Ever seen one of those amazing Google videos (check this one out if you haven’t!) with their cheerful color treatment or the cute ones Kasra Design Studio published on their Youtube? Notice how you feel happy and automatically flash a smile on your face when you watch their videos? That’s the direct impact of colors on your mood. When you create an animated explainer video, your essential goal therefore, is to create an impact on the audience and invoke emotions in them strong enough to make them want to perform the action you wish for them to perform. Before we get into colors though, let’s first understand what is an explainer video especially the “animated” type.
Animated Explainer Video is the New Communication Tool Your Audience Will Love
It is a new tool for businesses to market, advertise and communicate a message to their audience in a fun, engaging and creative way. With video content being preferred over text content, animated videos are pretty much loved by the audience. That said, boring videos with poor color choices, dry scripts and meaningless jargon is not in any way effective and may even be negative for the business if not downright annoying for the viewer. This is why it’s extremely important for animators and designers to go beyond logo colors or corporate-safe colors when they create an animated video for a corporate client. Just because it is for a business / corporation, doesn’t mean it has to be boring, repetitive or in black and white.
Why is Color Important in Animation and Design in General?
Infinite research has been done by artists, academics and designers defining the importance of colors in animation and design. We quote this passage from a research thesis carried out by Andrew Kennedy from Purdue University which discusses the importance and role of colors in animated films. His discussion in this thesis is relevant to such videos too especially since animated videos are similar to animated movies with only the difference in context & approach. If you’re a 3D animator, the thesis will make for an interesting read. Here’s what it says about colors!
In a film, the color choices used to elicit certain emotions from the viewer. Often the associations occur at a subconscious level. By carefully selecting colors, filmmakers can cause a greater impact in their viewers. Red is a color that causes alarm or apprehension. Yellow evokes happy emotions and gives the audience the expectation that the story will be taking an optimistic turn. In general, warmer colors capture attention more effectively than cooler colors, which is why they appear so often in advertisements. A warm copalette brings excitement and energy to the picture. In contrast, cool colors let the viewer feel more relaxed. Outdoor scenes involving nature are dominated by cool colors and are thereby suitable for neutral backgrounds. Blue will convey sadness or coldness. Green is unique in the sense that it is the quintessential color of nature, yet green light can also make a place look eerie or portray illness. While there are established conventions for using color, they also must be used carefully with their impact in mind
It is safe to say that the right use of colors not only invokes emotions but can also make the audience trust you, associate with your brand and feel good enough to spend their money purchasing your service or product.
If you want to have a preliminary understanding of the language of colors, we recommend you read this interesting blog post by Rita Shehan who has given a quick summary of each of the twelve colors and what they mean when used commercially. For additional or advance details, visit the sources provided below.
Best Sources to Learn About Colors and Get Inspiration From
So now that you know about animated videos and the importance of using colors, let’s take a look at some sources where you can learn more about colors as well as get inspiration for your next video project!
This tutorial by Lucy Lamp is super helpful for beginners who want to have a basic understanding of color psychology, color theory and how colors relate to each other along with ample examples and references that you can follow for a deeper understanding. If you’re just starting out as a designer or animators, it goes without saying that mastering the effects of color can escalate your career graph faster than designers who have limited or absolutely no knowledge of colors.
Generally, you have more room to play with colors in animated videos, but when it comes to websites, you really have to be more strategic and use specific colors to represent the brand. Renderforest has an interesting blog post covering 20 trending color schemes used by websites.
If you’re interested in joining a community of color lovers (just as the community’s name!), this is a great place to hang out. From discussing latest trends to sharing designs, palettes and other goodies, Color Lovers is for those truly in love with the magic of colors!
You can’t be a designer and not know about Canva! It’s a beautiful place to be with thousands of fresh ideas and resources that can help you overcome an inspiration block. Take a look at some of these templates listed in this blog post and you may have an amazing idea for your animated video.
Color Palettes Sources
Palettes are everything when it comes to design and animation. You need to stick to a color scheme which means you have to follow a range of colorpalette to ensure consistency in your design. Here’s a list of free sources where you can get millions of color palettes!
DTelepathy
Need palette ideas for your new web project? DTelpathy has a listing of 50 beautiful palettes that you can use to create a stunning website!
16 colors can lead to millions of color palettes. How do you choose the best one without going bonkers? You use a color generator. Follow the tutorial and generate your favorite palettes.
Do a quick search through 53604 color palettes using words in the search bar. Type any emotion (love) and see the different types of shades you can use for that particular emotion.
More palettes, more inspiration, more resources. This simple listing by Hubspot consists of beautiful shades of the most commonly used colors.
We hope you enjoyed this listing as much as we enjoyed curating it for you! Do remember that a great designer has a great sense of colors and you don’t even have to be naturally adept at it. With the Internet at your fingertips, you can always learn more about color theory and dig deeper to understand the impact of colors on your audience.
Have any interesting resource to share with us? Drop in the comments below!
