If you are interested in making a whiteboard or video scribe animation in Motion^R and don't know where to start, this tutorial may help. There are two types of simulations used in a whiteboard animation. One is a drawing simulation and the other is a writing simulation. In this tutorial, we will make a very simple whiteboard animation that animates a hand drawing a logo and writing a company name on the screen.

You will need a few graphics such as a hand/pencil graphic. This can be a photograph or illustration of an arm with the hand holding a pencil, paint brush or whatever. The graphic should be on a transparent background. Unless you want your hand to float in space, the arm should be long enough so that the end of the arm is below the screen throughout the animation.

Next you will need the graphic of what the hand will be drawing on the screen. This image should also be on a transparent background. Most of the time this graphic will be provided to you by your client but you can also create this graphic from scratch inside Motion^R or Photoshop^R.

The easiest way to get these graphics into Motion is to put them in a layered Photoshop image. Open a new Photoshop image that is 1280 x 720 pixels, which is the dimensions of the video screen. Place your graphics in this image, being sure that the entire arm is visible. Also, the arm should be on a layer above the logo layer. As for the company name, we will be using Motion's Text tool. Save this image as a layered .psd Photoshop image.

Let's get going in Motion.

1. Open a new Motion document. I use the 1280 x 720 pixels resolution and 29.97 fps (NTSC) because it's the best trade off of screen size and download time. Set the number of seconds for the video. For this example, I used 5 seconds.
   
   
2. From the Menubar on the right, set the screen to Transparent.
   
   
3. In the Layers pane, rename the Project layer to "Whiteboard". Rename the Group layer to "BG" for background.
   
   
4. If you aren't using a background graphic, grab one from the Motion Library or draw one on the screen. To draw a background, use the Rectangle tool and set the Fill to the color of your choice in the Inspector.
   
   Now we are ready for your graphics.
   
   
5. Import your Photoshop image and tell Motion not to merge the layers. As we placed them in the Photoshop image, the hand is on a layer above the graphic it will be drawing (logo). Arrange the hand and logo on the screen in position for the first frame of your animation.
   
   It is easiest to put the hand and each graphic that it will be drawing into their own layer group. For this tutorial, we will place the hand graphic in a Group named "Hand" and the logo graphic in a Group named "Logo". The Hand group should be above the Logo group, which should be above the BG group.
   
   
6. Select the BG layer and click the Plus icon at the bottom of the pane to add a new Group layer. Name this group "Logo" and drag the Logo graphic into this layer. Repeat this for the Hand graphic, putting the Hand group above the Logo group.
   
   
7. Now that the default Group layer is empty, we can delete it. We should have three group layers: Hand, Logo and BG.
   
   

In the next tutorial, we will draw the Bezier path that will animate the hand.

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