And just like that, the 2022 VideoScribe Awards are over and our winners have been selected by you! Once again we’re so happy to celebrate our winners and today we’re catching up with Shadi, the winner of our ‘Best use of VideoScribe for your browser’. For those of you who missed Shadi’s award winning video, '5 Money Management Tips for Millennials', you can catch it below:
Let’s get into it.
Firstly, tell us a little bit about yourself…
Hi, I’m Shadi. My career background is in finance and accounting. Part of my job involves designing and creating Board packs for senior managers and I was finding that this was where most of my job satisfaction was coming from, as it requires you to be creative and condense large amounts of financial data into charts, pictographs and bullet points – it’s basically taking complex data and turning it into a financial “story” that you want to tell your audience.
In early 2022, I was inspired to have a go at creating my own YouTube channel and videos by a friend who runs his own successful YouTube channel. As my background’s finance and I enjoy the creativity involved in telling “financial stories”, the channel is called Everyday Finance Illustrated. It’s all about personal finance and money management tips. I decided to use a mixture of VideoScribe whiteboard animation and video footage, and to use simple, everyday language that everyone can understand.
As I’ve only been creating videos for a few months, I’m writing, animating and uploading videos in my spare time, but hope to one day be making videos full time.
Why did you choose VideoScribe to create animated videos?
I had started researching various animation software sites and using free trials to evaluate their products, but for the most part they all seemed to be overly complex to learn and time-consuming to produce videos with. The things I like about VideoScribe are (1) that it’s relatively easy to learn (I only watched a couple of “how to” videos and was up and running), and (2) it’s pretty quick to produce high quality and engaging videos, which is important if you only have limited spare time to work on your videos!
I also chose it because I wanted to get ideas across simply and to create engaging videos that were fun to watch. Using whiteboard animation draws in the viewer’s attention and keeps them engaged as they watch to see what the drawing hand is going to reveal and how it ties into the narration.
I like how you can also dispense with the hand altogether and just use VideoScribe as a more conventional animation tool, so there is a lot of versatility built in – as you can see by watching other VideoScribe users’ videos.
It’s worth mentioning that I picked up a lot of good tips from the VideoScribe blog by following the links in the regular newsletter emails that come out - such as using a ‘storytelling’ approach to make your videos more compelling to the audience and how increasing the drawing time adds suspense, as your message or intent is slowly revealed.
What does winning the ‘Best Use of VideoScribe for your browser’ title mean to you?
It was a nice surprise and quite exciting to have won the category. I’m very thankful to those who voted. It’s always a good feeling to have your work acknowledged, especially if you’ve not long started out. I’d say it has definitely given me encouragement to keep going and hopefully shows that anyone can start creating, no matter what experience or skill level you have. Thank you to VideoScribe for creating the awards and inventing the software!
How do you use video?
From the start I wanted to create mixed media videos such as whiteboard animation and live action video, just to be a bit different and to retain viewers’ attention by breaking up the flow. Recorded footage can be successfully used for transitions - to conclude a section or start a new section. Don’t be afraid to mix things up.
It’s relatively easy to add recorded footage whether it be from online stock libraries or video you shoot yourself on your smartphone. For example, instead of listing the names of websites you might want to refer your audience to, film yourself navigating to those websites. Just be creative with what you have to say, and consider alternative ways to present that to your audience.
How did you create your award winning video?
I started by researching current financial topics and eventually decided on Money Management Tips for Millennials. After writing a script I had someone record the voiceover of the script. While that was going on I went through and highlighted sections that I thought would be better shown as recorded footage (for example the introduction and closing sections) and searched for suitable free stock videos online for adding later.
I know some of the advice/blog for creating VideoScribe animations is to start by creating a storyboard of the entire video, but my approach at the moment is to read a section of the script, visualise the scene and create the illustrations/layout on a scene-by-scene basis, that’s just how my mind works right now, he he.
I then used free movie-making software to edit the VideoScribe animation file, video footage and the voiceover together. Two things I would’ve done differently would have been to upload the voiceover straight into VideoScribe - this makes it so much easier to synchronise to the animation (schoolboy error 😀 ), and start creating the scenes first in VideoScribe (I guess this is kind of like creating the storyboard on the fly) and worry about how they’ll animate and synchronise to the voiceover later.
What is the best piece of advice you could share with our readers?
I would say keep on creating and trying new things or tweaking until you find what works. Don’t be afraid to experiment, redo or just throw things out that are not working. I’m still learning and experimenting all the time with my videos. Also, try and find someone or a community where you can ask questions and pick up tips quickly. I’m lucky as I already had a friend who has given me great advice, but the VideoScribe blog is also a good place to start. Good luck!
There you have it! If you want to get started with your own animated videos just like Shadi’s, sign up for your free 7 day trial of VideoScribe today. Don’t forget to take ‘VideoScribe for your browser’ for a spin. Happy animating!
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