COLE'S TIKTOKS

What prevents me from using this logo? Does it look a little too familiar? Trademark protection prevents others from using things like your name, symbols, logos, and phrases. However, trademark protections have been claimed for things like colors, jingles, sound effects, shapes, and even smells. So basically, you can’t use anything that infringes on another company or brand. Generic foods get around this by simply changing a few ingredients and the name. It all tastes the same to me. Trademark is also really important because if you were to purchase the domain name idearocketmarketing, we would have the ability to take it from you because our company name is trademark protected. Although our name is Idea Rocket Animation, it is still closely related to ours. For more on video marketing, remember to like and follow.

Hey, why was my video removed for copyright? Ooh! A copyright is a bundle of rights you get when you create something. You don’t even have to file with the government to get it. So why bother? Well, it protects it better. You have proof that you created this thing and you filed a record of it. Copyright was created to give content creators the right to control and profit off of their work. But, copyright doesn’t just end at writers and video creators. Musicians file copyrights as well. Hey, how does that work with TikTok songs? Do artists get a cut from TikTok when their music is used as a sound? Short answer, yes. Long answer, no. What do you mean? Artists can receive royalties from having their music on the platform. Distributors such as DistroKid, CD Baby, and TuneCore, allow artists to upload their music to TikTok. The problem is your song has to meet very specific requirements. However, I wouldn’t let that steer new musicians away from sharing music on the platform. Creating exposure for yourself is the best thing you can do. Oh! By the way, this also isn’t a phone. It’s a Pelican Case for SD cards.

So you’re using one of these. You should probably know which one of these to use. These are SD cards. SD stands for secure digital. SD cards come in a variety of different classes. Whether you’re creating video or you’re a photographer, it’s important to know which one you should use. I think we all know that this number is the capacity for storage, the higher the size, the more room you have before you fill it. If you’re a photographer taking RAW photos, you’re gonna fill it much quicker than you would taking JPEG photos. If you’re making video, you’ll find that recording in a higher resolution and higher frame rate like 4K, 60 frames a second will fill the card much quicker than recording in 1080p, 24 frames a second. Moving up to this number here we have the read speed. Not to be confused with the write speed. Read speed is the speed at which you can transfer files from your SD card to your computer. Write speed is the speed at which the camera itself can write the video or photo files to the SD card. Choosing a higher read speed can save you some time when moving things over to your computer. The write speed is up here at the top-right, classified with this little V check mark looking thing.

Your SEO is so impor- (upbeat music) Seriously. (fingers clicking) The audio levels in your video are really important. Specifically background music. It’s much better to have your music too low than it is to have it too high. If you’re adding music within TikTok, click this drop down arrow and scroll down to volume. Then you can turn up the original audio and turn down the music volume. Now, if you’re not using TikTok Audio and you’re editing in something like Premiere, Final Cut, or DaVinci, you can do the exact same thing simply by dragging the audio bar up on your voice and down on the music track. Now I know what you’re thinking, “Cole, I love the background music I chose and it’s too low. They’ll never get a chance to actually hear it.” You need to use a technique called, Ducking. To do this, add two key frames where you want the volume increased and two key frames where you want it to decrease. Then simply drag the volume bar up. If we move the first set of key frames further from each other, the volume will gradually increase to the set volume. If we shorten the distance between the key frames, the volume will increase much faster. But anyway, as I was saying.

I hate watermarks. What if I told you there was actually a way to post videos from your TikTok to your Instagram or Instagram to TikTok without having the dreadful watermark? You can actually do this by using something called Repurpose.io. Here is how you do it. Go to repurpose.io’s website, choose connections, and link up the accounts you want. Once done, go to workflows. Choose create a new workflow. Name it whatever you want. Select the source type; this will be the account you want to pull the content from. I’m gonna choose TikTok. Leave this stuff the same. The destination connection is the account you want to send the content to. So for me, I’m gonna choose Instagram, and then click done. You can view the content in the workflow you just made and publish video from your TikTok directly to your Instagram. Hassle-free and best of all, no watermark.

