How I made an animation using a whiteboard and iMovie in 10 minutes
When I’m in a meeting room I typically sketch people on the whiteboard. Today I made an animation.
It turned out to be quite a quick process, so I thought I’d share how I did. The fact that I spent less than 10 minutes on this one could be promising for quick visual explanations using animation.
Crop marks
To make sure the individual photos would be in the same (sort of) place and zoom, I plotted four dots at the corner of my iPhone camera’s viewport.
Modifications, not new drawings
The animation apps I’ve tried on the iPhone and iPad do not copy the previous drawing onto the next frame. Instead it leaves a trace so the user can draw on top of the old drawing. While it gives a charming expression, it sure requires time. The modification above took approximately 20 seconds.
Looking at the timestamps, I see that it took me 5 minutes and 33 seconds, or 17 seconds per frame.
Import to iPhoto, drag to iMovie
Now all there’s left is to remove the standard settings for imported photos in iMovie: Select all frames, hover one of them, click the blue control, choose Cropping, Ken Burns & Rotation, and select “None” and click “Done”. Then, double click one of the frames and change the Duration value to 0.1s.
And that’s it. The animation is done, ready to be exported to Youtube (share > Youtube), add music (drag a sound file to the timeline).