Whiteboard animation firmly entered our lives and entrenched among the trends of modern video production. The animated picture on a white background, laconic in its execution, which appears right from under the author’s hand, has become a landmark. Especially, when such a style is adopted by Google in their doodle-animated screensavers.
Whiteboard is not just a drawing of pictures. This is a certain style that has firmly taken its place among the styles of modern art. Its sketchy image and simplicity are not misleading: the deepest thoughts, the most complex concepts and the most non-standard approaches with whiteboard animation take on a visual form and can be easily transcribed by humans in a right way. Cannot express it in words – then, draw it! This is exactly the way to express each one of the whiteboard animation company slogans.
Whiteboarding is an untranslatable word in Russian (at least they have not yet figured out how to translate it normally), which means drawing on an online board in real time together. Drawing is not in the sense of drawing pictures, but in the sense of using text, pictures, schemes for expressing one’s thoughts. This is a very handy thing that helps 2+ people communicate more productively over the Internet. The offline version of this tool is Flipchart, which is often used in office meetings.
There are quite a few services for white boarding, but two solutions stand out from this crowd: Dabble Board and Twiddla. Both services are free, both are simple and convenient. There are slight differences in functionality, but it is still easier to choose from two options than from a hundred.
Dabble Board is based on Flex technology. The chip of this tool is drawing by hand. Of course, no one can draw a shape beautifully with the mouse, but Dabble Board automatically recognizes which shape you want to draw (circle, rectangle, oval …) and redraws everything beautifully. In general, all drawing takes place almost without using the toolbar. If you need to draw lines and shapes – draw, drag – point and drag. If you need to insert text – click where necessary, and type.
Navigation bar, that was made very conveniently, which allows you to create new sheets and switch between existing ones. The multi-step undo / redo tool makes it easy to fix bugs.
After the online meeting, the painted sheets can be easily saved to the computer in image format.
Twiddla, unlike Dabble Board, uses Ajax technology. The functionality of this service is more saturated, but on the other hand – more difficult to understand. Here, the freehand drawing mode is separated from the smooth shapes that are inserted from the toolbar. In addition to figures, you can insert images, clip-art, text, as well as (!) Documents, mathematical formulas, and even widgets and HTML code.
In addition to them, in the online space, there are still quite a few tools for accurately displaying sketches in whiteboard style. At the same time, there are those designers who still use the classical technology of drawing and animating. And their products also deserve attention, because old-school cheekbones are always cool and extraordinary.
