A Whiteboard animation is a process by where a story is told with pictures that are drawn on a whiteboard by a hand that is usually holding a drawing instrument. The animation video is simulating a real live drawing, but the video is actually created by importing pictures into a variety of video programs and instructing the video program in a way that makes the whiteboard animation look like it is actually being drawn as you are viewing it.
So how and why does whiteboard animation work? Why do people watch them and why does it magnetize them to the screen?
One of the secrets of whiteboard animation (video scribing) is the concept known to artists and illustrators as viewer completion. When a picture is being drawn right before your eyes, you (the viewer) engage in “viewer completion” and are glued to the video because you basically can’t wait to see what develops.
Whiteboard animations stimulate viewer anticipation – they ask the audience to guess what is being drawn next. This continual anticipation creates surprise, rewards the brain with dopamine and keeps your audience glued to the video.
Much research has been done and whiteboard animations (scribed videos) outperform talking heads type video in just about every instance.
- Those who had seen the whiteboard video performed better in 4 out of 5 memory tests
- The whiteboard video was three times more likely to be shared
- The whiteboard video was over twice as likely to be recommended
- 4 out of 10 whiteboard viewers would have been more likely to buy a product described in the video when compared to a “talking head video”.The whiteboard video came out on top in all age brackets and for both sexes.Beyond the power of video, beyond the effect of multimedia presentation, there is something about whiteboard-style animation that gets through to people.