Types of explainer videos, and when to use each
The six main types of explainer videos: whiteboard, 2D animation, motion graphics, screencasts, live action and talking heads. What each suits and costs.
By the Chasca team 7 min read
The main types of explainer videos are whiteboard animation, 2D character animation, motion graphics, screencasts, live action and talking-head videos. Each one shows something different: drawings that build an idea, characters who act out a story, moving shapes and words, a real screen, real things or a real person. Choose by what your viewer needs to see. Draw it when people need to understand how something works, record the screen when they need to click, and film it when they need to see the real thing.
Here is what each type looks like, what it suits, what it costs and where it falls short.
The six types at a glance
| Type | What you see | Best for | Cost and effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whiteboard animation | Simple drawings that appear as the narrator names them | How and why something works | Low to medium, and minutes with an AI generator |
| 2D character animation | Illustrated characters acting out a story | Brand stories and messages that need emotion | High: every scene is drawn and animated for you |
| Motion graphics | Animated shapes, icons, charts and words | Product features, data, a polished brand look | Medium to high |
| Screencast | A narrated recording of a screen | Software walkthroughs and tutorials | Low |
| Live action | Real people, places and products on camera | Physical products, places, testimonials | Medium to high |
| Talking head | A person speaking to camera | Courses, updates, trust in a person | Low to medium |
What is a whiteboard explainer?
Simple drawings on a plain background, each one drawn at the moment the narrator names it, so viewers watch the idea being built instead of decoding a finished diagram. Our guide to what a whiteboard explainer video is covers the format in detail.
The evidence behind it is unusually strong for a video style. In a 2023 experiment with 133 secondary school students, diagrams drawn progressively while the narrator explained them led to better recall and transfer than the same diagrams shown finished. And in 6.9 million viewing sessions on edX, Philip Guo, Juho Kim and Rob Rubin found that Khan-style tablet drawings were more engaging than PowerPoint slides or code screencasts.
- Good for: concepts, processes, policies, lessons, and documents people won’t read in full.
- Watch out for: anything people need to see for real. A drawing of your product is still a drawing.
What is a 2D animated explainer?
Illustrated characters in illustrated scenes: the familiar startup video in which a customer runs into a problem and then meets the product that solves it. Its strength is story. In the same 2023 experiments, wrapping the lesson in a narrative, with someone who wants something, an obstacle and a resolution, improved transfer compared with a plain informative script.
- Good for: brand stories, a customer’s problem and how you solve it, messages that need emotion.
- Watch out for: cost and change. Clutch’s budgeting guide puts 2D animation at $1,000 to $3,000 per finished minute, and when the product changes, scenes have to be redrawn. Our guide to what an explainer video costs compares the options.
You don’t need characters to tell a story, though. “Maria’s savings grow while she sleeps” works as a whiteboard drawing too.
What are motion graphics and kinetic typography?
Motion graphics animate shapes, icons, charts and pieces of an interface. Kinetic typography animates the words themselves, line by line. Both look polished, and both suit short product videos and social clips where a brand look matters.
The catch, when the job is explaining, is text. One of Richard Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning, the redundancy principle, is that people learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration and the same words printed on screen. Moving sentences work for a slogan or a quote. For a mechanism, let a picture carry the idea and the voice carry the words.
- Good for: feature launches, data stories, short social clips, a strong brand look.
- Watch out for: screens full of moving text that compete with the narration.
What is a screencast?
A recording of a screen with narration over it, and the standard way to show software. People use these videos differently from lectures: in Guo’s data, students came back to tutorials to rewatch and skim them, which is why the authors recommend supporting rewatching and skimming in how-to videos. Clear titles and chapters help.
- Good for: step-by-step tasks in software, settings, internal how-tos.
- Watch out for: the why. A screencast shows where to click, not why the process exists, and every interface update dates it. Many teams pair a one-minute drawn explainer for the idea with a screencast for the clicks.
What is a live-action explainer?
Real people, places and products on camera. It is the only type that shows the real thing, which makes it the natural choice for physical products, places and customer stories.
- Good for: physical products, a service in action, testimonials, a tour of a place.
- Watch out for: budget, scheduling and updates. A shoot needs people, locations and equipment, and reshooting one changed detail is rarely cheap.
What is a talking-head video?
A person speaking to camera, often cut with slides, drawings or a screen. It is the default for online courses, founder updates and internal announcements, because it is cheap to make and it builds a connection.
