Ways to Draw Attention in your Doodly Videos
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Having an informative video content is sometimes not enough to capture people’s attention. A great video presentation is one that uses techniques to draw a viewer’s eye to a specific area on the screen. In Doodly, there are ways we can do to draw people’s attention towards a certain portion of our screen. Apart from catching people’s attention, this is also a way to make people remember the important points in our presentation.
Usually, when we create a video, we just add all the assets we need, input all the info in our scenes, and add the tracks required in our video. In today’s blog, we will talk about the different ways to grab viewer’s attention and turn that ordinary video presentation into something that is more interactive, interesting, and eye-catching.
Push your story forward by trying these suggested tips to draw attention in your Doodly videos. Let’s take a look at our list:
Hand drawing is fun but don’t draw everything in your scene.
By default, all assets placed in our scene are being drawn by hand. The nature of the hand drawing assets immediately captures the attention of viewers so it is important that we use this feature strategically in our videos. We can do this by carefully selecting which assets the hand needs to write or draw. If you have too many assets in your scene, it is best to only have the main characters or the important texts get drawn or written by the hand. Remember that the attention span of people these days is short. We only have a couple of seconds to hook viewers before they move to the next thing. Having said that, we cannot afford to have one scene with too many images getting all drawn.
Let’s look at the example scene below:
In our sample scene, we have a vet and a dog. We also have the scene’s headline and bullet points. So, what’s the best strategy for this scene?
Let’s reveal the image automatically without any transition or hand drawing it. By default, the drawing duration is 3 seconds so we need to update that and turn it to zero (0). To disable the hand drawing animation, we go to Layers, locate the image, and set the duration to (0).
Next is to set the duration settings of the headline and the bullet points. The animation duration may vary depending on the length of your voice-over spiel or narration. We also added a slight delay before we reveal the headline. Adding a delay is not a “must-thing” to do but it can help with our timing. In our given scene, we want the image to get revealed first before we show our subject line.
Apply colors to text headlines.
Colors are attractive. It makes any asset in our scene distinctive. We want our viewers to quickly grasp our topic by highlighting our subject line and one way to do that is by adding colors to it. Let’s keep our bullet points or subheaders in black & white. By doing so, we are giving the spotlight to our headline.
To change the color of our headline:
a. Select the headline from your scene and tick the gear icon.
b. AssetSettings will pop up. Locate Color and choose your preferred color from the color picker provided and don’t forget to hit Apply.
Here now is our subject line:
Apply colors to each bullet point as you discuss it.
Each bullet point is like a talking point. You use it to guide you on the topics you are about to discuss. Applying color to each as you talk about every topic makes viewers focus on your discussion. When you start the discussion, your viewers know that what you’re talking about is related to the highlighted bullet point. At the same time, it serves as your guide so you don’t get confused on what needs to be discussed next.
In our sample scene, we have a total of 10 bullet points. This is the number of scenes we need to have in order for us to add text color to each bullet point as you discuss it.
Before we can duplicate our first scene, we need to make some adjustments to it first. We don’t want to make similar changes on all 10 scenes individually as it will take time. So, we have to modify our first scene’s settings before we duplicate it.
1. Modifying the first scene
A. Exit animation should be set to “X” or None.
Set the transition of the existing scene to NONE. To do this, simply locate Scene Settings and choose “X” or none under Exit animation. Don’t forget to hit Apply.
B. Double-check sequencing of Layers.
Before we duplicate the scene, let’s make sure that our Layers are arranged in the right sequence. Right sequence means that all assets will appear on the scene in the order it is supposed to appear.
With our given example, we expect our sequence to show the image first, next is the headline, followed by bullet points- feeding, exercise, grooming, handling, etc., etc. We don’t want “Exercise” coming in first before “Feeding“, or our headline showing up last.
We can check our sequence by doing a preview and see if the hand animation is drawing each asset in the correct order. Remember that our first scene will carry over its settings to our duplicated scenes so it is important that it is properly set up prior to duplicating it.
C. Duplicate the first scene.
Okay, so the first two checks are done: exit animation and layers are both in order. We’re now ready to duplicate our first scene.
To duplicate, just right-click the first scene from the timeline then select Duplicate.
2. Modifying the second scene
Our next step is to duplicate our second scene so we can finally have the remaining 9 scenes. Just like the first scene, we have to make some adjustments to our second scene before we duplicate it.
A. Modify layers of the second scene
Our succeeding scenes need to play seamlessly so we have to remove all the hand drawings of our assets.
To do this, we have to make all duration and delays within the Layers menu zero (0).
B. Add extra time in the end.
We can set a time limit for each scene depending on the duration of your spiel. To do this, select Scene Settings and locate “Extra time at the end”. Input how many seconds you need the scene to stay up in your video.
We can now finally duplicate our second scene and make 9 more scenes out of it.
