally with your content by featuring a universe reminiscent of things that are light and fun – even if you need to talk about serious stuff.
What will a traditional animation videos look like?
Traditional animation reveals its heritage, being recognisably based on drawings. That’s a good thing: to the average viewer, it signals the potential for entertainment. Having said that, there’s a myriad of styles to choose from.
While corporate cartoons will generally feature a non-realistic or semi-realistic caricature-based style, hand-drawn animation also offers scope for highly realistic and detailed drawings.
Tips for a successful traditional animation video
- Pick your style based on the tone and scope of your video. A cartoon-style lends itself well to a funny video, a realistic style to an informative one, a children’s book style to an emotional topic, etc.
- Invest in your characters. Corporate cartoons and traditional animation generally enable you to feature hand-drawn characters telling your story: it’s important to create characters that resonate with your audience. This means paying attention to diversity considerations for example, but you can take this one step further by first creating a customer ‘persona’ that is then reflected by your cartoon characters. We can help you use the data at your disposal for this analytical exercise.
- Combine traditional and other forms of animation. While you’ll need a drawing of each individual posture your character will feature in, these can easily be combined with motion design or 2D animation for other aspects such as abstract shapes or static backgrounds.
Three popular use cases for traditional animation videos
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