Is voiceover worth having in your videos today? Next time you’re in a public space, take a look around. How many people are on their phones? Most of those people probably have their volume turned all the way down, and have no idea what’s being said. So maybe you should just use music on the soundtrack and text on screen so that nobody misses your message. Like in this video we created for Slice Insurance. Well, it depends on how many people on your website are on mobile and how many are on a desktop, and how dense is your message? You can communicate a lot of information quickly if you’re working on two channels at once, voiceover and visuals. Also remember your viewers aren’t gonna be completely lost in your narrative if they can’t hear anything because they’ll still have captions. Now there is no right or wrong answer to the voiceover or no voiceover question, but if you consider these questions, you’ll come up with the best answer for you.

Guys, hiring an influencer to be the face of your brand is a great way to increase brand engagement, which is what I do for IdeaRocket. Now to make it worth your while, you’ll wanna keep a few things in mind. Number one: hire an experienced influencer. You wanna go with someone who already has a following on the platforms you’re looking to post to. I mean, that’s kind of common sense. This goes to show that they know the ropes and how to play the game. Number two is to pick someone right for your brand. If your company is very serious and your customers might not find humor in your videos having humor, it wouldn’t be in your best interest to go with an influencer who is a comedian. – Are you cremated ’cause you got a smoking hot body. You can’t spell funeral without fun. ♪ If you’re lying on the floor ♪ ♪ And you can’t breathe no more ♪ ♪ You might be dead ♪ ♪ So call 1-800-YOU-DEAD-NOW ♪ (beep) – Number three: meetings. Meeting with your influencer is crucial. I’m talking either face-to-face or video conferences like Zoom. Things get lost in translation through messages and email. Number four is trial and error. Guys, do not be afraid of trying new things with the content. Together, you can figure out what works and what doesn’t. Number five is patience. Allow time for traffic and engagement to come to your account. It can take days or it can take months. And finally, number six is creative freedom. You know the actors who are so good at what they do, but there was that one movie where it was just terrible? That’s because they weren’t given any creative freedom with the script. Everything coming from the actor felt forced and unnatural. You chose the influencer you picked for a reason. Let a little bit of their color shine through in the content that they’re making.

Four types of videos that are great to have on your company’s website. Number one, and explainer video. Do people really understand what you do? If they don’t, they’re certainly not gonna buy from you. Explain the problem that you can solve for them and how you solve it. Number two is a company’s story, just a video showing how your company got to where it is today. People love to be reminded that the company they’re looking to work with or buy a product from are indeed ran by human beings. It makes the company feel more wholesome and trustworthy. Next is a testimonial, a video that shows real customer reviews. Incorporate these either in digital form and pull them from places like Google and Yelp, or get the customer in front of the camera. People love seeing faces in videos, so getting a customer in front of your camera can really sell your message. And finally, number four, a must-have is a showcase. When a company like Apple creates a new product, how do they market it? With a mind-awing video showcasing the product’s new sleek and must-buy design. And how do companies like IdeaRocket market their services with a video? With a reel. It showcases some of our best work and gives the customer a general idea as to what we have to offer as an animation studio.

The 12th and final principle of animation is appeal. Just how in movies, you would want the actors to have their own charismatic traits, in animation, you want the characters to have something appealing or interesting about them. This goes for the protagonist, the antagonist, and all other characters. It doesn’t necessarily mean to make them look good but to make them interesting to look at. To give a character more of a dynamic design, number one, use a variety of shapes. Instead of using the same shapes across all characters, try giving each character their own. Number two is proportions. Emphasize key points of a character. Make them stand out by enlarging them and shrinking parts that are less interesting. And the third is detail. You can actually over-complicate a character by adding too much information. Not only that but you’re making the animation process that much harder. So a general role of thumb is to keep it simple. If you’re interested in learning about the 12 principles of animation, check out our page where we have videos going over them.

