Remember the first time you discovered PowerPoint animations? Like most people, you probably went overboard with the animation at first. But you eventually figured out that less is more. Now think about your animation software. Your message may be getting lost in the clutter of canned characters and animation effects. Plus, if your videos all look and sound the same, your learners will start to tune them out. It's time to move beyond the software and explore better ways to make your explainer videos stand out.

In this session, we're going to build an animated explainer video together in 60 minutes. If you show up to this session, you're instantly part of the design team. We won't be making a fancy explainer video, but that's the point. It just needs to be effective. And memorable. And yes, maybe a little bit quirky.

To start, we'll have a quick look at what makes a great explainer video: images, script, narration, and music. Then we'll create a story that will "hook" the learner. We'll look at which animation style works best for our video. From there, we'll determine the proper length for our video—probably 30 seconds—and write our narration script. After that, we'll find good quality images for our animation, and then record and edit our narration. Finally, we'll put it all together: music, narration, images, and simple animation effects. And presto, we've just built an animated explainer video together.

In this session, you will learn:

• How you can animate using any software tool
• How to hook your audience with a great script
• How to choose the right narration style
• How to choose the right illustration and animation style
• How to choose the right music