Whiteboard animations seem to be having a bit of a resurgence at the moment, mostly thanks to the RSA Animate scheme. This style of animation, which features a hand illustrating the narrator’s words, is a fantastic way of livening up a soliloque and getting across a lot of information without losing the audience’s attention.

A whiteboard animation is created by shooting the live action footage of a hand as it draws. This footage is then sped up to sync with the audio (meaning that technically it’s not actually animation, as it’s not created frame by frame, but that’s just semantics really…) and the hand then appears to be illustrating the voiceover.

With this film for Hire The Barman we wanted to take that concept of an animated lecture and take it one step further, by animating the drawings as the hand does its thing, to create a fun, dynamic and fast paced film. We also chose to use splashes of colour, to help the film stand out visually and to show Hire The Barman as the vibrant company that it is.

Original artwork by the very talented James Stayte