“If a static picture is worth a thousand words, how much is an animation worth?”

Ana Gregurec, Graphic Designer

As an animator, your most significant source of income is doing projects for clients, but you should always be looking at ways to expand your stream of income. One of the ways this can be done is by providing a variety of animation projects to clients. 

It’s important to have a list of animation projects and services available on your website or advertise them in your marketing efforts for clients to choose from. 

However, the animation industry experiences trends, which also applies to animation projects that fluctuate in and out of popularity. It’s important to follow these trends to stay ahead of the curve and appear more desirable to animation clients in a highly competitive industry.

This blog lists the top animation projects you should create for clients to diversify your skills and stay ahead of animation service trends. These animation projects are in demand on freelancing sites like Upwork or Fiverr, and it’s a good idea to keep these in mind when creating a list of animation projects you can provide to clients.

7 Animation Projects You Should Be Creating for Clients

1. Explainer Videos

^{GIF by Dana Kachan via Medium}

Animated explainer videos are short videos that help to illustrate complex ideas in simple, engaging, and meaningful ways in a few seconds or minutes. These animated projects usually feature voiceovers and animated images to aid the viewer in understanding the concept or product being explained. 

The purpose of explainer videos is to educate, entertain and inform the viewer in an alternative way by filming, writing, or incorporating static graphics such as infographics. 

This is a worthwhile animated project to create for clients as it can be difficult to explain a new product, service, or idea with words alone. Explainer videos are an excellent additional method to incorporate into any marketing strategy.

Being one of the most potent resources for content marketers today, explainer videos aim to describe a company’s products or services in a way that resonates with a target audience. Explainer videos also introduce your client’s solution as the best solution.

Explainer videos can offer clients short videos that break down their products or services to explain them to their customers in a simple way. 

Additionally, you can sell this animation project to your clients by mentioning that their customers are more likely to view products or services as helpful and useful when they are educated and entertained. These videos can also attract new customers by using an engaging medium to raise awareness of a brand and its values.

Explainer videos can also be used in various contexts like workplaces and classrooms, on social media, and company websites. Check out these explainer video examples from companies like Google, Paypal, Airbnb, and Dollar Shave Club. This will help you get a better idea of how they typically look and how they are used in different contexts. 

2. Instructional Videos

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A popular animation project idea for freelancers to suggest to their clients is creating animated how-to videos or instructional videos. 

An instructional video is recorded content that provides detailed information on how to meet a specific challenge. It features an expert on a particular topic who describes or demonstrates the relevant information to resolve an issue or achieve an outcome, often with real-life applications.

Instructional videos are especially valuable animation projects to offer to your clients because video content has skyrocketed in popularity due to how engaging, entertaining, and informative the medium can be.

Instructional videos typically focus on explaining the basic usage of a product, membership procedure, how to sign-up to use their services, or any information your client would like to provide step-by-step to their audience.

Instructional videos can also take the form of training videos that can be used to help clients’ customers on how to use a product or service.

Video training has emerged as the go-to method for creating effective training content in large and small organizations since companies typically use training videos to educate their staff. A video is a perfect medium for learning or training because it takes some pressure off the training provider and is enjoyable for the audience. 

Training videos can also deliver organizational change and communicate internally with staff. Training videos can be useful for businesses because they can teach employees new procedures or how to use new software.

You can sell these animation projects to clients by emphasizing that training and instructional videos can be a great way to improve their business’ efficiency and training new employees or customers can be made simple and cost-effective. Here are some examples of engaging training videos for you to check out.

3. Website Animations

^{GIF by Marie Weber via Superside}

Digital marketing has become a fiercely competitive environment, and companies are always looking for new ways to capture and retain people’s attention. For this reason, you can offer animation projects for your clients that focus on website animations. 

These include ideas for creating short, looping, animated landing page videos to replace the traditional website background colors and draw the audience in. Some examples include Species in Pieces, Squad Easy, and Paper Planes. 

These types of videos can also be utilized as banners on social media platforms. As an animator, you can capture and hold a viewer’s attention.

An animated website design makes the user journey memorable and helps build an emotional connection with a user. Background animations should complement the existing content of a website rather than be at the center of the user's attention.

The attention of a user often follows animations, which is the main reason for website animations. Other than that, including animation in a website is also helpful to distract the user while the content loads, making it seem to be quicker while also allowing them to see movement or progress upfront. 

Companies and animation clients know that people are wired to react to and notice movement. For this reason, animated projects such as animated street advertisements at bus stops and on subway platforms, video ads popping up on social media streams, and electronic billboards with full-motion videos are popular amongst animation clients. 

Website animation can be used to visualize various steps in a complex process or idea, to illustrate a simple marketing message, or to move things on a web page naturally and fluidly as people scroll.

4. Animated Video Ads

^{GIF by Brent Barnhart via Sprout Social}

Animated video ads are a type of video that promote products and services to reach a wider audience. Typically, a video ad can be as short as 30 to 60 seconds or even as long as 2 minutes. The quicker you can grab the attention of the clients or customers, the better. 

Marketing animation continues to become increasingly important as a key component of a business’s advertising strategy. It should go without saying that marketing animation ideas should be at the top of your list when approaching animation clients with what animation projects you can offer them. 

Animations do not only engage customers and clients; they also inspire them to make purchases, which helps businesses maximize their revenues. Animated videos are an excellent approach to attracting potential clients because they allow the communication of important information in a fun and engaging way.