The 11th principle of animation. What is it? Solid drawing? This principle is about making sure that forms feel like they’re in a three-dimensional space with volume, weight, and balance. Having some basic three-dimensional drawing skills allows you to utilize this principle. For example, if we draw a line straight down this sphere and another perpendicular to it, it looks very flat. Now, if we make those lines, follow the contour of the sphere, we get a three-dimensional look. The same goes for drawing a cube. If we draw a cube and use parallel lines, something looks a little off, but if we tilt those lines towards the vanishing point, we get a three-dimensional looking cube. You also wanna avoid twining. This is when a character’s limbs are moving in symmetry and doing the exact same thing. This tends to look really unnatural. So, try to avoid it. Another thing is to not be afraid of overlap. Let simple things like the character shirt color cover part of the character’s face. It’s little things like this that create a more three-dimensional look.

– How do you increase the amount of impact on the viewer in animation? With the 10th principle of animation, exaggeration. Exaggeration is used to push movements further to add more drama and appeal to an action. It can be used to exaggerate how a character is feeling. If characters are shocked, make them more shocked. And it can be used to exaggerate a character’s actions. Your goal with exaggeration isn’t necessarily to distort the characters, but convince the audience of what they see. Take a look at this example we created. The deer morphs into a mini tornado to show just how destructive he’s being to the trees. For more on animation and video marketing, remember to like and follow.

Creating hand drawn traditional animation? How do you make an object move slower or faster? This is the ninth principle of animation, timing. Timing refers to the number of drawings, or frames for a given action. Let’s take a closer look at some examples. If we have this car with the frames tight together we get a slow moving car. Now the further away we space the car between frames, the faster the car will appear to go. This principle of animation is crucial, so make sure that you’re using it. For more on animation and video marketing, remember to like and follow.

– What principle of animation do all of these clips follow? – [Narrator] Stops winter dear browse damage. – [Narrator 2] Can help keep you and pedestrians safe on your- – Secondary action, the eighth principle of animation. Not to be confused with follow through and overlapping. Secondary actions are gestures that support the main action to add more dimension to the character’s animation. They can give more personality and insight to what the character is doing or even thinking. The primary action in this example we made for Dear Pro would be the deer spitting out the leaf. The secondary action would be the tail flicking showing relief that he’s got that awful taste out of his mouth. In this video we created for Ford Edge’s driver assist functions, the primary action would be the person walking and the secondary action would be them texting. Kids don’t try that at home, not every car has pedestrian detec- (man mumbling) Kids don’t try that at home, not every car has Ford’s at, what? Not every car has Fords pedestrian. Not every car. Not every car has pedestrian detection systems. Kids, don’t try that at home. Not every car has a pedestrian detection system. Woo! I got it.

– Most living things, including humans, move in circular paths called arcs. Life doesn’t move in straight lines and neither should animation. The seventh principle to animation is called arcs. Arcs operate along a curved trajectory that adds the illusion of life to an animated object. Without arcs, your animation would be stiff and mechanical. (mechanical spider clanks) (child screams) In this example we created for Scandis the man passes the cash along from one person to another by reaching his arms across the frame. At first glance, it might be hard to see the arcs happening but when it’s outlined, it’s quite obvious. The fluid arcing of the man’s arms adds grace to the animation. The speed and timing of the arcs are also crucial. Sometimes an arc can happen so fast that it actually blurs beyond recognition. This is called an animation smear. Check out our page for a video on that.

