Top 10 Animation Examples Shining the Spotlight

The Animation Industry

The animation industry is largely dominated by the US, with a large gap between it and the second country. According to a report by ResearchAndMarkets, the global revenue of this industry is staggering, projected to reach up to 270 Billion Dollars in 2020!

Animation giants like Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks have been cashing in on the widespread attention that animation movies pull internationally, producing and releasing many blockbusters each year!

The animation industry is nowhere near done, though. It’s steadily climbing the ladder to success each year and has spread across all industries, planting its roots in them.

Animations are flooding every industry, and rightfully so as they give so many benefits!

1. Text vs. Video

As time progresses, people rely on visual aid more than they rely on textual. It’s far easier to skim through a text than it is through a video.

This is why 95% of people retain more information when it’s delivered from an animated video. Why? Simply because it’s creative and, therefore, engaging. 

2. Attention Span

It’s not a hidden fact that the attention span of humans has been declining slowly over the years, making it almost impossible for bloggers and marketers to make the reader stay till the last word. Only 20% of the people who click on an article finish it completely.

But when it comes to videos, it’s another story. As compared to the measly 20% engagement rate, videos boost an engagement rate of 77%! 

3. More Information, Less Time

Videos are famous for conveying more information in less time. Learning is more effective when it’s done visually with demos, etc., rather than explaining it through a thick textbook, which is vague.

Youtube is swarming with tutorials and other helping material because people have noticed the rise in their demand.

4. Mood Changing Power

How often have you felt your mood shift according to the type of animated video you were seeing? How many times have you cried because of a movie scene?

A compilation of visuals, script, music, and sound effects has the power of affecting the viewer’s mood. One moment a person would be laughing, and in the next, they would be crying. This is why good animation movies take you on an emotional roller-coaster ride!

This power is great for marketing purposes as well as marketers can play around with advertisements. I’m sure you must have seen advertisements that appeal to your human side, pulling you in emotionally and making you relate to it. This leaves a lasting impact on people and even influences their buying decision!

5. Great for businesses

Animation videos help businesses in so many ways, hence why the animated explainer video market is booming right now. As mentioned earlier, animated videos carry the most engagement rate; this is linked to the time spent on a website.

Higher is the time spent on the website, the lesser the bounce rate, and the better ranking on Google. In short, videos are great for SEO!

Good animated videos also help in lead conversion as they have appropriate CTAs embedded in their videos to help direct the viewer to targeted websites.

Not only this, but animated explainer videos also support a high return on investment, one of the primary goals of a business! This is because people tend to share videos if they are produced right, increasing your brand awareness. And, this is how Dollar Shave Club was able to close a 1 Billion dollar deal with Unilever! 

To summarize, a good animation is short yet straight to the point. If you want to test if an animation is good, send it to beta viewers and notice how long they stay focused before zoning out and losing attention.

If the video is vague, this will happen, no matter how good the animation. The script is more important than visuals; if you want to prevent the viewers from getting bored, focus on the script, and make it more engaging. Animations are just there to attract the viewers.

Animated videos are so popular because they deliver the most information in less time, therefore leading to maximum engagement. Moreover, videos help 95% of the viewer retain information when compared to the text; hence they are more preferred for certain types of learning.

Moreover, creating exemplary animation is no more difficult thanks to the top animation software such as Crazy Talk, Cinema 4D, Blender, Keyshot, and many more. Then there are some free and open-source animation software also available.

Nevertheless, to be able to build the best animation, you must understand the different animation styles. So, here are these!

Top 10 Animation Styles

1. 2D Animation

Thanks to the cutting-edge technologies, creating a 2D animation is far easier now than it was over 20 years ago. Drawings are made digitally on software like Adobe Flash, for instance.

This is one of the most popular forms of animation styles that the majority of the videos are created. Some of the finest examples of this category are The Lion King, Tangled, and Frozen.

Quality will differ from animator to animator, but the concept is the same: animating in the 2D dimension. The animation doesn’t have much depth into it; however, 2D gives a free hand in creativity.

It’s up to the animators on how much detail they want to put into one scene. For example, in Frozen 2, the details are so intricate that even the threads on the clothes are visible. Such attention to detail is definitely complicated, but worth it in the end. 

