8 things I learnt while creating my first animation

I am a User Experience designer on the BBC Visual Journalism team.

I recently created my first animation for BBC News. The purpose of the animation to explain the process your old clothes go through after they have been donated to a charity shop. I had two weeks to create the animation; on the launch day we received 616,760 views which was a great result for our team. Read more, and view the animation on the BBC News website.

This was my first animation for the team, and I learnt lots through the process. As this post is about animation, I thought I'd share the key points with you in a short video. I hope you enjoy it. I've also added a transcript.

1) Have a clear storyboard

When beginning to build your animation, you need to know all the key steps to your desired outcome. Having sketches and notes depicting what you want to happen will help to keep consistency throughout and make the process much quicker.

2) Use fewer words to deliver your message

Keep text concise and to the point to help give your animation impact and be more engaging. Reading time can vary considerably from person to person; so keeping the text short helps to prevent any slower readers from getting lost.

3) Small details make a big difference

Subtle detail can have a big impact on how effective your animation is. It is the small details that bring your animation to life and make it interesting, so take the time to work on these, the outcome will be rewarding.

4) Nature can be hard to recreate

I found natural movement a challenge to create; subtle changes made the whole scene look incorrect. I spent a large proportion of time on these areas and with patience I managed to achieve something close to what I desired with help from pre programmed movements.

5) Texture adds interest to the design

Adding texture to my animation helped to add tone to the illustrations. While looking at other animations, I noticed it was a current trend and so by adding this it gave a professional feel as well as making the animation look over all more interesting.

6) Research the topic you are animating

Being a novice animator I spent a lot of time looking at other successful animations. I watched to see how they had achieved certain movements, gaining inspiration for how I might want movements to trigger in my own animation.

7) Make it brief to keep your audience engaged

Gauging the perfect length for the animation was a crucial part of it being successful. If it was too long, the user could become disengaged and potentially stop watching, if it was too short it could lack meaning and a message for the audience. The use of a storyboard and rough designs helped me to get this right.

8) Start rough and build upon it

By first creating a draft, it gave me flexibility to experiment with my animation and use my best ideas, building on the areas that I thought worked. I had a tight deadline, so I created the whole animation roughly first and then reworked different sections and improved them based on time I had. From my opinion animation is something you can continually tweak, especially if you are learning as you go.

I learnt a huge amount in such a short space of time through this project. I hope to continue experimenting with animation and look for areas where I can use it in the future.

Charlotte Thornton is User Experience Designer, Visual Journalism, BBC Digital.