– Slow in and slow out. What is that? This is the sixth principle to animation. If we have this car move from left to right without applying this principle, we get something like this. Now, if we apply slow in and slow out, we get something more lifelike and realistic. Now achieving this in traditional animation is much different than how you would in an animation software using key frames. For traditional animation we’re actually drawing every frame to create motion. So the closer you are to the start position, the more inbetween frames you wanna add. And as each frame gets closer to the start, you wanna decrease the distance of the object between the frames. Now, if we reverse this method and use it at the end frame we get the same effect, but the object eases into its resting position. To achieve this in animation software using key frames we could simply just use the ease in and out feature, or we can manually change the motion curves from linear to spline by adjusting the Bezier handles. Okay, now there are definitely times where you don’t wanna use this principle. For example, if we have a cannon ball blasting out of a cannon, we wouldn’t want to use this for the ball as it’s shot out. We also wouldn’t wanna use it when a ball hits the ground. And we also wouldn’t wanna use it if a car is driving into a tree. For more on animation and video marketing, remember to like and follow.

– What is the fifth principle to animation? Follow through and overlapping. Remember how in sports, you were always told to follow through? – Fore! (theatrical music) – Because of the momentum in your actions, there is follow through in practically all of the actions we take, and it’s the animator’s job to capture it. When a moving object, such as a person, comes to a stop, parts might continue to move in the same direction because of the force of forward momentum. These parts might be hair, clothing, jewelry, or jiggling flesh of an overweight person. – Woohoo, look at blubber fly! – This is where you can see overlapping action. The secondary elements, hair, clothing, fat, are following through only primary element and overlapping its action. Here’s a pretty simple example we created for view boost. Watch the sleeves of the Cheese Jedi’s cloak when he swings his lightsaber. They move with the momentum of the action. But when it’s over, the sleeves continue to go before settling to a stop. That is over overlapping action.

– What is the third principle to animation? Staging is the setting you choose for the story, where you put your characters, what they do, and where you put your camera. The animator’s job is to control where the viewer is looking. Timing is key, and if you have a ton of things going on at once, the scene may look messy and the viewer may not know where to look. Don’t make your characters or elements in the scene compete for stage time. It’s important that you allow for the viewer to see what’s happening and then move on to the next character or element’s action. Another thing to remember when it comes to staging is composition. Composition is the way elements in a scene are arranged within the frame. If we take a look at this video we created for Georgia 811, we see this gopher running and opening this door in a panic. Our eyes naturally look at the gopher on the chair here with no hesitation, but if we were to center the gopher at the door or, better yet, put him on the left side of the frame, our eyes wouldn’t know where to look. By having this gopher on the right side of the frame, we are leaving space on the left side for something to fill it. In this case, it’s the gopher sitting on the chair. If you’re learning anything from our videos we’re happy to hear it, and remember… (“remember” repeating) I can never say that part. And remember to like and follow for more.

– Could somebody please tell me what’s wrong with this? (ball squeaking) It’s missing anticipation. This is the second principle of animation. Anticipation is the preparation for the main action that’s about to take place. Here is an example we created for Eastlink Wireless. We first see the character as they’re standing on the box, they then bend their knees and springs into action by leaping from the ground up into the air. But anticipation doesn’t just stop at jumping. Anticipation can be used for almost any action in animation. It can be exaggerated (ball squeaking) or very subtle. If any of you are learning things from our videos we’re very happy to hear it and remember to like and follow for more.

Take notice to how this ball squishes when it hits the ground. Animators still strive to give real physics to their work, even if it is exaggerated. There are 12 principles to animation, and this is the first one, squash and stretch. So elements in animation will actually get longer or flatter to emphasize their speed, momentum, weight, and mass. For example, a soft squishy ball will have a lot of squash and stretch and here it is without it. I think it’s safe to say that the first ball represents something more squishy, like a kickball and the second represents something more dense, like a bowling ball. Squash and stretch can be used in a number of ways. If a ball starts in motion from a stop position, the stretch would happen gradually as the ball begins moving but if the ball were to be hit by something, the ball would first squash and then immediately start its stretch phase to emphasize how quickly they’ve all gained its speed. There’s a lot of really cool things that go into video marketing in animation and if you’re interested in learning more, remember to like and follow.

