Have you ever watched an amazing animated video for a business and wished you had the ability or skills to create one yourself? You can! You don’t have to be a master animator or artist. You don’t even need to know how to draw. There are several animation creation tools online that are easy to use.

Animated videos are great for businesses that want to make an explainer video for their audience. They are also amazing for educational videos. You don’t need to hire a videographer to create videos for you. You can create them yourself with an animation creation tool. They can animate words and images to help people visualize your points or create realistic looking scenes to tell a story.

The three animation creation tools we are going to look at today are Vyond, PowToon, and Doodly/Toonly.

 

Vyond

The first animation editing software we are going to cover is Vyond. Vyond offers multiple video styles such as business-friendly, whiteboard, and contemporary. 

• Business-friendly is the standard animated characters style
• Whiteboard looks as if everything was drawn by a sharpie on a whiteboard
• Contemporary consists of animated characters and graphics with a rounder and thinner style. 

Each style is organized into different categories so if you wanted to stick with a certain style it’s easy to find scene templates and images of that particular style. 

Vyond also provides a large variety of different animations for their characters and props. Characters can simulate all basic emotions and have hundreds of different actions.

Vyond lets you edit with a video timeline, so you are able to see the scenes and the audio in correlation with each other. There is also a royalty-free music library with hundreds of songs that you can use for free in your videos.

Vyond makes videos in the aspect ratio of 16:9, which is the standard video size for most videos but not all social media platforms such as Instagram. To change the video’s size you’ll have to download it and change its size in another video editing program.

Vyond’s premium business package is currently listed at $89 per month.

Pros:

• Has multiple video styles
• Scene styles are separated into different categories
• Large amount of animations for characters
• Video timeline
• Royalty-free music library

 

Cons:

• Can’t export video in different social media sizes
• Most expensive option

 

PowToon

Powtoon has five different video style: Professional, Whiteboard, Infographic, Cartoon, and Corporate. 

• Professional is the standard animated style
• Whiteboard are animations drawn on a board
• Infographicincludes charts and graphs
• Cartoon is comic-style looking characters
• Corporate is presentation style templates 

This seems like a useful variety but the drawback is that the scene styles aren’t separated when creating a scene in the editor, so it is a bit difficult to sort through all of the styles to find props and characters to maintain your specific style. 

PowToon does include animations for the characters but these are pretty limited. There is only a handful of animations to represent the character’s basic emotions.

Powtoon doesn’t use a video timeline to edit your video, which makes it difficult to visualize how long the scenes are and how it matches with the background music. 

On the upside, PowToon does have royalty-free music that you can use in your videos you create. It also gives you the ability to export your video in different sizes so the aspect ratio can fit on desktops, mobile phones, or Instagram.

Powtoon’s pro+ package is currently listed at $59 a month

Pros:

• Can export to various social media sizes
• Royalty-free music library

Cons:

• Doesn’t use a video timeline
• Scene styles aren’t separated
• Limited animations for characters

 

Doodly/Toonly

Doodly and Toonly are two separate animation creation tools under the company. Doodly is for whiteboard animations and Toonly is for character animations.

Doodly only has one animation style, which is similar to the whiteboard styles of Vyond and Powtoon. The characters in Doodly have a large library of actions. However, unlike Vyond and Powtoon, the characters don’t move so they are stuck in that pose.

Doodly lets you edit with a video timeline, making it easier to align your music with the scenes you are creating. They also have a royalty-free music library that you use for background music.

Doodly enables you to create custom video sizes. Therefore, you can set it to any aspect ratio you want to fit on any social media platform. You can also edit any existing videos to change the aspect ratio so you can have the same video in different aspect ratios for different social media platforms.

 

Toonly, unlike Doodly, is a software that you download to your computer instead of using it online. It specializes in character animations since Doodly only has still whiteboard style characters. Since it is downloaded to your computer, you don’t have to rely on the internet to create videos with Toonly. However, you’ll have to install it on multiple computers if you use different computers to edit with or have more than one person making animated videos for you.

Doodly and Toonly are purchased separately but they are the cheapest option since their standard package are both currently listed at $39 per month.

Pros:

• Video timeline
• Royalty-free music library
• Able to choose your own aspect ratio
• Least expensive option
• Toonly doesn’t need the internet

Cons:

• Only has board animation videos
• Doodly only has still poses
• Doodly and Toonly purchased separately

 

Recommendation

The best overall option for creating animated video is Vyond.

Vyond has the largest library of characters and actions to make your videos unique from others. They also have a fantastic editor mode since all of their styles or organized into separate categories and it uses a video timeline to edit scenes.

It is the most expensive option but it provides you with much more functionality and freedom to create videos in comparison to the other two animation creation tools.

At Learn to Flourish we are all about creating relevant, engaging, and effective eLearning and videos. If you want to increase the quality of your educational videos, get our free training on how to make great demonstration videos for your audience.

For more tips on video and eLearning creation, check out our blog for more articles such as learning the basics of how to use the dslr camera and how to create online education that people will love.

 

(Prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of publication. Learn to Flourish does not receive a share of sales or any compensation from sharing any of these products, they’re just some of our favorites!)

 

Wishing you inspiration, innovation and continuous learning,

Lorena and the Learn to Flourish Team