2. 3D Animation

3D animation is used for more realistic character and scene animations. It’s a compilation of layers upon layers, giving the scenes more depth. Even though 3D animation is more popular in the entertainment industry, it’s more useful for the technology industry where modeling is used to explain a concept.

3D animations limit the animators of creativity because it’s so complex, hence the reason why 2D videos are making a return. However, for learning purposes and in industries like architecture, 3D animations take the cake.

A popular example of a 3D animated movie is Disney’s “Inside out.”

3. Whiteboard Animation

Whiteboard animation video is a video that involves live drawings on a whiteboard with colorful markers. This is mostly used when a concept needs to be explained.

Due to the nature of whiteboard animations, a viewer is hooked to each movement of the hand as he watches how the story unfolds. This is great for engaging users, and it’s also a budget-friendly style as compared to other animation videos.

It’s more popular in the explainer video industry as this type of animated video explains a concept!

4. Kinetic Typography Animation

Typography animation is the play on words by continuously changing its fonts and sizes to maintain the video’s appeal and engagement rate. This type of video is almost like whiteboard animation, except that instead of visuals, it unfolds a story with words.

You might have seen this mostly at the beginning and end of the movie. This is so that you can focus on each word and find it hard to ignore.

This type of animation is usually easier to produce; hence it is also budget-friendly.

5. Stop-Motion Animation

Stop-motion animation is rather difficult, yet extremely interesting to watch. It requires moving static objects for each frame and taking a picture of it. They later animate it by compiling all the frames to give the illusion of a movie object.

This is complex because there are many frames per second in an animation. Greater is the number of frames, the smoother the animation and higher its quality.

Stop-motion animators have to change the static objects 24 times (which is the standard frames/second), only to compile it to make it one second!

This is why it’s so complicated. It’s also one of the oldest forms of animation when the technology to produce digital animation wasn’t there.

If you have seen Tim Burton’s “Nightmare before Christmas,” then you know how a stop-motion animation looks. 

6. Hybrid Animation

Hybrid animation doesn’t really have a specific type. It is a blend of two types into one. Or even three types, but it often gets too messy.

The most popular type of fusion is the one between 2D and 3D animation.  I would suggest the movie “Klaus” if you’re curious; however, there are also many short films on the internet. 

Animators these days prefer hybrid animation because it’s unique and something fresh for the viewers, hence also interesting! It helps the animation to stand out from other generic types and piques audience interests.

Other types of hybrid animation also include the one between Live video and 2D/3D animation. The looney tunes movie, “Space Jam,” is a popular example of this.

These aren’t the only types of hybrid that you can do. Animators should experiment with other animation types and see which ones complement each other to create the next masterpiece! 

7. Clay Animation

Clay animation is much like stop-motion, except instead of mechanical figurines, the animation is done using clay figures!

Since this is a non-digital animation, it’s very high in complexity, however, still interesting to watch! The clay figures have metal skeletons inside of them to hold them upright, and then clay is used for detail purposes.

The clay figures are changed for each frame to make the animation as smooth as possible to deliver high-quality results.

This was also one of the early types of animation when it was a non-digital age. One of the best examples of this type of animation is the oscar-winning movie, “Chicken Run,” which came out in the year 2000.

8. Motion Graphics Animation

Motion graphics animation is the art of displaying words combined with visuals and sound effects to direct the viewer to the message. It’s animated graphics if that makes sense.

This type of animation is more popular in the explainer video industry due to its engagement and complexity level. Relatively, it’s not easy to produce; however, it delivers good results and, therefore, is used for marketing purposes.

9. Cut-Out Animation

Cut-out animation can be digital as well as non-digital. Stop-motion animation is kind of like an extension to this type of animation.

The only difference is that stop-motion uses 3D figures, while cut-out animation uses cut-outs to animate.

Traditionally, these cut-outs were hand-drawn and used the same technique as stop-motion to animate, shooting each frame and then combining all to make the movie. The more the number of frames, the smoother the animation.

Traditional cut-out animation was very complex to produce. For only two seconds of a movie, almost 50 frames would need to be shot. That means changing the cut-outs after every frame, taking a picture, and then repeating the whole process. Imagine how long it would take to produce a one-hour movie!

However, in the digital age, the process is just slightly easier when it comes to compiling all the frames. This technique was more popular in the 1900s as has slowly declined as newer and higher-quality animation types were introduced.