– What’s this? – It’s art project? – Okay, I like it. Picasso. – Yeah. Except I really don’t even understand what they are. – I got you. SRT stands for SubRip subtitles. These are text files that contain subtitle information. They include start and stop time durations next to the text you want to appear during that time. Platforms like YouTube allow you to upload SRT files along with your videos. – That sounds like a waste of time though, doesn’t YouTube already have automated captions? – Automated captions are no bueno. – Why? – Search engines can’t read and analyze your videos like they would a blog post. By having an SRT file, you’re giving the search engine something to read and index your videos. Now, some people do say and argue that search engines still read and analyze your data even without an SRT file. But even if this were true, they would still be auto generating your captions to read and index the video. – Okay. But why are automated captions bad then? – Automated captions are not accurate. – Ah, what if I hate videos that have captions on them? Doesn’t that hurt the video’s engagement? – You can still turn them on and off just like automated captions. You’re thinking of open captions. – Which means? – Open captions are actually burned into the video. They cannot be turned on or off by the viewer. – So search engines can’t read and analyze open captions. – Exactly.

15 ways to promote your video in under 60 seconds, go. Number one, once your video is complete, you wanna pick the perfect title. Number two, next, choose a thumbnail. Number three, after you find an image for your thumbnail, you’ll wanna spruce it up with some text. Number four, create a (beep). (beep) are great because they can be used to tease your video in emails, blog posts, and your website. I still have no idea how to say the word (beep). Number five, write a description. Number six, identify keywords to help boost your SEO. Number seven, create a transcript and post it with your video. Number eight, create an SRT file. SRT files are caption files that go with your video. You can create these by hand or have a service like rev.com create them for you. Number nine, choose what metrics you wanna measure. This could be click rates, watch times, purchases, et cetera, anything you want. Number 10, your goal is for the viewers to take action so create a call to action. 11, share on organic social media. Number 12, you can promote it as an advertisement on social media. Number 13, create a blog post. Number 14, send it out as an email newsletter. And finally, number 15, write a press release. For more on video marketing, remember to like and follow.

Did you know, you could possibly air your nonprofit ad on local TV and radio? PSAs or public service announcements are ads that local stations run to prove that they’re running their stations in the public interest. PSAs are dispersed by stations without charge to raise public awareness or change behavior. You can actually reach out to local TV and radio and ask for PSA air time. But since there are so many stations distributing PSAs isn’t simple. Many nonprofits will use specialized agencies to do this. Two really well known ones are the Ad Council and Connect 360. So you still might need to pay for that service and production. But given that you could still get a ton of free air time. This is still a good deal. At Idea Rocket, we’ve made PSAs for Georgia 811 and Alcoholics Anonymous. Maybe your nonprofit can qualify.

This is the best way to increase engagement on your videos. Thumbnails. A thumbnail is that tiny little image your viewer sees right before they click on your video. Two great starting points for creating your own thumbnails are Canva

What is 2D animation? Animation is a simulation of movement created by a sequence of images. 2D, or two dimensional, is flat artwork that moves. Back in the day, traditional animation was drawn on cells, which were photographed over backgrounds often painted in watercolors. Most animators that use traditional animation today work on computers, but rather than drawing on cells, they draw on touch sensitive monitors or tablets. Speaking of computers, an another form of two dimensional animation is puppet animation. Animators create a character in sections, in something like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Once brought into the animating software, they can then freely move around the character rather than having to draw every frame. One drawback to using puppet animation is it can sometimes seem less organic. However, it is cheaper and allows animators to use more rich textures.

What is 3D animation? 3D or computer generated imagery, also known as CGI, is created on computers using three dimensional space. And just like you and I have bones, so do 3D models. It is the animator’s job to create bones for the models. This action is called rigging. Once the rig is complete the animator can now freely move around the model. And just like a real production set they illuminate their scenes with virtual lighting and shoot them with virtual cameras. There’s a lot of cool things that go into animation and if you’re interested in more remember to like and follow Idea Rocket for more.