Whiteboard animation video: complete tutorial

How to create whiteboard animation videos? This is a complete whiteboard animation tutorial to create your own whiteboard animation videos (aka explainer videos) without a special software. have been making whiteboard animations for Youtube professionally since 2013. In this video I go through the tools and software I use, how I record the voice-over and a bunch of tips to make them work well.

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Intuos Medium Pen tablet: https://amzn.to/2swss13
Blue Snowball microphone: https://amzn.to/2RTWoCO

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Videos are created by Alexandre Magnin using years of experience drawing and working as a sustainability consultant with businesses and communities: http://www.amcreative.org
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How do I create my whiteboard animation videos?

I run a Youtube channel where I post whiteboard animation videos to explain sustainability concepts. I have been asked how I make them several times over the last few years year so here is a tutorial to make one yourself. Whiteboard animation videos have become very popular over the past ten years, in part thanks to famous ones such as RSA Animates or The Story of Stuff. They can be very effective to explain something complex or abstract with drawings when words are not enough. In 2013, I decided to use drawings in whiteboard videos to share what I had learned about sustainability concept in a simple way. Not knowing anything about making whiteboard videos, I figured out myself a way to do them and I explain everything in this video.

4 steps to create your own whiteboard animation video:

Writing the script;
Preparing all the drawings to illustrate the script;
Recording the voice-over;
Recording the drawings in a movie format and putting the video together.

The tools I use:

Photoshop;
A pen tablet Intuos Medium: https://amzn.to/2swss13;
Screen Record Pro from the App Store to record my screen as a movie when I draw;
Final Cut Pro X to create and edit the final video;
A Blue Snowball microphone to record the voice-over: https://amzn.to/2RTWoCO.

A few details about the process:

I prepare the drawings in advance once the script is written and I make sure that there will something drawn on the screen at any point when the voice-over is explaining something. When all the drawings are ready, I record them from scratch by drawing them again on a white background in Photoshop with a black (slanted felt pen) brush to have the whiteboard video style. It si also possible to draw with a white chalk brush on a black or dark green background. Once all the drawings are recorded, I transfer the footage in Final Cut Pro X and I crop the Photoshop tool bars to keep only the white background. Finally, I add the voice-over and I synchronize the drawings with the narration (and not the other way around) in short segments until everything is smooth and well timed.

Benefits of this method:

It does not take camera, spotlights, whiteboard or people to help operate everything;
It is easy to do it all on your own and it is very time efficient;
The drawings look like they are really hand drawn because they are;
The quality of the final video is very good: there are no shadows or strange light effects.