13 Cool Tools to Create Animated Characters for Your Business

In today‘s digital world, animated characters are becoming increasingly popular across various industries. From marketing campaigns to educational videos, animated characters help grab attention, convey information effectively, and boost engagement.

According to Statista, the global animation market is projected to be worth $587 billion by 2030. With the rising demand, several tools have emerged to help create animated characters easily without needing extensive design experience.

This guide will explore the top 13 cool tools to create stunning animated characters for business use cases like ads, explainers, presentations, eLearning content and more.

Why Use Animated Characters?

Before jumping into the tools, let‘s first understand the benefits of using animated characters:

• Engaging – Animated characters are more dynamic, expressive and interactive which makes content more interesting and engaging for audiences.

• Attention-grabbing – The motion and interactivity of animated characters capture viewers‘ attention instantly compared to static images or text.

• Storytelling – Animated characters can act out scenarios, display emotions and reactions which aids storytelling and explanation of concepts.

• Memorable – Audiences find it easier to remember information delivered by an animated character than plain text.

• Friendly and Appealing – Animated characters project warmth and appeal which helps build trust and likeability for brands.

• Customizable – Animated characters are highly customizable in terms of physical attributes, actions, voice-overs making them suitable for different applications.

• Cost-effective – Creating animated characters using software tools is much more cost-effective compared to traditional animation techniques.

Now that we‘ve seen the power of animated characters, let‘s look at some handy tools to create them.

1. Adobe Character Animator

Adobe Character Animator is a powerful tool that is part of Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. It allows users to animate characters created in Illustrator or Photoshop.

The tool tracks facial expressions and motion through webcam to animate the characters in real-time. This results in high-quality lip-sync and mimicking of natural movements.

Key features:

• Import assets from Photoshop or Illustrator
• Track webcam to animate in real-time
• Lip-sync capability
• Record dialogues and trigger actions through keyboard
• Customizable behaviors and triggers
• Integrates with other Adobe apps

Adobe Character Animator enables exporting animated characters in multiple formats seamlessly. It is ideal for animating characters for explainer videos, broadcasting scenarios and digital puppets.

2. CrazyTalk

CrazyTalk by Reallusion is a dedicated tool for creating 2D and 3D animated characters from images. It uses auto motion technology to animate facial images and allows customizing different parameters.

Key features:

• Imports images to auto generate animated 3D heads
• Facial recognition technology for accurate tracking
  -controls for eye movements, lips, cheeks, head position and more
• Library of templates and assets
• Lip-sync capability
• Export as video, gif or integrate with other tools

CrazyTalk is suitable for independent animators and businesses looking to create interactive characters, digital avatars, animoji and talking emojis from image assets.

3. Vyond

Vyond provides a complete suite for businesses to create custom animated content easily. It has multiple pre-defined characters, templates and assets to choose from.

The tool allows customizing character features, attributes, voices, backgrounds, text, props and more. No animation experience is required to create dynamic scenes using its drag-and-drop editor.

Key features:

• 100+ character templates fully customizable
• 6000+ props and scenes covering various settings
• Lip-sync capability
• Collaborative tools
• Share securely with custom viewer permissions
• Analytics on viewer engagement

Vyond is trusted by leading companies and ideal for corporate training videos, digital assistant avatars, animated AE slides and more applications.

4. Animaker

Animaker is a DIY platform for making animated videos using pre-defined characters, templates and assets. It provides a drag-and-drop based editor to create cartoon style animated content easily.

The tool allows full customization of scenes, characters, backgrounds, text, props, workflows and voice-overs. Users can also import own media files and audio tracks.

Key features:

• 100+ animated characters available
• 1000+ templates across verticals
• Drag-and-drop editor
• Customizable character movements
• Text to speech conversion
• Lip-sync capability
• Stock media library access

Animaker is suitable for both businesses and individuals looking for an easy animated video creation platform. Its cartoon style templates make it great for explainer videos, ads, social media posts, and more.

5. Doodly

Doodly provides a simple drag-and-drop tool to create whiteboard style animated videos. It offers pre-defined backgrounds, characters, props and libraries to assemble animated scenes easily.

The tool allows importing of own illustrations and audio files. Multiple customizations can be done to characters, workflows and scenes using an intuitive editor.

Key features:

• Huge library of assets and templates
• Customizable backgrounds, props, and movements
• Lip-sync enabled characters
• Collaborative tools
• Analytics on viewer engagement
• Video integration across platforms

Doodly enables anyone to create great whiteboard animation videos for marketing, training, and other business applications.

6. Animatron

Animatron offers a growing library of pre-animated media, graphics, backgrounds, icons and more. Users can easily alter and customize these assets to create HTML5 animated content.

It has dedicated features to animate presentations, create banners, design infographics and develop light animated scenes. The platform is suitable for non-animators to create basic animated graphics easily.

Key features:

• 1000+ pre-animated configurable scenes
• 500K+ media assets
• Animated icons and infographic widgets
• Vector editing tools
• Animation effects and presets
• Lip-sync enabled characters
• Collaborative tools

Animatron provides an easy starting point for creating lightweight animated characters and graphics for non-profits, agencies, startups and more.

7. Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate is a veteran tool for creating vector-based 2D animations and interactive content. It offers advanced animation capabilities for seasoned animators.

The tool allows to import assets from Illustrator and Photoshop. Bone rigging, inverse kinematics and other techniques can be leveraged to animate characters. The animations can be exported in multiple web and app friendly formats.

Key features:

• Advanced vector animation capabilities
• Integrates with Illustrator and Photoshop
• Bones, skins and IK rigging
• Rich set of easing functions
• Export as SVG, Canvas, WebGL
• Scripting and coding tools

Adobe Animate is ideal for experienced animators looking to create complex interactive and scripted animations for apps, games and web.

8. Moho Pro

Moho Pro (formerly Anime Studio) provides professional 2D animation capabilities for animators. It offers advanced bone rigging, automatic lip-syncing, smart shapes and modeling tools.

The tool also integrates with leading graphics apps allowing import of existing assets. Some key highlights of Moho Pro are:

• Smart bones and automatic edge weighting
• Dynamic hair and cloth simulation
• Automatic lip-syncing
• Robust vector brushes
• Real-time media preview
• Graph editor for precise timing
• Export animations as video, sprite sheets etc.

Moho Pro enables professional 2D animators to create high-quality characters and animation for films, games, apps and advertising.

9. Blender

Blender is an open-source 3D creation platform with professional-grade animation capabilities. It supports modeling, sculpting, camera & object tracking, scripting and more.

Some key animation features are:

• Fast and fluid modeling workflow
• Character animation rigging tools
• Realistic mesh deformations
• Particle simulations and physics
• Non-linear animation editor
• Render scenes using Cycles engine

Blender allows skilled 3D animators to rig, animate and render production-quality animated characters. Major studios like Disney have used Blender for animated movies.

10. Aurora 3D Animation Maker

Aurora 3D Animation Maker offers an easy drag-and-drop tool for creating 3D animated videos. It provides several pre-defined 3D assets, templates and effects to assemble animated scenes quickly.

Some of its key features are:

• 1000+ 3D animated assets
• Built-in animation effects
• Easy timeline editing
• Lip sync enabled talking avatars
• Customization tools for assets
• Camera paths configuration
• Group animation of multiple assets

Aurora 3D Animation Maker enables anyone to create great 3D animated videos easily for business and educational usage.

11. Powtoon

Powtoon provides templates and pre-built objects tailored for business videos. It enables users to make animated videos through its drag-and-drop editor without expertise.

Some of the notable features offered by Powtoon are:

• 100+ video templates for business use cases
• Animated library of characters, props, scenes etc.
• Customizable visual theme and branding
• Lip-sync enabled voice overs
• Animated text and transitions
• Music library powered by EpidemicSound
• Analytics on viewer engagement

Powtoon allows marketers, educators, HR professionals and more to create animated videos for ads, product demos, training and onboarding.

12. Renderforest

Renderforest is an online platform for making animated videos based on templates tailored for marketing and advertising. Users can customize every aspect of the videos easily.

Some key highlights of Renderforest are:

• 700+ animated video templates
• Library of animated characters, scenes, props
• Customizable visual theme and branding
• Background music and voiceover options
• Animated text with fonts and styles
• Intuitive timeline editor
• Predictable pricing model

Renderforest enables anyone to make professional animated ads, explainers, intros and outros without needing animation expertise.

13. Animoto

Animoto offers easy video creation capabilities for marketers and businesses. It provides a host of animated templates, graphics, icons, transitions and more to make professional videos.

Some notable features of Animoto are:

• 100+ drag and drop video templates
• Animated elements, overlays, transitions
• Dynamic text animations and effects
• Background music library
• Customizable colors, fonts and themes
• Multi-format exports and downloads
• Analytics on viewer engagement

Animoto allows quick creation of promotional and marketing animated videos for social media and websites.

Key Considerations for Selecting Animation Tools

When evaluating the various options, some key factors to consider are:

• Ease of use – The tool you choose must be easy to learn and use without needing much design or animation expertise.

• Customization – Ability to customize the characters, environments, text, voice-overs, camera angles and other aspects as per need.

• Output options – Tool must support exporting or publishing the animations in formats like MP4, GIF, WebM, HTML5 etc.

• Assets library – Availability of good quality templates, scenes, characters that can be reused and customized.

• Branding – Ability to match animations to company‘s brand style, logo, colors etc.

• Collaboration – Features to enable team collaboration on animated projects.

• Cost – The budget for acquiring the tools and resources for animation development.

Selecting the right animated video software based on these criteria can help create great results cost-effectively.

Conclusion

Animated characters provide an impactful way for brands to attract and engage their audiences. The tools discussed in this article make it possible for businesses to develop animated content without needing much design expertise.

With minimal learning time, these animation softwares allow customizing templatized assets like characters, backgrounds, props into videos or GIFs that align with brand style. Considering factors like use case requirements, customization needs, output options and budget will help identify the best tools for animated character creation.