Creating animated videos

What have we got here?

Creating animated videos is a self-paced, online course that you can start, finish or just dip into at any time. It's one of a growing catalogue of Skills Journey courses for learning professionals. You can buy this course on its own or subscribe to the whole catalogue.

Is this course for me?

The course is aimed at digital content designers, graphic designers, subject specialists, trainers, marketers – in fact just about anyone who wants to create animated videos themselves or intends to work alongside other specialists. It assumes no technical knowledge other than basic computer skills. If you already have software suitable for animating (and PowerPoint is enough to get started), that’s fine. If you don’t, you’ll find out on the course what’s needed to do a good job.

What will I learn?

This course will enable you to:

• identify when an animated video is right for your subject
• create a compelling idea that you can then take through a simple design process
• plan and structure your animated video to give it balance and pace
• design animated videos and build them using simple office tools
• design animated videos that can be developed in more complex animation tools
• publish and share your animated videos

How long will it take?

Well, it all depends.

• If you’re curious about something or you need to know urgently how to carry out a task, you could get in, get what you want and get out again in less than 10 minutes.
• If what you need is a quick appreciation of the subject matter covered by the course, you could watch all the lesson videos in an hour, give or take. You’d be better off spreading this over a few days, but if an hour is all you’ve got, then go ahead and binge.
• Our courses are roughly equivalent in scope to a one or two day classroom event. If you were to spend a whole day on one of our courses, perhaps spread over a week or two, you’d be able to complete all the activities and begin applying your new skills to your work.

How does it all work?

To help you build your skills in creating animated videos we have provided you with twelve lessons, each of which includes a short video and sometimes an optional activity to complete. We have also provided you with a number of resources that you can use for on-going reference, including tips and links to useful tools.

In lessons one to six we’ll cover what animated videos are - the formats, the characteristics of good animated videos, the design process, the tools and ways to distribute them. In lessons seven to twelve we’ll see how that looks in practice as we go through the design and development process for two different styles of animated video. We’ll then show how those videos were built in two different ways – once using a professional animation tool and once using PowerPoint.

If you want, you can complete an optional assignment to help you put what you have learned into practice and demonstrate your skills to others.

Download the course info sheet.