Now that we have all 10 scenes, it’s time to add color to each text within each scene.
To do that, we will start with the 2nd scene. Select the first bullet point which is “Feeding” then click the gear icon. The asset settings will pop up. Choose your preferred color from the color picker.
For our scene sample, we colored our text red. Don’t forget to hit Apply after. We repeat the same process with the 3rd scene but this time we color the 2nd bullet point, which is “Exercise“. We do the same process on the succeeding scenes until we finished all the scenes.
The last bullet point on which we need to color the text red is “Vaccinations“. It is important that we color each text in the right order. Feeding first, next is Exercise, then Grooming, Handling, Housing, and so on.
Let’s check out how our video turned out:
Use check icon.
Lastly, if you want to highlight a character (say the old lady in our scene), you can apply opacity to the rest of the assets around her. This will put your character on the spot. You can add text or apply pan and zoom effect to your scene to further enhance it.
You can locate the check icon from the Props tab. Under Categories, choose Shapes then scroll down and select the check icon. It is important that you add the checkmark in the right sequence so it appears on the screen in the correct order.
Use other icons, shapes, or import images
Apart from the check icon, we can also try to add other icons and shapes to give emphasis to our bullet points like a thumbs up.
We can also add color to the lines of each preset shape and icon:
Or, import gif files to accentuate your bullet points:
Use arrows to draw attention.
Arrows are commonly used when pointing out something in our presentation. As you discuss your video, we can use arrows to draw people’s attention to certain portions of our scene. Say we mentioned something about the dog in our intro, we can use an arrow to point the dog in our image.
Import images from 3rd party website.
If you can’t find your preferred arrow or other icons, you can go to websites like pixabay.com to choose your preferred image and import it in Doodly.
Personalize your graphics.
Sometimes we want to put a personal touch in our video. Other times, we just have an ideal shape or icon in mind that we can’t find anywhere on the web. If this is the case, you can try to import your own designs or drawings by using online websites that support graphic designing. These websites let you draw your own line designs. Not many websites though are for free. Some users use a graphic drawing pad that lets you draw and import your own handmade drawings into your computer.
Use camera movements.
Lastly, we can use a camera pan and zoom effect. We can zoom in and zoom out to certain portions of our screen. This is a great way of directing viewers and making them pay attention to the most important parts of your presentation. Pan and zoom is mostly effective for scenes that have too many characters and props. It also adds animation effect to your video which makes your presentation far better than the regular presentations.
To set up your pan & zoom effect:
Click the pan and zoom icon located within the timeline.
By default, when you click the “+” sign, it covers the first 7.6 seconds of your video. You can extend this all the way to the portion where you want the zooming effect applied.
For our given scene, we used the default length of pan and zoom and adjusted the frame to where we want our camera to zoom in.
Adding the first pan & zoom effect zooms in to our image which is the vet and the dog. It looks great to zoom in but we can’t leave it like that. If we add only one pan & zoom effect, we’ll have the zoomed image on our screen until the end of our presentation and our viewers will miss the rest of the important texts and information in our scene.
To bring our camera back to its original focus, we need to add another pan & zoom effect.
This time we will expand the focus of our camera to capture our entire scene.
Let’s see our applied pan & zoom feature in action:
It zoomed in to our image and zoomed out the screen to capture the hand which started to write our headline. Perfect timing!
And that wraps up our list!
You probably have tried some of the tips mentioned which is awesome if you did. If not, don’t worry. It’s always fun to try it the first time and it’s never too late to try. If you have other tips and tricks, feel free to share them with us via our Facebook page. 🙂
In Summary…
- Doodly is all about hand drawing but don’t let all assets in your scene gets drawn. Remember, in whiteboard animation, hand drawing or writing easily capture people’s attention. It takes time to draw several tiny props. Unless the tiny props is your main subject, save the hand drawing to important assets in your scenes.
- Apply colors to your headlines. Apart from making headline’s font bigger, adding color to it makes it standout. Use color that matches your theme or use dark colors if you’re background is white.
- Apply colors to each bullet point as you discuss it. Use it as a marker, so your viewers know that your discussion is related to the topic highlighted.
- Use a check icon. Don’t limit your presentation to bullet points, dash, or any icon available in your keyboard. Checkmark is a great way to highlight your sub-headers.
- Use other icons, shapes, or import images. There’s a lot of great shapes and icons that you can use, you can even import your own images.
- Use arrows to draw attention. Arrows are great icons to use when pointing out something in our scene. Use it every now and then.
- Import images from 3rd party website. You can look for additional props and characters from third party websites which offers royalty free images.
- Personalize your graphics. Draw something and import your drawing. Use it in your videos.
- Use the pan & zoom effect. Direct the camera to whatever direction in your scene. Use the pan & zoom effect to capture your viewers attention.
We hope this list helps you, our fellow doodlers. Until next time!
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