Two findings are worth knowing. In Guo’s study, videos that intersperse an instructor’s talking head with slides were more engaging than slides alone, and videos with a more personal feel could be more engaging than high-fidelity studio recordings. But a face doesn’t add learning on its own. A 2022 meta-analysis of 20 experiments found that showing the instructor did not significantly change learning, though it raised both motivation and cognitive load. And when René Kizilcec and colleagues let 2,951 online learners choose, 35% watched without the instructor’s face, for reasons that included avoiding distraction.
- Good for: courses, updates, founder and sales videos, anything where trust in a person matters.
- Watch out for: a face doing the job a diagram should do. When the topic is a mechanism, cut to a drawing.
Which type of explainer video should you choose?
| If the viewer needs to… | Choose |
|---|---|
| Understand how or why something works | Whiteboard animation |
| Feel a problem and its solution, in a look all your own | 2D animation or motion graphics |
| Click through software | A screencast |
| See a real product, place or person | Live action |
| Trust a person, or follow a course with a familiar teacher | A talking head, cut with drawings or slides |
Three questions settle most cases:
- What does the viewer have to see to understand? A mechanism calls for a drawing, a task in software for the screen, a physical product for a camera.
- How often will it change? The more often it changes, the cheaper each update needs to be. Live action and custom animation are expensive to change, and screencasts break with every redesign.
- How many do you need? One flagship video can justify a studio. A library of fifty training videos can’t.
Can you mix types in one video?
Yes, and good explainers often do: a few seconds of a presenter saying what the video covers, a drawn explanation of the idea, then a screencast of the clicks. Give each part one job, and keep the whole video short.
Where does Chasca fit?
Chasca makes whiteboard explainers. Type a topic, or drop in a document, a deck, a recording or a link, and it writes the script, splits it into scenes and draws each one stroke by stroke in time with the narration, usually in about a minute. There are six drawing styles (Marker, Chalkboard, Pencil, Blueprint, Crayon and Clean), 30 narrators and 79 languages, and an update means making the video again in about a minute, not reshooting. It doesn’t film people or record screens, so when viewers need the clicks, pair it with a screencast. The examples page shows finished videos in every style.
Sources
- Schneider, S., Krieglstein, F., Beege, M., & Rey, G. D. (2023). Successful learning with whiteboard animations: A question of their procedural character or narrative embedding? Heliyon.
- Guo, P. J., Kim, J., & Rubin, R. (2014). How video production affects student engagement: An empirical study of MOOC videos. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Learning at Scale.
- Clutch. Downloadable video production budget template. Updated April 2026.
- Mayer, R. E. (2008). Applying the science of learning: Evidence-based principles for the design of multimedia instruction. American Psychologist, 63(8), 760–769.
- Alemdağ, E. (2022). Effects of instructor-present videos on learning, cognitive load, motivation, and social presence: A meta-analysis. Education and Information Technologies, 27(9), 12713–12742.
- Kizilcec, R. F., Bailenson, J. N., & Gomez, C. J. (2015). The instructor’s face in video instruction: Evidence from two large-scale field studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(3), 724–739.
Video transcript What the narrator says in the 0:58 explainer above.
Which explainer video should you make? Choose by what your viewer needs to see. It’s like choosing a window: pick the one that shows the view you need. To explain how something works, draw it. To show where to click, record the screen.
What can the first three windows show? Whiteboard animation builds a drawing as you explain an idea. 2D character animation lets characters act out a story, though each scene takes work to draw and animate. Motion graphics move shapes, charts and words for features or data.
Screencasts record screens for software walkthroughs. Live action films real people, places and products. Talking heads put a person on camera for courses or updates. Each window offers a different view. What decides which type you choose? Choose by what your viewer needs to see.
Questions people ask
Whiteboard animation, 2D character animation, motion graphics (including kinetic typography), screencasts, live action and talking-head videos. Many explainers combine two of them, such as a presenter who cuts to drawings or to a screen recording.
The one that shows what the viewer needs to see. Draw it when people need to understand how or why something works, record the screen when they need to click through software, and film it when they need to see a real product, place or person.
A screencast, or a talking head filmed on a phone, costs little beyond your time. Custom animation costs the most; Clutch puts 2D animation at $1,000 to $3,000 per finished minute. AI whiteboard generators sit at the low end, with a monthly plan and, in Chasca, two free videos to start.
Not for learning. A 2022 meta-analysis of 20 experiments found that showing the instructor did not significantly change how much people learned, though it did raise their motivation. Use a face where trust or connection matters, and pictures where the idea is the point.
