How To: Make a Whiteboard Animation

In this instructable you will be able to see the end result of a well worked on Whiteboard animation. The process took about Six hours, which you can do all in one day, or finish it within two. You will need; Asorted Dry Erase Markers, a Whiteboard, a Camera, Adobe Premier Pro and an Dry Marker Eraser.

Step one is probably the most important step of all. In this step you have to come up with your own ideas to make your video. I thought of a simple fight scene that would use awesome intro moves and cool action scenes, but an animation on whiteboard can be as simple as someone walking around giving highfives to everyone and walking off the screen again. Coming up with ideas can be hard, but I usually think of what intrests me most, and what will make me want to finish the animation. After you have come up with an idea, the best thing to do is plan it out, for example: a storyboard, or maybe draw out the moves such as I have in the image here. This image shows the drawing I made for the Sith Soldier doing his front flip into the battle. I am an artist, and I used to hate doing things rough and fast, but spending too much time on the planning stage and drawing good looking refined characters over and over doing the same move would take a long time, sadly, I did not have the time to do so. However, using a stick figure looks just as good on the big screen when It's done with percision.

After the planning and the set up of your camera and everything, the first thing I did was create a border, the outter limits of the camera, so that you know where the outskirts of your camera is at the beginning. It also gives the impression that your animation is inside a room or enclosed area if you have the sides show at the end or beginning. I then drew a line for the ground, about 1/2 or 3/4th's of the way down.