Hi! I’m Erin Champion, Director of Customer Success at Vyond. I’ve worked with countless customers over my time (5+ years) at Vyond and have synthesized what I believe are the most important and impactful things to be successful using Vyond Studio.
I understand there are countless use cases for Vyond. Some customers want to create quick marketing videos for Facebook, while others are busy building out microlearning video libraries. No matter the type of video or end goal, understanding the design and capabilities of Vyond Studio’s key features will save you time, improve your overall productivity, and leave you with more visually interesting videos.
1. Continue Scene
In my opinion, the easiest, most manageable way to create fluid animation in Vyond is to use the Continue Scene function. Continue Scene is a concept that is unique to Vyond and prevalent in the world of animated video. In fact, this technique has existed since the first cartoons aired.
You can think of scenes in Vyond more like frames in an animated movie. Say you want your character to walk into the scene, then wave at the camera and then walk off of the screen. In Vyond you would break these parts down into 3 scenes to be exact. Check out the following video showcasing the capabilities of Continue Scene:
The thing that often confuses and frustrates new Vyond users is the fact that the character can only take one action per scene. This is similar to the idea I spoke about earlier, back when the first animated films were created they were made painstakingly frame-by-frame, when you put all the frames together and speed them up a beautiful fluid animation is created.
The concept in Vyond is similar, but not nearly as painstaking. Instead of using hundreds of individual frames to give a character motion, you can simply use the continue-scene function to keep your character walking, talking, and high-fiving across your video.
2. Expanded Timeline
Upon first glance, you might not know Vyond Studio has the ability to open/close the timeline. But if you look closely you’ll notice a tiny little arrow (see image below) that will change the way you edit your videos:
This feature will help you fine-tune the timing of all of the elements (props, characters, scene transitions) in your videos. And if you need to adjust the timing of your audio & visual elements this is the quickest way to achieve down to a fraction-of-a-second synchronization. Here’s how you can seamlessly time elements in a video:
Pro tip: You can even adjust the duration of the enter effect if you want to make it longer or shorter to speed up the visual pacing or add drama.
3. Camera Tool
So you want to create a rich, engaging, visually appealing video? It’s time to get familiar with the camera tool. In my opinion, this is the most under-utilized tool in Vyond and the tool with the MOST visual impact.
Much like the expanded timeline, this is a hidden weapon that can take a simple video from snooze-worthy to captivating. Before I dig into how to use the tool let’s talk about why it’s so important.
Any television show or feature film you’ve seen is the product of hundreds, if not thousands of different camera shots. The raw footage is then edited together in post-production to tell the story. You might see wide shots of landscapes or cities when a location is being established.
- Medium shots: when two characters are having a conversation.
- Extreme close-ups: when a character is experiencing intense emotion, like sadness or grief.
The point is directors film different shots for different purposes so the editor can then piece them together in a way that tells a story.
In contrast, the only videos you probably see that consist of 1 camera shot are security camera footage. Just think about watching a security camera for an hour, you would be bored out of your mind. The subjects of the video are always shot very far away. You can’t really tell what they’re doing, or how they’re interacting with one another. There’s no change in perspective, so even if there is any real action, it’s hard to tell what’s happening at a granular level.
Now think about your favorite television show. I’ll use Grey’s Anatomy as an example. The show might begin with a shot of the hospital’s exterior. Then a few seconds later cut to the operating room, with a doctor talking to a patient. At this point the conversation might be getting very intense, the character’s tearing up, cut to an extreme close-up of the character’s watery eyes.
Next time you watch a television show or a movie take note of how many different shots you see and how the editor chooses to piece them together to evoke emotion.
Get Inspired and Create Beautiful Videos with Vyond Studio
I hope that these tips will give you the confidence to go forth and experiment with your videos in Vyond. One exercise I recommend to customers I work with is to go back to a video you’ve previously created and make a copy. Now, using the new things you’ve learned, see how you can improve the look & feel of that video.
It could just be adjusting the timing to match with the audio, or adding a close-up shot to emphasize something important a character has to say. The more you use these features the quicker, easier & more impactful it will be for you to build video in Vyond Studio!
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