However, cut-out animation leaves the viewer in awe just by thinking about how much time is invested in making each second possible!

10. Rotoscope Animation 

Rotoscope animation is one of the oldest techniques that is still being used today. This is a physical animation technique in which animators trace over live-action scenes to make the animation more realistic.

This is used when some animation sequences are extremely difficult to produce with imagination. Hence, a machine called rotoscope is used to aid the animators in this. An object is kept in front of the rotoscope, and action is performed on it. This action is later physically traced by the animators, therefore, creating an animation sequence.

This is to make the animation as realistic as possible since a live object’s action is traced to make it happen.

One of the examples of this technique is the Disney classic, “Pocahontas.”

Different Ways to Use Animations

Surely animations can’t have one use, right? Earlier, I mostly gave movie examples to explain the types better, but only because entertainment is the most popular industry which uses the animations the most!

However, animations are more than just entertaining. Due to their creativity and flexibility, animations can be very helpful in other industries as well. 

1. Entertainment

The bar chart above confirms what we already know; the entertainment industry dominates the use of animation. Since the entertainment industry is always evolving, it comes as no surprise that animated movies are only targeted to the younger audience.

The targeted audience has widened significantly, and animated movies are now enjoyed by all age groups. The animation, storyline, graphics, and sound effects make a good and irresistible viewing experience.

2. Marketing

Text-based marketing is slowly being pushed out, making room for animated and live advertisements. The whole point of marketing is to create brand awareness and pull new customers in. How are businesses going to do that if they can’t even maintain a viewer’s interest?

The more creative the marketing campaign is, the higher the chances of increasing brand authority. How many times have you remembered an ad just because of how cool it’s marketing strategy was?

No matter how good your product or service is, it is not going to make any difference if your marketing campaign is not up to the mark.

Hence, to make marketing more creative and engaging, animated videos are being used! We’ve already talked about the statistics earlier in the article to support this claim.

3. Gaming

Normally, this would be included in the entertainment section. However, due to the rise in the gaming world and the hype it’s creating each day, I think it deserves to be recognized as a separate category. After all, animators in the movie and gaming industries are very different.

Gaming animation is far more complex to create since it’s so engaging. There are so many interactions happening all at once, so many actions that even gamers are lost sometimes.

According to Forbes, the gaming industry alone is going to be a 165 Billion dollar in 2020! It’s projected to hit almost 200 Billion by 2022.

Now, does it make sense of how the entertainment and gaming industries differ?

4. Explainer Videos

Explainer videos are changing the digital marketing game for good. Ever since the first explainer video which was used by Twitter went viral, each business went nuts for it. It’s a relatively new industry, but it’s growing each day!

Almost 87% of companies have already invested in explainer video and have witnessed a considerable amount of return on investment. Even though explainer videos can be expensive, depending on the company, a good explainer video can easily generate a hefty profit.

They also help in lead conversion and brand awareness because of their creativity and engagement rate.

Explainer video employs almost all types of animation styles to accommodate different audiences and achieve company goals.

5. Architecture and Engineering

3D animation takes the lead in this industry. Architecture is all about modeling and dimensions. For a building structure to be approved, a complete model needs to be produced; 3D animation can do exactly this.

Even if a company wants to sell a real estate property, having a miniature version of their future property modeled to perfection greatly swings the deal their way.

6. Medical

Animation has found a way to wedge into the medical industry as technological advancements began to grow. The human body is a very complex thing; some of the internal elements are invisible to the naked eye. Animation solves this problem by recreating the human body so it can be studied effectively.

Apart from this, new medical examiners can practice surgeries digitally, and new ways of surgeries can also be invented. This is all possible because of animation and the extremely advanced animation software integrated with Artificial intelligence.

Conclusion

The animation industry isn’t just fun and games. It has layers of depth into it, making it suitable for all types of industries. The ten types of animation styles aren’t the only ones; there are so many more; however, these were the most popular ones.

Animation has proven to be a blessing whenever it’s used, even though time and money needs to be invested in it, it’s worth all the benefits companies reap when their video finally goes live!

Now you are aware of the different animation styles and the best animation software which will help you develop your animation. If you have used any animation creator software, don’t forget to post its review!