Video ads can be used to engage your animation clients’ customers in different ways on Youtube, Instagram stories, emails, commercials, etc. It allows you to target a specific audience and boost awareness of your animation clients’ brands.

You can sell these animation projects to your clients by emphasizing that digital marketing is becoming a more competitive field and it is critical for their company to stand out. Because video ads can promote your clients as creative, original, and futuristic organizations, an animated video may quickly set them apart from competitors. 

Here are some marketing animation ideas that you can offer to your animation clients:

• Animated product teaser videos: You can offer clients a brief, 15-45 second teaser video that gives customers a sneak peek into the key features of a yet-to-be-launched product.
  
• Company and brand jingle animation videos: A short, fun, and catchy animated company jingle is an effective way for your animation client to help familiarize their audience with their brand or call to action.
  
• Animated product launch and event videos: These videos can be useful to your animation clients insofar as the focus is entirely on the product, and because they are product-centric, they minimize other variables that may that the viewers' attention away from the product.
  
• Animated case study videos: An informational case study video is a fantastic animation idea for your clients due to its ability to educate their customers on the problem-solving capabilities of their product or service.
  
• Animated sales videos: An animated sales video is an appealing way to present information that the sales team would usually have to repeat over and over to every client.
  
• Animated testimonial videos and success stories: Offering your animation client an animated testimonial or success story video is another great animation idea. These videos are effective in terms of manufacturing brand loyalty and could be invaluable for your client’s success.

5. Educational Videos

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Educational videos are very valuable animation projects you can create for your clients because they make the process of understanding complex subjects much simpler. Animations are very effective audiovisual learning resources. 

This is because the human brain can process visual information efficiently and quickly. Additionally, according to scientific research, humans are likely to process and retain visual information better than text easily.

This is where animated educational videos come in. This simple animation project can educate and provide support to your animation client’s customers in a more engaging way. Educational videos combine dynamic visuals with meaningful storytelling to deliver impactful and memorable learning experiences.

In terms of the effectiveness of educational videos for animation clients, they can attract more customers because many people don’t have the time or interest to spend hours reading through a wordy product manual or spend time researching a complex subject. 

Learning institutions can use educational videos to improve subject matter understanding and retention while creating an ever-expanding educational video library. Your target audience is looking for educational videos that make it easy to understand complex topics.

Examples of animated educational videos can be found on the CrashCourse YouTube channel. The creators behind this channel use animated educational videos to explain complex scientific topics to their viewers.  

6. Logo Animation

^{Image via SVGator}

Animated logos are also in-demand animated projects as they help grow a brand’s identity, and it also helps bring awareness to a brand by making the logo more engaging. 

A logo animation takes a company’s logo and adds motion graphics or animation to the design. When animating a logo, it's important to keep in mind the company's values and purpose so that you can translate these ideas into your animation. This is important as a logo is the visual identification of a brand.

It represents the personality of a company or product and plays a significant part in its overall brand recognition. A great logo can help an audience connect to your client’s brand. Animating your client’s logo brings another dimension to the connection to the consumers. It enhances this connection by creating a memorable and visually engaging brand.

An animated logo uses video effects to transform a simple logo into a spectacle. It ranges from simple dynamic effects to a short video presentation. It’s a symbol that builds your animation clients’ brand identity and is the first thing recognized in a company. It also leaves an impression on customers and creates brand awareness. 

Because of the increased digital interaction with brands online, having an animated logo can help your clients draw customers' attention and stand out from the crowd. Some well-known companies that use animated logos effectively include Netflix, Google, and Nike.

7. Social Media Animation

^{GIF by Carlos Cochon via Dribble}

In this digital era, companies create online content to promote their products and services. These types of content range from infographics, animated videos, live-action videos, GIFS, and so much more, which can all be published on social media.

Your job as an animator is to convince your clients that animation projects are the way to go when they want to market on social media. Before selling your social media animation projects, you must learn to keep up with the current trends in creating social media posts.

This knowledge will help you understand how to make videos go viral, convince your animation client to purchase your project, and eventually help them grow their business.

There is an increasing shift toward video consumption across all the social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and so forth. Most consumers worldwide prefer video content to reading content, downloading PDFs, and sifting through endless infographics.

Due to this, there is a massively growing demand for video content, and social networks are increasingly turning to visual media. This includes animated social media videos.

Social media animation is an engaging way to help create interest in your clients’ brands and what they stand for. Social media advertising has become a prominent component of a company’s marketing strategy. 

As animation projects, you can offer your clients short, focused, 30- to 60-second-long social media animations that demonstrate key products or services and are focused on brand familiarization.

Top Animation Projects You Should Be Creating for Clients

Keeping up with current trends on popular animation projects is important for all animators to do. Whether you run a big animation studio or work as a freelancer, standing out from the crowd can be difficult.

Luckily, marketing and new marketing tools are always in demand, and you can offer your clients animation projects that cater to their marketing and advertising needs. Remember to keep up with marketing trends and keep the content you produce engaging and to the point. 

Your goal is to create animation projects that reflect your clients’ brands and that draw in potential customers for them. This can also be used to your advantage because creating effective animation projects will surely catch the eye of other potential clients. 

If you want to grow your animation skills, check out our free masterclass, download a copy of our free marketing handbook, and check out our blog on “How to Start an Animation Studio”!